Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Brandon Darby Defamed by Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser; Pursues ‘All Legal Remedies’ Against SWATting Charge

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Breitbart.com columnist Brandon Darby plans to pursue a defamation lawsuit against a Democratic political consultant who accused Darby of perpetrating so-called “SWATtings” that have targeted several conservative activists in the past year.

Darby says that Neal Rauhauser falsely accused him of involvement in SWATtings, a dangerous type of illegal hoax that results in armed law enforcement raids against innocent individuals. News of Rauhauser’s accusation, and of Darby’s planned response, was announced today in a press release from the National Bloggers Club.

“Darby is being defamed by this dangerous, bizarre fringe activist because he has dared to speak the name ‘Brett Kimberlin,’ is a member of the National Bloggers Club, and associated with Andrew [Breitbart],” the Club’s president Ali Akbar said in the press release (full text below).

Kimberlin, a convicted domestic terrorist who founded two progressive non-profit organizations, has repeatedly filed lawsuits and other legal complaints against bloggers who wrote about Kimberlin’s criminal past. In May, blogger Aaron Walker was arrested after a Maryland hearing in a case involving Kimberlin. Walker was also the target of a SWATting last month.

Rauhauser is a political operative who co-founded the Democrat consulting firm Progressive PST. Rauhauser has described Kimberlin as a “client” and, in e-mails and blog comments, represented himself as an agent of Kimberlin’s non-profit 501(c)4 group, Velvet Revolution.

Akbar said that the National Bloggers Club will “encourage Darby to use all legal remedies in this clear case of defamation,” including the possibility of “pursuing criminal conspiracy” charges against Rauhauser.

UPDATE: Rauhauser’s association with Kimberlin apparently began a year ago, after Rauhauser became obsessed with the cybersex scandal involving Rep. Anthony Weiner, which forced the formerly popular New York Democrat to resign from Congress.

Mike Stack, a New Jersey man who played a role in exposing the so-called WeinerGate scandal, was SWATted in June 2011. A week later, Patrick Frey (who had written extensively about the Weiner case) was SWATted at his Los Angeles home. Red State editor Erick Erickson, who had written about the Kimberlin case, reported that he was SWATted in May, and Aaron Walker was SWATted June 25 after he won a Maryland courtroom victory against Kimberlin. Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Texas Rep. Kenny Marchant and more than 85 House Republicans called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the SWATtings.

UPDATE II: Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution non-profit gained publicity after the 2004 election by leveling accusations of vote-rigging by Republicans. A January 2007 Time magazine article noted that Kimberlin had “found a home in the blogosphere” by “repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true.” Kimberlin’s organization has also made charges of criminal wrongdoing against such public figures as GOP political strategist Karl Rove, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In October 2010, Kimberlin was the subject of a 3,600-word feature article by Breitbart.com contributor Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy. Subsequently, Kimberlin threatened to sue both Nagy and Patrick “Patterico” Frey, and filed a lawsuit against progressive blogger Seth Allen, who had been an outspoken critic of Kimberlin and Velvet Revolution at several liberal Web sites.

Kimberlin became the subject of widespread interest last month after Aaron Walker published a 28,000-word account describing how he says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him for assault. On May 29, Walker was briefly arrested after a Maryland court hearing in which Judge C.J. Vaughey ruled that Walker’s blogging constituted a violation of a peace order obtained by Kimberlin. Judge Vaughey’s ruling has been widely denounced as an infringement of First Amendment rights, and is being appealed in both Maryland and federal courts.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

* * * * * *

* PRESS RELEASE FROM NATIONAL BLOGGERS CLUB *

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2012
Contact: Ali A. Akbar, [email protected] (emails will be reviewed by system and then a volunteer), (888) 308-3606, ext. 4

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE ACCUSES ACTIVIST
BRANDON DARBY OF “SWATTING” BLOGGERS;
NATIONAL BLOGGERS CLUB PLEDGES SUPPORT
FOR DARBY AND ALL LEGAL RECOURSE

