Will Brett Kimberlin Ever Learn?

Posted on | August 30, 2014 | 25 Comments

Dave Weigel has finally published his account of the Kimberlin v. Walker trial, and it’s amazing that it ends with this:

“These guys are going to come out today and say I’m a pedophile,” said Kimberlin. “And tomorrow, I can file another lawsuit against them. And now I know what I need to do. It’s going to be endless lawsuits for the rest of their lives. And that’s what it ends up being. I sue them. They sue me. They come into court. I sue them. They come into court. That’s the way it is.”

Insanity, is what it is. After the December 2012 hearing in Manassas, Virginia, where a state judge dismissed Aaron Walker’s lawsuit against Kimberlin, I remember eating dinner with Walker, his family and John Hoge, and the question was, “Is this story over?”

Walker’s plight, as well as the involvement of notorious troll Neal Rauhauser, was what originally drew my interest in the Kimberlin story in May 2012. The subsequent escalation — “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” — was astonishing. But after a few weeks, interest in the story dwindled, I returned to covering the 2012 presidential campaign and, by the time Walker’s Virginia lawsuit was dismissed in December 2012, it seemed that the story had fizzled.

The fact that we’re still talking about Brett Kimberlin in August 2014 is basically a result of actions by Kimberlin and his allies:

Neal Rauhauser’s obsessive persistence in harassing various of his chosen enemies (including the defendants in Kimberlin’s lawsuits) continued to kindle resentment. The association between Kimberlin and Rauhauser is a proven fact, although the exact nature of their relationship remains mysterious. Because Rauhauser has used the word “client” to describe Kimberlin, it has been generally assumed that Neal was on Brett’s payroll somehow. Anyone hassled by Neal (who has boasted of his exploits as “iron Troll of the Year”) immediately wonders, “Who is paying Neal’s bills?” This casts a shadow of suspicion on Kimberlin.
Bill Schmalfeldt made a nuisance of himself by harassing Lee Stranahan, the instigator of “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.” John Hoge assisted Stranahan in trying to stop Schmalfeldt’s harassment, which led to a war between Hoge and Schmalfeldt. Given that Kimberlin was clearly supporting Schmalfeldt (hiring a lawyer for one of the Hoge-Schmalfeldt hearings), this helped keep alive interest in Kimberlin throughout 2013.
In July 2013, Kimberlin went to court trying to get a protective order against his estranged wife, and tried to get criminal charges filed against his wife’s boyfriend Jay Elliott. Court proceedings are a matter of public record, so these actions — which were entirely Brett’s doing — created an entirely new “angle” on the story.
In late August 2013, Kimberlin sued five of us in Maryland state court, then in October 2013, filed a federal lawsuit against about two dozen defendants. These lawsuits are newsworthy in their own right, and therefore generated more attention to Kimberlin, none of it good for him.

So now Kimberlin has lost his state case and, based on what I’ve seen of the filings in the federal lawsuit, the judge is just waiting for the case to become “ripe” (as the lawyers say) before dismissing that hopeless mess of a pro se bungle. When that is done, Kimberlin will be 0-for-2 and the smart thing for him to do, as hunters say down home, would be to “call in the dogs and piss on the fire.”

Is he that smart? I don’t know. One of my posts that seemed to piss him off the worst was where I called him “evil,” describing Kimberlin’s sadistic appetite for vengeance. That’s a judgment based on studying and researching the guy, and I think anyone else would reach the same conclusion about him. Kimberlin cannot stand the sense of shame and humiliation he associates with failure. He obviously has a strong sense of self-righteousness, and seems to feel that he is so special that he should never fail at anything. (I blame this tendency on his mother, who obviously spoiled Brett as a child.) Therefore, when Brett does fail, he seems to fixate on “enemies” as the scapegoats for his failures, and seeks to avenge himself by attempting to destroy them. Or so I’ve deduced from observation.

