The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’

Posted on | October 5, 2013 | 45 Comments

One of the accusations in the Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., lawsuit:

4. Defendants falsely wrote that other targets of theirs were part of “Team Kimberlin” and published that Plaintiff controlled, paid, and directed this vast network of “unsavory” operatives.

Let us note, and quickly leave aside, several questions: Who has “targeted” whom? Is not the existence of “Team Kimberlin” self-evident? It was evident to me as soon as I began writing about this story in May 2012. My first article about it, in fact, was headlined, “Is Democrat Operative Neal Rauhauser an ‘Associate’ of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin? (And Why It Matters).”

The association between Kimberlin and Rauhauser is a documented fact and, as soon as I began reporting on this story, my Twitter timeline filled up with harassing messages from two accounts, @OccupyRebellion (now defunct) and @BreitbartUnmask, whereupon I discovered that the latter account was associated with a Web site that had been compiling negative (and in some cases, it seemed, false and defamatory) material about various individuals targeted by Kimberlin and Rauhauser.

So between Rauhauser’s involvement, the “Breitbart Unmasked” site, and these two Twitter accounts, there was clearly an alliance that could fairly be called “Team Kimberlin.”

There was also much more than that, but I said I’d quickly leave such questions aside and I’ll not litigate this matter in the blogosphere.

The indictment Thursday of 13 members of the Anonymous hacker collective gave me the occasion to mention how Brett Kimberlin’s 501(c)4 non-proift Velvet Revolution had advocated on behalf of these hackers, and how Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser was also personally associated with the Anonymous movement.

This prompted a new smear by Team Kimberlin member “Xenophon”:

We have to wonder: is McCain looking to add a whole new defamation charge to the lawsuit he already faces by accusing two unindicted persons of taking part in a criminal conspiracy without proof? As we have said before, McCain and his friends actually believe their crazy notion that Kimberlin runs an international hacker ring through Rauhauser on behalf of Islamic terrorists. This would be delightful as a Tom Clancy novel, but as “journalism” it fails a basic sniff-test.
Let us recap the actual history here. After Anonymous attacked the websites of financial institutions that had cut off WikiLeaks from receiving contributions, HBGary Federal CEO (and friend of Andrew Breitbart) Aaron Barr bragged openly that he would reveal the “leadership” of Anonymous, a leaderless collective, and then got smacked around for being a tool who could not even secure his own company’s emails. The FBI made its arrests in that case more than a year ago, arresting neither Kimberlin nor Rauhauser or even naming them in any way.
McCain has connected two very different dots here, turning Kimberlin’s outspoken political support for the stated transparency mission of WikiLeaks into sinister control of Anonymous. McCain’s only “proof” is this lunatic screed by Jennifer Emick, McCain’s favorite source of information on all things Anonymous and all things Neal Rauhauser, which pigeonholes every obscure blogger who ever gave Seth Allen butthurt into a massive conspiracy.

OK, a few points: I have never said, nor do I believe, “that Kimberlin runs an international hacker ring through Rauhauser on behalf of Islamic terrorists.” This is something Neal Rauhauser has attributed to me, in the same way that he has routinely mischaracterized many other things, because Neal Rauhauser is a dishonest sociopath.

This is really a simple deception: “Xenophon” refutes accusations that were never made by me (nor by anyone else I know of), in an effort to discredit me. Did I say Kimberlin and Rauhauser were “taking part in a criminal conspiracy”? Did I accuse Kimberlin of “sinister control of Anonymous?” No, I wrote this:

I know that Rauhauser hates Jennifer Emick, and Neal’s association with Anonymous is something he boasted about. See, for example, his early intimations of familiarity in “Aspects Of Anonymous,” published under his “Stranded Wind” alias at Daily Kos in March 2011. As for this specific aspect of Anonymous, see Rauhauser’s May 2011 Daily Kos item, “Is Berico Sheltering Aaron Barr?
Once you understand that it was the criminal “Operation Payback” hackings that led Hunton & Williams’s clients to seek the assistance of HB Gary Federal (of which Aaron Barr was CEO) to help protect their clients against such illegal activity, you see that both Brett Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution and Neal Rauhauser were on the side of these criminal hackers. If you want to understand why that matters, I urge you to read my June 2012 article, “‘A Faint Whiff of Vigilante Hysteria’: Weinergate’s Kimberlin Connection.”
Remember: Former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown melted down and was arrested for threatening an FBI agent after Rauhauser (behind the alias “Carlito2000?) provoked Brown with a conspiracy theory involving Jen Emick and other of Neal’s personal enemies.
If you ask around, you’ll find that a lot of people suspect that the FBI “protects” Neal Rauhauser because he is a confidential informant.