AUSTIN, TX — Democratic operative and self-proclaimed “hacker” Neal Rauhauser has accused Brandon Darby of “SWATting.” Darby is a political activist and former FBI operative.
Darby has the full support of the National Bloggers Club, an organization that represents hundreds of bloggers and online journalists. The Club will raise funds (using KimberlinFiles.org) and encourage Darby to use all legal remedies in this clear case of defamation and explore pursuing criminal conspiracy options.
“Convicted domestic terrorist turned left-wing ideologue activist Brett Kimberlin runs two liberal non-profit organizations. His contracted employee, Neal Rauhauser, has accused one of our members of being the perpetrator of these illegal, coordinated attacks. We are standing with our members, many of whom — myself included — have been targeted by supporters of Brett Kimberlin,” said National Bloggers Club President Ali A. Akbar.
Akbar continued, “Darby is being defamed by this dangerous, bizarre fringe activist because he has dared to speak the name “Brett Kimberlin,” is a member of the National Bloggers Club, and associated with Andrew. Andrew associated himself with the Bloggers Club, I’ll associate the Club with Darby any day of the week.”
SWATting is the term used to describe the illegal use of technology to place an untraceable emergency call to falsely report a serious, violent crime. The caller typically gives the emergency dispatcher the address and personal information belonging to the victim, claiming that people in the house have been shot and that the caller is armed inside the home. By protocol, law enforcement then sends armed officers to the scene. Last week, after winning a courtroom victory in Maryland against Kimberlin, blogger Aaron Walker was targeted by a SWATting call that sent police to his Virginia home.
“Thank God no one has been killed as a result of SWATting — yet. I strongly believe the continued use of these tactics will result in a horrible tragedy — which is exactly what the perpetrators want,” said Akbar.

* * END PRESS RELEASE * *

 


Freedom Is Under Attack: Help the National Bloggers Club Fight Back

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Several Twitter accounts associated with the Brett Kimberlin/Neal Rauhauser axis unleashed a torrent of attacks yesterday against Ali Akbar and the National Bloggers Club. Exactly what prompted those attacks, I’m not sure, but the National Bloggers Club has given important support to Aaron Walker in his defense against Kimberlin’s “lawfare” harassment and now — a little birdie tells me — the Club is preparing to counterattack.

At the end of a post yesterday, I gave you a tiny hint of what’s coming, and will soon be able to tell you more.

For now, I urge you to contribute to the National Bloggers Club: $10, $20, $50 — whatever you can give, it’s for a good cause.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. Fight for your freedom.

UPDATE: Brandon Darby Defamed by Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser; Pursues ‘All Legal Remedies’ Against SWATting Charge.

A Drawer Full of Sockpuppets: Another Neal Rauhauser ‘Persona’ Exposed

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Neal Rauhauser was a speaker at the 2010 Netroots Nation conference

“Soliciting assistance in his plots — recruiting a gang of followers — functions psychologically as a means for Rauhauser to validate his grandiose narcissistic conception of himself as a heroic leader.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, June 15

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
One of the most persistent characteristics of Neal Rauhauser is his use of online aliases. He’s a sort of sockpuppet factory and once wrote that he had created more than 100 Twitter accounts. Some of those accounts were apparently created for Democrat politicians who had hired Rauhauser’s Progressive PST consulting firm. However, it is known that Rauhauser has also operated a number of intentionally deceptive online aliases, the protection of which was the subject of a very interesting treatise Rauhauser wrote on “persona management.”

Did I say “very interesting”? Why would Rauhauser be so obsessively concerned with “IP address concealment,” offering advice on how to protect a “persona” on a laptop with such elaborate measures that these secrets would be secure even “if you’re arrested and questioned”?

What criminal online behavior, conducted under a secret identity, requires that kind of protection? We can only speculate on possible answers to that question, and let’s just stick to the known facts: Rauhauser habitually uses online personas, such as the “Gaped Crusader” alias with which he cyberstalked and harassed Patrick “Patterico” Frey.

So today, while researching some background on the Progressive PST consulting firm that Rauhuaser co-founded with Beth Becker in 2009, I stumbled onto a Daily Kos diary from March 2010:

I had a back channel discussion with a member of [Georgia Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson’s] staff, and Congressman Johnson gave us a truly amazing thirty minutes of his time on Monday, answering questions about health care reform, his job as the southeast regional whip, and giving us some insight into what Congress will do next … and how we can help.
Present for the interview were Sandi Behrns, Karoli Kuns, Jesse LaGreca, Beth Becker, and Neal Rauhauser.