Why not just let it go? Weigel captures a glimpse from the trial:

Once the proceedings had begun, it became very clear, very quickly, why Kimberlin was better off in court than in the wilds of the Internet. In a courtroom, he could control what was known about his past, and what a jury was allowed to consider. He could, theoretically, present himself as a model citizen who made a mistake while obscuring what the mistakes been.
But Kimberlin overreached early and often. The “pedophile” trolling from the blogosphere was based on a few distinct stories. One: Mark Singer’s book had made Kimberlin’s interest in one young girl look downright creepy. Two: A post-prison Kimberlin had written songs about sex with teenage girls, explaining to a reporter that “every guy who’s seen a good-looking teenage girl has thought about it.” Three: In 2013, as the blog war raged, Kimberlin’s wife filed charges against him, alleging that her husband had sex with her, before marriage, when she was 15 years old, and attempted to have sex with her 12-year old cousin.
In court, Kimberlin was both outraged at the “pedophile” claims and slippery about whether they were defamatory.
“Were you ever arrested for a sexual child abuse charge?” asked the judge at one point. “Did they say you were arrested for that?”
“They say I am a pedophile,” said Kimberlin.
“If you’re charged, it’s an arrest. Is that what they say?”
They had not said that. Kimberlin paused before repeating himself. “They say I am a pedophile.”
“My question is, do they say you were charged with being a pedophile? It’s not a hard question.”
“It kind of is,” said Kimberlin.
“If they say you are something you are not, that’s one thing,” said the judge. “If they say you were arrested, that’s another thing.”

You see that it was Kimberlin himself who turned this into the “Brett Kimberlin Pedophile Trial” — and he lost. Oops.

Read the whole thing at the Daily Beast.

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Comments

25 Responses to “Will Brett Kimberlin Ever Learn?”

BKWatch
August 30th, 2014 @ 5:32 pm

I’ve lost the ability to see Brett Kimberlin stories the way an outsider sees them, but I think the article’s OK and those new to the story will get a good enough idea of what Kimberlin might be.

There are laughably inept attempts by Bill Schmalfeldt and also someone called “LeftAllTheWay” in the comments to the article. The latter identity, naturally, people will suspect is Neal Rauhauser. I believe Neal Rauhauser is too busy defending crimes of a different Pedophile, Tom Retzlaff, who btw the Texas courts have declared a vexatious litigant. “LeftAllTheWay” is worse at writing, and worse at concealing his angle, than Neal. Given this ineptness at trying to plant sympathetic comments, maybe this is what Brett Kimberlin himself does on the weekends. And here’s what’s really good about Dave Weigel’s article: a writeup about Brett appears in a widely read publication. Even though the article has some minor unnecessary digs on Brett’s opponents, Brett is so alarmed at how troublesome the article is that he and his toadie Bill Schmalfeldt have to spend their Saturday afternoon writing really long arguments about it.

Enjoy your Streisand effect, Brett.
Guest
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:00 pm

x
LLC
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

To answer your headline question: “No.”

He’s had plenty of time to mend his ways, and he’s chosen not to. I see no reason he will see this as anything but a minor setback.
Jeanette Victoria
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

Brett Kimberlin has some interesting friends Note the anonymous poser and pretend stalker @NicoleBonnet1
BKWatch
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:15 pm

I think unethical people like Kimberlin just see those unhinged stalkers as useful tools to sic on their critics. They don’t even necessarily take sincere interest in the same causes. It’s about building an allied team to attack enemies with.

I also don’t believe #0 is Brett Kimberlin. That’s just someone who argues in Brett’s favor so much that people suspect it’s him. Not to downplay the seriousness of the threat Brett poses, but I think people overestimate Brett’s abilities in thinking that #0 is him.
canuckamuk
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:23 pm

I think #0 is a shared account that Brett has access to.
Dianna Deeley
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:25 pm

Kimberlin is willfully unable to learn.
BKWatch
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:27 pm

In fairness to your view, that’s exactly how @BreitbartUnmask seems to have operated, and many Rauhauser accounts operate that way.

