Neal Rauhauser Goes Dark?
UPDATE: Law Enforcement?
Posted on | November 30, 2012 | 38 Comments
UPDATE 4:45 p.m. ET: At least two people who have been following this story tell me they suspect the unexplained disappearance of Neal Rauhauser’s blog may be a consequence of a criminal investigation. While these explanations are merely speculative at this point, one possibility is that Rauhauser has attracted FBI attention because of his involvement with the “Anonymous” hacker group. One source mentioned a certain hacker whose chat logs on a computer hard drive have come under scrutiny by the FBI.
A law enforcement angle in the shutdown of Rauhauser’s blog related to his Anonymous invovlement would, perhaps, explain the simultaneous silence by the “Occupy Rebellion” Twitter account, which openly supported the Anonymous hackers.
*** PREVIOUSLY (2:37 p.m. ET) ***
Mike Stack informs us that Neal Rauhauser’s blog has disappeared, after two months of cranking out smears and conspiracy theories about the alleged evils of various enemies of Rauhauser and his client Brett Kimberlin. Meanwhile, Rauhauser’s pet Twitter troll, “Occupy Rebellion,” has switched her account to “private” setting.
Why this happened or what it means is purely a matter of speculation, but one obvious possibility is that it may have become apparent to Brett Kimberlin that these cyberstalking presences were jeopardizing his case as defendant in the Walker v. Kimberlin, et al. lawsuit in Virginia.
UPDATE: John Hoge suggests:
Perhaps, he needs to coordinate a defense for the hearing on Tuesday. Maybe he’s just tying to hide.
There’s a key hearing in the Virginia case on Tuesday, and one of the motions to be heard will be Aaron Walker’s motion for a default judgment against Rauhauser. If Neal has belatedly decided to contest the suit, then trying to make the evidence of his continued harassment disappear would be an obvious move. Another possibility is that one of the various innocent people Rauhauser has dragged into his bogus conspiracy theories — and trust me, I hear from such people routinely — decided to take legal action against him.
UPDATE II: Mike Stack updates to say that the disappearance of Rauhauser’s blog will be permanent, but doesn’t say why it happened.
Anyone who’s studied Rauhauser’s methods know that this is typical: Neal has deleted more Internet content than most people have ever created — blogs, Scribd files, PDFs, Twitter sockpuppets, you name it. He has a childish love of the “you can’t catch me” game, and when his online mischief inevitably leads to trouble, Rauhauser tries to scrub the evidence off the Web. Then, when he re-emerges from hiding, Neal has some self-serving excuse about how he did nothing wrong, he was a victim of right-wing enemies, and anyone who claims otherwise is a paranoid wingnut.
Unfortunately, the truth accumulates and Rauhauser eventually runs short of people who believe his lies. There are always telltale clues that Neal can never quite explain away entirely, e.g.:
If you morons would just forget #brettkimberlin even exists and go about your lives, you would be happier and no one would be investigating.
— The Liberal Grouch (@LiberalGrouch) November 30, 2012
Hmmm. It seems to me that “Liberal Grouch” (Bill Schmalfeldt) is saying that his cyberstalking and harassment – which he ludicrously describes as “investigating” – are part of an organized intimidation campaign to shut up Brett Kimberlin’s critics. And seeing as how Schmalfeldt has taken over the “Breitbart Unmasked” site that many suspected was originally a Rauhauser project, maybe this reveals a fundamental truth about events of the past several months.
UPDATE III: Becca Lower offers a line from Sir Walter Scott:
The consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.
“Consciousness of guilt,” as the detectives like to say. Throwing things in the river is only a misdemeanor littering offense, unless what you’re throwing in the river is the weapon used in a murder.

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