Hmmmm. Becker and Rauhauser are both mentioned, along with Sandi Behnns, who subsequently joined Progressive PST in 2010. This item about the Hank Johnson interview was the last DKos diary posted under the account called simply “twitter,” and it aroused my curiosity.

The “twitter” DKos account was created in October 2009 and posted 10 diaries and 68 comments before becoming inactive after March 23, 2010. What sort of subject matter did “twitter” write about? One was the “Kossack Twitter Mojo Report,” which showed that Neal Rauhauser’s account (“Stranded Wind”) was one of the top 10 Daily Kos contributors, according to Klout rankings. Although Rauhauser had only 1,056 followers on Twitter as of March 19, 2010, his Klout ranking was nearly as high as DKos founder Markos Moulitsas, who had 11,541 followers.

The first time the “twitter” account ranked Kossacks by their “mojo” (on Feb. 26, 2010) Rauhauser actually ranked second and “twitter” wrote:

[T]he ranking system we use, @Klout, can determine how many of those followers are actually paying attention. This is important — remember those automated processes? Twitter is infested with salesbots and they breed. If you get one and you don’t promptly squish it the next day it’ll have a dozen of its species follow you and it’ll spiral out of control from there. @StrandedWind does the programming for this stuff and he blocks five accounts for every four real people he gets.
What about the ones without any True Reach at all? Well, to get the full picture on an account they have to sign up for a @Klout account. We can get them to rank lists for us, but digging through followers requires that they have Oauth access, a safe way to share details about your account with their service.
We like Klout for rankings but it changes slowly, just like a real world poll. You definitely need an account there to fully participate, but for day to day exploration @Twitalyzer does similar things and it has lots of fun ways to look at your position on Twitter, find others who are interested in the same things you are, and so forth. If you’re brand new and looking for good people to connect with you should take some of the more active people on this list and put them into @Followerwonk.
If you want to get on [Twitter] and get hooked up right away Followerwonk is an immense help. One of the very best places to start is checking into the friends that are shared by @StrandedWind and @Sandibehrns, two of the top rated Progressive activists on Twitter.

You see? The “twitter” account was actually Rauhauser, using a third-person sockpuppet voice that would proclaim to the progressive community at Daily Kos — the top blog on the Left — that Neal Rauhauser was really a super-savvy social-networking guy.

Self-promotion was one of the original purposes of Rauhauser’s deceptive sockpuppetry. This “twitter” account is at least the third DKos identity Rauhauser is known to have used, along with “Stranded Wind” and “Iowa Boy” (the latter of which transmitted ugly gossip about Rauhauser’s ex-wife). Rauhauser is obsessed with online secrecy and deception, and has used his various aliases to manipulate both his enemies and allies.

Go read Patrick Read’s 2010 TwitterGate follow-up, “Democrat Cyber Stealth Revealed: Neal Rauhauser & Radical Thugs,” and contemplate how Rauhauser acquired the influence that he used for such purposes.

Study Rauhauser’s history long enough, and you understand that his progressive friends were exploited by Rauhauser for purposes that had very little to do with advancing any legitimate political or policy goals, but had a great deal to do with Rauhauser’s self-aggrandizing effort to make himself a sort of kingpin/hero of the Left.

Rauhauser is ultimately his own worst enemy.

He is rather like the fellow who imagines himself a shrewd poker player but who has a number of “tells” that enable other players to know when he’s bluffing. His habits are deeply engrained and predictable, and his inevitable blunders make Rauhauser perhaps even more dangerous to his allies than he is to his enemies.

In recent days, Rauhauser has committed new blunders, and when his latest errors are revealed, his friends will suffer new embarassments.

— Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 
Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out Saturday’s Stephen Kruiser video.
 