Personally I think he’s just a jackass. He will have a number of opportunities to turn away from his Brett cheerleading as events continue to unfold. He, along with many others, must be encouraged to admit to past wrongs and apologize to victims for piling on to attack them instead of aiding them.
DeadMessenger
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:34 pm

By his own admission, Kimberlin is a vexatious litigant. Why hasn’t he been declared as such by the court? And for that matter, why isn’t this insignificant little rat turd in prison?
Jeanette Victoria
August 30th, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

There have been a couple of accounts impersonating me that I also though were shared accounts.
MrPaulRevere
August 30th, 2014 @ 7:33 pm

“I’m a father,” Kimberlin told the jury. “I’m the founder of a nonprofit. I’ve worked with the State Department. I’m also a musician, a composer. I’m composed music for different movies, independent movies. I create a lot of videos that have gotten millions of views.” Obviously Kimberlin sees himself as some sort of great man who should never be criticized. What he seriously needs is a strong dose of humility. Decisions do indeed have consequences. No one will ever call me a pedophile, bomber or dope peddler because I have never done such things. It’s really quite simple when one thinks about it.
WJJ Hoge
August 30th, 2014 @ 8:56 pm

And now The World’s Worst Pro-Se Litigant™ (I’ll hit the tip jar with a royalty payment, Stacy) is making noise about appealing the state case and filing an additional federal lawsuit. Where I come from, that’s called doubling down on stupid.

OTOH, all is proceeding as I have foreseen.
Will Brett Kimberlin Ever Learn? | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
August 30th, 2014 @ 9:38 pm

[…] Will Brett Kimberlin Ever Learn?. […]
Recommended Reading | hogewash
August 30th, 2014 @ 9:48 pm

[…] UPDATE—Stacy McCain adds his thought here. […]
BannableLecturer
August 30th, 2014 @ 9:52 pm

Looks like Brett is girding his loins for another round of failure – this time he will be writing more than a 600 dollar check
John Bradley
August 30th, 2014 @ 9:56 pm

Therefore, when Brett does fail, he seems to fixate on “enemies” as the scapegoats for his failures, and seeks to avenge himself by attempting to destroy them.

You’ve also just described our Dear President, and every other Malignant Narcissist ever.
Eleanor D.
August 30th, 2014 @ 10:21 pm

Please o please I hope some folks decide to find some of his (little watched, for the most part) dreck and realise this man is mentally unbalanced or personality disordered. “Mozart” has an unbearable tune-challenged voice and a propensity to borrow – and the production values are something else again.
Want to See What Stacy McCain Looks Like After He’s Just Kicked Some Ass Big-Time? | Daily Pundit
August 30th, 2014 @ 10:47 pm

[…] Will Brett Kimberlin Ever Learn? : The Other McCain […]
RosalindJ
August 31st, 2014 @ 2:03 am

Why should he bother? Why change now? It’s always worked so well before. Oh wait.
McGehee
August 31st, 2014 @ 6:52 am

I guess he likes having things blow up in his face.

Stop being metaphorical, Brett. Go literal. You have the know-how.
K-Bob
August 31st, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

Comments at Wiegel’s article are hilarious. You have the thirty-percent or so who get it, 25 percent who just stopped by to call McCain and Akbar evil right-wing racists or something, The rest is pure trolling by a well-known, deranged cyberstalker.
Quartermaster
August 31st, 2014 @ 9:16 pm

Joe Nixon, as one example, is a moron. An evil moron, but still a moron. You get the same sort of nonsense when a conservative posts on the evils of marijuana.
Rob Crawford
September 1st, 2014 @ 11:47 am

Because his crap generates easy money for lawyers.
Rob Crawford
September 1st, 2014 @ 11:48 am

It’s the Daily Beast.
librarygryffon
September 1st, 2014 @ 3:22 pm

I’ve been busy with offline world stuff lately, so maybe I missed it, but has Brett actually paid that fine yet?