All of this is fact. Read what I wrote, click the links there and see for yourself. You can do Google searches, research it as far as you’d care to go, and attempt to refute what I wrote.

For that matter, go read the “lunatic screed by Jennifer Emick” I cited and then do as much research as you’d care to do to ascertain whether her account is generally accurate. And, if you’re in an investigative mood, why not research the time when Kevin Zeese (an attorney with Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution) falsely accused Mike Stack of instigating violence at an “Occupy” protest?

That was a defamatory smear invented by Neal Rauhauser, who has been harassing Stack since June 2011 when Stack was involved in exposing the “WeinerGate” scandal. Rauhauser was the most persistent of the so-called “Weiner Truthers” who believed (falsely, as everyone now knows) that Anthony Weiner was a victim of hackers, and Stack was only one target of Rauhauser’s harassment.

So, we ought to ask, why would Kevin Zeese of Velvet Revolution be repeating Neal Rauhauser’s discredited smear of Mike Stack, if there were no connection between Rauhauser’s “Weiner Truther” obsession and Kimberlin’s 501(c)4 organization? That is to say, why was it in the interest of Zeese to attack Mike Stack this way? But wait — let’s read Rosie Gray’s BuzzFeed article about “Weiner Truthers”:

A major locus of modern Weiner trutherism is BreitbartUnmasked.com . . .
One of its related Twitter accounts, @OccupyRebellion, regularly tweets about Weinergate and the alleged conspiracies therein. . . .

Ah, so the obsession with WeinerGate is connected to BreitbartUnmasked.com and the (now defunct) @OccupyRebellion account, and Mike Stack’s connection to WeinerGate made him the target of Brett Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser’s harassment, and Brett Kimberlin’s associate Kevin Zeese repeated Rauhauser’s smear of Stack. If you further know that BreitbartUnmasked.com has been hosted by the same secretive overseas Internet service providers which host several sites associated with Brett Kimberlin (including VelvetRevolution.us), isn’t the existence of “Team Kimberlin” a rather obvious common-sense surmise? And don’t these various connections furthermore, upon careful examination, form a pattern from which one might infer a motive for all this weird activity?

Here’s another interesting question: Why are Xenophon and BreitbartUnmasked.com obsessed with Patrick “Patterico” Frey?

Probably just a random coincidence, right?

 

Comments

45 Responses to “Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’”

  1. CHideout
    October 5th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co/kBCmEDlsaR

  2. MrEvilMatt
    October 5th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co/TJl9owZFB1

  3. jwbrown1969
    October 5th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co/8c2PY3lgLY

  4. Lockestep1776
    October 5th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co/UydArJcHaA

  5. Citzcom
    October 5th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co/mry5AwjvhV

  6. rsmccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 1:14 pm

    RT @MrEvilMatt: Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.…

  7. rsmccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 1:33 pm

    “Probably just a random coincidence, right?” http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ | @Patterico @Popehat @asherahresearch

  8. cubanbob
    October 5th, 2013 @ 1:44 pm

    It would be relatively easy to go after these clowns legally but unfortunately that would cost a bit of money. A good tax lawyer who is well versed in non-profit tax law could file a dec action in federal court that would ruin them.

  9. anonymous3636
    October 5th, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    When these cowardly schemers are confronted with the truth, what choice do they have other than to do battle with a straw army?

    PS: the ‘lunatic screed’ as it were, is linked to the wrong doc. XD

  10. DocWashburn
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Probably just a random coincidence, right?” http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ | @Patterico @Popehat @asherahresearch

  11. EarlScruggs
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:07 pm

    That they attribute a tie to “Muslim terrorists” to RSM is telling. What it really means is that there IS such a story out there. RSM has not made such a connection or accusation, but if, say, the FBI were investigating such a thing, then to try to wrap it up in the ball of crazy they are rolling around with the Internet hissy fit stuff would go right along with a strategy of deceit and “accuse the accusers.”