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 

 


Ten Questions for Brandon Darby

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BRANDON DARBY (photo by Todd Wiseman/Texas Tribune)

(If Brandon Darby isn’t No. 1 on the radical Left’s hate list, it’s only because they hate so many people they can’t keep track anymore. In 2008, Darby worked undercover with the FBI to foil a planned domestic terrorist attack on the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Since then, Darby has become a columnist for Breitbart.com. His courage was praised by the late Andrew Breitbart, and Darby spoke movingly of his friendship with Andrew at a March memorial service. In recent weeks, Darby has been paying close attention to the story surrounding Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser and the harassment of conservatives. He agreed to the following e-mail interview about the story. — RSM)

1. How long have you been following the Brett Kimberlin story, and how did you become interested in it?

The Kimberlin/Rauhuaser issue isn’t unique to Kimberlin and Rauhuaser. The details and specifics are, but the gist of it is prevalent in the American Left. The gist is that the people we call “far Left crazies” are actually very well organized and calculated and they operate on behalf of, with the support of, and to the benefit of more mainstream and moderate left-of-center political players.
My interest in this particular issue came up because I began to realize that they acted like bullies. They exhibited a tendency to go after people who were quite innocent of anything other than simply voicing their political concerns and addressing what seemed to be a criminal enterprise operating with mainstream Democratic Party funding and interests.
People I cared for like Mandy Nagy have been being harassed by this network for a long time. My only regret is that I didn’t start taking arrows for my friends on this sooner.

2. What is the most interesting aspect of the story to you?

The most interesting aspect is in watching the Right finally wake up and realize that ignoring “the crazies” isn’t actually ignoring crazy fringes, per se. It’s actually ignoring well funded and organized shock troops whose goal is to destroy anyone who challenges their masters.

3. How does Neal Rauhauser fit into the story?

Rauhuaser seems to be employed or brought in by Kimberlin as an operative. He also seems to be brought in by another similiar network in Florida that created the faux public outrage against Rush Limbaugh in the Stop Rush campaign.

4. A lot of people are focused on the SWATting aspect of this story: First, Mike Stack, then Patterico, then Erick Erickson, and now Aaron Walker. How much do we definitely know about who is behind these dangerous hoaxes and why they’re happening?

It seems to me that the issue is simply this: There exists a group or loosely affiliated entity that receives funding through a front group nonprofit from mainstream left-of-center interests. That group defends the mainstream interests by engaging in campaigns of deception and destruction. They utilize blackhat Anonymous hackers, fake personas, lawfare, and engage in deep intel operations and attention shifting against their funders foes. Some in the Right blogosphere began to catch on, and consequently they were SWATed. Others began to catch on, and they were SWATed. Then the story received more attention than the dirty tricks entity wanted to receive.

5. Recently, some people have actually tried to claim that you were responsible for SWATtings. What is that all about? Why you?

Let’s be clear: By some, you mean the Kimberlin/Rauhauser network and another network who is directly tied to them from Florida, the Matt Edelstein/Matt Osborne network.
The issue seems clear to me. Some parts of this network never intended to receive this much attention. Now they are realizing they are likely going to face justice and get caught. It seems they are now engaging in a preemptive defense strategy where they are making public allegations focusing on someone connected to the FBI, so that when they get busted they can claim that they were close to “uncovering the truth” and their charges are nothing more than political retribution from the FBI or an effort from the FBI to silence them for “getting too close” to the truth. Like it or not, that’s something the New York Times and their ideological Middle Eastern counterpart, Al Jazeera, would eat up. They might even nullify a jury with such a scheme, because it only takes one for them to get off.

6. You’ve worked with the FBI before. I know that some people are frustrated at the slow pace of the investigation. Members of Congress have asked the Attorney General to make the SWATting investigation a priority. Is the FBI incompetent? Do they not care if people get SWATted? Or is SWATting a difficult crime to solve?

Let’s make a distinction between the devoted men and women who bust their ass in the FBI and the organization’s politically appointed leadership and their appointed executive managers. The FBI is the most competent investigative force in the world — when they focus. The issue is in getting them to focus. The men and women can’t focus without the approval of their leadership. It’s that simple. As a citizenry, we have to understand this and focus our attention and efforts on that leadership.
Though I can’t or won’t get into specifics, I can discuss the historical issues I’ve seen that seems to be similiar to what we are seeing in this case. It seems likely that their are indeed many Special Agents who care abut this SWATing threat and how it pertains to an effort to silence free speech. It also seems likely that the leadership of the FBI and DOJ as a whole isn’t assigning resources as the Special Agents are likely requesting.
The centralization of resources and decision making has been centralized in an unprecedented manner since Eric Holder took over the Justice Department. The focus on what appears to be a point-based system of promotion within the FBI also seems to be at fault here. This simply results in executive management focusing on quick and simple cases that result in quickly resolved prosecutions. It’s the same reason we didn’t see civil rights charges against the “RNC Welcoming Committee,” the 2008 manifestation of the groups we now call Occupy that set out with the stated goal of “shutting the RNC down by any means necessary.” It would’ve been a politically charged prosecution, Holder didn’t want it. There are easier ways for his appointees to “earn points.”

7. People have told me that, for a long time, Andrew Breitbart didn’t seem to “get” the importance of the Kimberlin story, or understand why Rauhauser’s involvement was newsworthy. But I understand that, in the last week or so of his life, Breitbart became very interested in the story. Can you explain what happened there?

I think people forget to look at the issues Andrew was covering. It’s easy to say someone should’ve done this or should’ve done that. But we have to consider that there’s only so much time in the day. He was focused on other aspects and cases of this common manifestation I spoke of earlier. He was focused on other instances of the mainstream Left using shock troops. . . .
He did realize that he was a target of what I call the Kimberlin/Rauhauser network. I think he didn’t realize until that point that they were so organized and calculated.

8. Back in February, Neal Rauhauser published a paper that claimed there was this vast conspiracy involving a lot of people: Breitbart, Mike Stack, Mandy Nagy, “Zapem,” James O’Keefe and even the security firm HBGary. Do you think Rauhauser actually believes that stuff? Was there ever any kind of conspiracy like that?

There was and is no conspiracy like that. The simple facts are these: People have a right to look at and report on networks of criminals. People have an obligation to report criminals to law enforcement when there are victims involved. The fact that the mainstream Left chooses to employ convicted bombers and other criminals is their own choice.

9. Why haven’t the major media gotten involved in covering this story? I mean, Walker’s SWATting happened in the Virginia suburbs of D.C., so that’s right in the Washington Post’s backyard and – nothing. Same thing with Patterico and the L.A. Times. Same thing with Mike Stack and the New York Times – I mean, Stack lives in New Jersey and he helped bring down Anthony Weiner, so he’s kind of local news for them. Is this about bias? Or is it just that the story is so complicated?

The story seems complicated until you put it into the historical perspective it exists within. Then it is quite simple. Left media doesn’t cover the story because many of them are involved with the networks of operatives we are discussing.

10. How would you summarize this story in a nutshell? What’s the one thing that people really need to understand about all this?

Just remember, the Right calls out, marginalizes, and rejects their “crazies.” The Right’s “crazies” are an anomaly. The Left embraces, defends, and supports their “crazies.” In fact, the Left’s crazies are vital and needed components to the dehumanization and deceptive methodology leftist thought depends upon. This is why the Left historically minimizes the crimes of their “crazies” and engages in a whore-defense against the victims of the Left’s crazies.

Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!
 


‘I Know This All Sounds Crazy, But …’

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The title quote is from Patterico’s post noting the one-year anniversary of his SWATting, as he was handcuffed and talking to police:

I said something like this: “Look. This is a hoax. I think I know what’s going on here. I’m a blogger. I’m also a Deputy D.A., but I don’t think this is about my job. It’s about things I wrote on my blog. This same thing happened to someone else last week, in New Jersey. Someone called and said he killed his wife, and the police showed up at his house and pointed guns at him, just like this. He and I were writing about the same story. We were both writing about Congressman Weiner, the Congressman who sent the picture of his underwear. We were both writing about that. We both got threatened by email. Check my phone. I talked to a New Jersey detective about it. His name is Jason Larson. His name and number are on my phone. I know this all sounds crazy, but that’s what’s going on.”

Read the whole thing. You might suppose that law enforcement would make such a crime a high-priority investigation. You might suppose that the news media would treat SWATting, as a terrorist threat to First Amendment rights, with at least as much attention as they give to SWATting of adolescents playing online video games.