    Of course, there is no reason to believe that there is any tie to a convicted terrorist and other terrorists. VR promoted Muslim musical acts and was/is anti war on terror. The tussle with Worthing/Walker was nominally because he offended Muslims. Could the whole Weinergate support cell have really been an arm of a jihadi cyber cell of the Muslim Brotherhood? I mean, it is supposedly unseemly to mention the Abedin family, but it is what it is.

    Just asking questions.

  12. robertstacymccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:09 pm

    The link is to a Scribd page called “Emick-BK.”

  13. robertstacymccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:23 pm

    Thank you for noting what I have never claimed, but which several sources familiar with this story have pointed out: Kimberlin has claimed to have a relationship with the State Department. Kimberlin has likewise claimed that he is cooperating with the FBI in some sort of continuing “investigation.”

    In order to attack Aaron Walker, Kimberlin told Walker’s former employer that they would be targeted by Islamic protesters. In order to attack this year’s CPAC Blog Bash, Kimberlin told the venue manager that they would be targeted by Islamic protesters. No such protests occurred, but the fact that Kimberlin has at least twice used the threat of such protests against his targets would seem to suggest that Kimberlin believes this a helpful threat to make against “right-wing extremists,” i.e., that they are Islamophobes who deserve to be protested.

    Returning, then, to Kimberlin’s various claims about his relationship with the State Department and the FBI: Does Kimberlin believe that this administration is particularly sympathetic to Muslims and hostile to Islamophobes? Does he have any objective reason to believe this? And do we have any reason to believe that Kimberlin might have politically-connected friends in the State Department and USDOJ who accept his explanation of events, who share Kimberlin’s avowed concerns about Islamophobic “right-wing extremists”?

    It is not a “conspiracy theory” to ask such questions, nor is it an “accusation” merely to ask why WeinerGate (involving the husband of a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) seems to figure so prominently in deciding who the enemies of “Team Kimberlin” are.

    Sure, it’s all just a random coincidence.

    I’m willing to believe that. How about you?

  14. rsmccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:31 pm

    Wow @vermontaigne, I guess Team Kimberlin’s @x3n0ph0n is taking the weekend off. http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ Paid vacation?

  15. Matthew W
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:39 pm

    Again, good luck trying to explain this to a judge.

  16. screwtape1a12
    October 5th, 2013 @ 2:44 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Wow @vermontaigne, I guess Team Kimberlin’s @x3n0ph0n is taking the weekend off. http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ Paid vacation?

  17. bet0001970
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:04 pm

    Oh McCain…you forgot the most obvious connection. The convicted domestic terrorist, Brett Kimberlin actually showed up in court to support his BFF, Neal Rauhauser at the harassment hearing of Mike Stack on May 15th, 2012. In fact, he was so supportive that he used his iPad to film Stack and his friend in court. Cause’ intimidation is just how Kimberlin rolls.

    Unfortunately, people tend find that being friends with Neal…doesn’t really work out so well for them. Are you reading this Kimberlin? Because Neal is smarter than you.

    Just ask him.

  18. anonymous3636
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:11 pm

    Ah, that was intended? Just FYI, that was attributed to Mandy, not me. It was Hallissey who gave that to Neal as my work. At the time that was written, I had no idea who either of those creeps were.

  19. anonymous3636
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:11 pm

    Ah, that was intended? Just FYI, that was attributed to Mandy, not me. It was Hallissey who gave that to Neal as my work. At the time that was written, I had no idea who either of those creeps were.

  20. thatMrGguy
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:18 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ http://t.co/rqSEk2dCzM

  21. ChrisDavis2011
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:26 pm

    The only ring that Kimberlin is qualified to be associated with is the piercing he probably has in his nether region in some vain attempt by an old dude to attract a Teen Dream

  22. wjjhoge
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Wow @vermontaigne, I guess Team Kimberlin’s @x3n0ph0n is taking the weekend off. http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ Paid vacation?

  23. G Joubert
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:32 pm

    I wonder if there’s any active ongoing investigation anywhere by law enforcement into the swattings of Frey and Stack.

  24. WJJ Hoge
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:37 pm

    There all sorts of interesting ties to delight a conspiracy theorist. Here are a few.