You would be wrong on both counts. And that’s why it’s no joke when I dateline these dispatches “From An Undisclosed Location.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

How Stupid I Was: 2011 Edition

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
How easy is it to miss a big story? This easy: While I was packing up my desk to move to our new home — thanks, Brett! — I found some notes I’d taken of a phone interview I’d done with Andrew Breitbart in the wake of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s resignation. I’d meant to write an article for The American Spectator based on that interview, but the GOP primary campaign started heating up before I could complete the article, and so I just forgot about it.

The other day, I was packing my desk and came across the notes — as usual, scrawled on the back of an envelope — and saw the names “Mike Stack” and “Lee Stranahan” and I was like, “Holy sh*t!” 

A big chunk of the same story I’m now covering so intensively was right there in my notes, taken in late June 2011, and I hadn’t realized it. How had I lost track of that story, so that when I bumped into it almost accidentally on May 17 of this year, it caught me by surprise?

Well, something else was happening in late June 2011: Herman Cain’s campaign operation in Iowa was in disarray. Staffers were quitting or being fired, and so I put aside the Breitbart/WeinerGate article and spent the Fourth of July weekend on the phone with various sources, eventually writing an article entitled “Iowa Calling” (The American Spectator, July 6, 2011). And I never got back to that Breitbart feature, until Andrew died in March.

Like a lot of other political reporters, as soon as Anthony Weiner resigned in disgrace, my attitude was: End of story. Move on.

For a week or two after Weiner’s resignation, I noticed some people arguing over things like “Betty and Veronica” and “Who was Dan Wolfe?” But all that struck me as useless trivia. The scandalized politician resigns and the story is Officially Over, as far as the press corps is concerned. Even though I’m now in the blogosphere, when I’m actually reporting news, I still think like an Old School newspaper reporter, and arguing over obscure details of Last Week’s Sex Scandal is (pardon the pejorative) amateurish.

So that’s how I missed it, see?

Yeah, I was mystifed by the “Betty and Veronica” angle, and the Dan Wolfe angle was peculiar, but that was “Grassy Knoll” stuff, not something I could afford to waste time worrying about while there was a presidential campaign to cover. In all honesty, my feeling was, “Look at those amateurs, running off on a useless snipe hunt.”

Bah, humbug.

I didn’t know Mike Stack and Patterico got SWATted. I didn’t even know what SWATting was. It never occurred to me that the fallout from WeinerGate might be far more serious than the GOP primary campaign (which turned out to be kind of a useless snipe hunt, too).

Now, however, I look back with regret at my stupid failure to recognize the significance of elements of WeinerGate I dismissed as trivial. All of which is prelude to pointing out that Patterico stayed on the story with an intense focus long after I forgot all about it:

I was very interested in these two pieces of information, because I knew that Mike Stack had been SWATted on June 23, 2011. I knew that the caller from Mike Stack’s June 23, 2011 SWATting had been (incorrectly) described by the police as having a British accent. And I knew that some suspected that a woman in Boston named Jennifer George was behind some of the fakery that could be related to Mike Stack’s SWATting — and that she had accused Lee [Stranahan] of threatening her.

Read the rest. Damn, I was so stupid.

UPDATE: Lying Felon Brett Kimberlin Scores a Draw in Maryland Hearing

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Brett Kimberlin could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison

“[I]n 1981, Kimberlin . . . was finally convicted of a week-long bombing spree . . . in which eight separate bombs caused extensive property damage, destroyed a police cruiser, and severely maimed a man, which eventually led to the man’s suicide.”
— Mandy Nagy (“Liberty Chick”), Oct. 11, 2010

“If someone had told me, don’t say anything about Lillian Hellman because she’ll sue you, it wouldn’t have stopped me. It might have spurred me on.”
— Mary McCarthy, 1988

“Never doubt that God answers prayer.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, May 21, 2012

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Aaron Walker reports that a Maryland district court judge on Friday granted convicted felon Brett Kimberlin’s petition for a peace order against Virginia resident John Norton. The judge also granted Norton’s petition for a peace order against Kimberlin.

Walker argues that neither peace order should have been granted, but it seems to me that Norton’s counter-complaint — a defensive measure, to protect himself against workplace harassment by Kimberlin — was entirely legitimate. Keep in mind that on May 21, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s workplace, accused me of having “harassed” him and, in doing so, made clear that he knew where I lived.

So if anyone on Kimberlin’s enemies list asks for legal protection against his known pattern of intimidation, certainly I can understand.

According to Norton’s peace-order petition, all he did was to drive on the road where Kimberlin lives — a through route, connecting Maryland State Highway 190 (River Road) with Maryland State Highway 191 (Bradley Boulevard), which D.C.-area commuters sometimes use as an alternate route to avoid congestion on the Beltway (I-495).

Kimberlin’s peace-order petition claimed that Norton was “lurking,” although it must be remembered that Brett Kimberlin is not merely a convicted terrorist bomber, but also a convicted perjurer (for lying under oath to a federal grand jury in 1973).

In fact, Kimberlin is so notoriously dishonest that liberal journalist Mark Singer, who was initially sympathetic to Kimberlin’s bogus claims of being a “political prisoner,” wrote a 1996 book (Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin) that portrayed him as a “top-flight con man,” as a reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly said.

Kimberlin has never admitted guilt for the federal felonies for which he was convicted in 1981, including the bomb blast that horribly maimed Carl DeLong. His refusal to confess his bloody crimes, despite the conclusive evidence against him — which involved, among other things, a brand of explosive known as Tovex — has turned Kimberlin’s entire existence into a massive mountain of lies, piled sky-high atop the fundamental lie of his bogus claims of innocence.

Anything that Kimberlin says must be presumed false.

To borrow Mary McCarthy’s famous denunciation of Lilian Hellman: Every word Kimberlin writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

So when Brett Kimberlin accused John Norton of “lurking,” it was not in the least bit surprising to see Norton’s response: “I was shocked to read the false claims made by Mr. Kimberlin.”

Brett Kimberlin lying in official court documents? You don’t say!

That’s why Jimmie Bise Jr. calls him “Lying Felon Brett Kimberlin.”

Kimberlin’s Modus Operandi

While the law may permit a convicted perjurer’s lies to be accepted as evidence in Maryland courts — legal scholars tell me otherwise, even though some Montgomery County judges treat Kimberlin as if he were capable of telling the truth — there is nothing than can lawfully prevent anyone from stating the honest facts about Brett Kimberlin, namely that he is a vicious liar with the blood of innocents on his hands.

Any reasonable person examining the facts about Kimberlin’s infamous history would be stunned to discover that law-abiding citizens are being hauled into court based on the word of a man once convicted of blowing up a police car. This was the act of a drug smuggler who boasted of his contempt for law enforcement and who, according to investigators, conspired from his jail cell to murder a federal prosecutor and one of the witnesses against him:

Brett C. Kimberlin schemed to elude justice with a series of bizarre plots designed to murder, maim and rob his enemies, create havoc . . . and discredit the chief government prosecutor. . . .
Kimberlin asked another inmate in the Marion County Jail to arrange for the murder of Bernard L. (Buddy) Pylitt, the former first assistant U.S. attorney who coordinated his prosecution.
The offer contained a list of 10 names, including a potential prosecution witness, Robert Scott Bixler.

It is genuinely amazing to think that anyone could read that 1981 article by Indianapolis Star reporter Joe Gelarden — please print it out and read the whole thing — without recognizing that Kimberlin’s characteristic modus operandi has scarcely changed in the past 30 years.

By accusing others of wrongdoing, Kimberlin seeks to evade responsibility for his own wrongdoing. What I’ve called the “accuse the accusers” strategy — which is also witnessed in the actions of Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser — looks very much like obstruction of justice.

Of course, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a detective or a cop or an FBI agent. I’m just a reporter trying to cover a story, and the big mystery at the heart of this story is: Why do Brett Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser keep acting like they are trying to hide something?

Why did Kimberlin sue Seth Allen? Why did Kimberlin threaten to sue Patrick Frey and Mandy Nagy? What was the purpose of Rauhauser’s collaboration with the hacker group Anonymous on behalf of Kimberlin’s 501(c) non-profit Velvet Revolution? Why did Rauhauser use the alias “Gaped Crusader” to harass Frey and Frey’s wife? Why would Rauhauser be obsessed with “persona management,” a deceptive means of concealing online identities? When did Kimberlin put Rauhauser on his payroll, and for what purpose? Why did Rauhauser send a weird document to the FBI and other law enforcement officials, accusing a number of people including Andrew Breitbart of complicity in a strange conspiracy? Why did Rauhauser suddenly start blogging obsessively Patrick Frey shortly after Frey was SWATted at his Los Angeles home? Why has Kimberlin waged a months-long campaign of harassment against Aaron Walker? Why does Rauhauser keep showing up at Kimberlin’s court hearings? Is there any truth to Rauhauser’s repeated assertions of his cozy relationship with the FBI?