    Kevin Zeese is supposed to have ties to Wikileaks and is a board member of several left-wing moonbat organizations as well as Velvet Revolution US.

    Harriet Crosby, an early donor and long-time supporter of Velvet Revolution, served for 5 years in an environmentalist position on the Clinton White House staff.

    Rauhauser has his Weiner connection.

    Discuss among yourselves.

  25. BobBelvedere
    October 5th, 2013 @ 3:56 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Probably just a random coincidence, right?” http://t.co/iMdNV7MIJF

  26. JoyKeller1
    October 5th, 2013 @ 4:18 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ http://t.co/l3K1AuRxq8

  27. rsmccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 4:20 pm

    RT @BobBelvedere: RT @rsmccain: “Probably just a random coincidence, right?” http://t.co/iMdNV7MIJF

  28. Patterico
    October 5th, 2013 @ 4:43 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Probably just a random coincidence, right?” http://t.co/fp1jdRxpTQ | @Patterico @Popehat @asherahresearch

  29. Finrod Felagund
    October 5th, 2013 @ 4:44 pm

    The only defense they have is the ol’ “baffle them with bullshit” one.

  30. Dianna Deeley
    October 5th, 2013 @ 6:29 pm

    It would be interesting. I’m not sure what the cause of action would be, though.

  31. Dianna Deeley
    October 5th, 2013 @ 6:33 pm

    Both men would be pleased to discover there is.

  32. Godspeed Nick Oresko and Weekend Links!
    October 5th, 2013 @ 7:02 pm

    […] Other McCain has many good blog posts up including this one by Stacy on “Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team […]

  33. SwiperTheFox
    October 5th, 2013 @ 7:27 pm

    Chewbacca defense?

  34. SwiperTheFox
    October 5th, 2013 @ 7:29 pm

    While this gets so complicated that it seems to be like some pretzel folding into itself, I’m glad at least that ‘Team Kimberlin’ seems to be floundering as people see how stupid and crazy they are.

    Not that I’m any great fan of the modern Republicans now, but it does say something that they won’t stoop to the level of associating with weirdos like The K-Team.

  35. SwiperTheFox
    October 5th, 2013 @ 8:05 pm

    Sad but true

  36. rsmccain
    October 5th, 2013 @ 8:11 pm

    RT @JoyKeller1: Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ http://t.co/l3K1AuRxq8

  37. cubanbob
    October 6th, 2013 @ 12:10 am

    Their non-profit and charitable deduction status.

  38. Adjoran
    October 6th, 2013 @ 2:50 am

    Sometimes people with mental problems will act as if they have the friends or associations they claim, although the relationships are entirely imaginary. Purely hypothetically, the situation you describe could fit such a scenario.

  39. Adjoran
    October 6th, 2013 @ 2:54 am

    If you are represented in litigation with any of these people, your attorney would very much appreciate seeing any articles you write on the subject before you publish. Sometimes a perfectly innocent statement can be misconstrued and damage a case.

    Somewhat related to the many reasons you should never, ever talk to the police: http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc

  40. Rampage at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: Perp Thought Obama Was Spying on Her… Um, Ridiculous? | Regular Right Guy
    October 6th, 2013 @ 4:42 am

    […] Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ […]

  41. alpacaherder
    October 6th, 2013 @ 4:04 pm

    Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ http://t.co/zy10PHgX8p

  42. Kimberlinunmask
    October 6th, 2013 @ 5:20 pm

    This is a great explanation of what Team Kimberlin is by @rsmccain http://t.co/Yw8UIEGyBb

  43. rsmccain
    October 7th, 2013 @ 10:23 am

    RT @thatMrGguy: Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’ http://t.co/rqSEk2dCzM

  44. rsmccain
    October 7th, 2013 @ 10:23 am

    RT @CHideout: Strange Craziness From @x3n0ph0n, Another Member of ‘Team Kimberlin’: One of the accusations in the Kimberlin … http://t.co…

  45. Pure Evil: Sherrod Sues Susie Breitbart; Wickedness in the Age of Dishonor : The Other McCain
    October 9th, 2013 @ 12:43 pm

    […] as such evil and deranged personalities as Neal Rauhauser and Bill Schmalfeldt continue lying about me, I must balance my concern for counteracting the deliberate harm they intend to inflict through […]