I don’t claim to have the answers to any of those questions, but it is small wonder that many people familiar with the facts of this story would like some answers. There may be innocent explanations for all this.

Maybe Brett Kimberlin is just embarrassed to be reminded that his strange interest in a pre-teen girl made him a suspect in the contract murder of the girl’s grandmother, Julia Scyphers, a crime that has never been officially solved because the only eyewitness died after identifying a member of Kimberlin’s drug-smuggling gang as the trigger man.

Maybe all the hinky online behavior by Neal Rauhauser during the past year is just a typical manifestation of a warped personality who reportedly engaged in behavior “disturbing enough to result in a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation” that found Rauhauser to be “deeply disturbed,” even “sociopathic.”

Maybe there is no reason to suspect that Rauhauser’s bizarre accusations against Patrick Frey are part of a deliberate effort to obstruct the investigation of the SWATtings of Frey and Mike Stack. Maybe all that weird stuff about “a very big dog from the Anonymous pen” helping Velvet Revolution against “Breitbart associates” was just standard-issue Rauhauser crazytalk, rather than the description of a conspiracy against Neal’s enemies sponsored by Kimberlin’s non-profit.

‘Accuse the Accusers’: How It Works

Given the possibility of innocent explanations for all these things, then, there is no need to allege any specific criminal activity that Rauhauser and Kimberlin are attempting to cover up. We can merely state, for example, that on May 24, Rauhauser sent an e-mail to Mike Stack, CC’d to California attorney Jay Leiderman, urging Stack to file a lawsuit against Frey so that Frey “could be compelled to settle for $10K-$20K just to avoid discovery.”

If you know that Rauhauser was named among those Frey suspects of complicity in his SWATting, doesn’t that e-mail look like an attempt to obstruct justice by using one SWATting victim (Stack) to help discredit another (Frey)? Accuse the accusers, you see.

Rauhauser clearly hoped that slanderous May 24 e-mail — in which, among other things, he claims that being “connected with Robert Stacy McCain” could make someone “an accessory in a federal hate crimes investigation” — would remain a secret. By the same token, Rauhauser also obviously hoped to keep secret other e-mails in which he claimed that Mike Stack, Seth Allen, Aaron Walker, Ron Brynaert and Michelle Lessick all have “psych[iatric] disabilities” or “mental difficulties.”

Again: Accuse the accusers — Rauhauser persistently endeavors to discredit anyone who might accuse him of wrongdoing, in the same way that Kimberlin has done by filing legal actions against Seth Allen, Aaron Walker and others. Kimberlin’s peace-order complaint against John Norton is part of this strategy: “Your honor, this man drove past my house and wrote about it on the Internet — I’m the victim of a conspiracy!” Indeed, this is what Kimberlin claimed:

“Mr. Norton clearly has a relationship with Mr. Allen and Mr. Walker, and I firmly believe that Mr. Norton is or was conspiring with Aaron Walker or his client Seth Allen, or others acting on behalf of Aaron Walker, to stalk or harass me and place me and my family in fear.”

On the one hand, this is insane. On the other hand, Kimberlin then turned around and cited his own insane claim of an Allen-Walker-Norton conspiracy as evidence in his June 22 filing against Walker:

On June 15, 2012, Petitioner found a stalker lurking outside his home taking pictures. Petitioner called 911 and the police identified the man as John Firman Norton, and he lives in Fairfax, Virginia, very close to Mr. Walker’s home.
Mr. Walker’s client, Seth Allen, posted at least one of the pictures taken by Mr. Norton on a blog. Exhibit B. On June 22, 2012, Petitioner filed for a Peace Order against Mr. Norton.

So you see how Kimberlin makes spurious charges against Norton, then employs those charges as part of his effort to discredit Walker. Remember that in October 2010, when Kimberlin threatened to sue Patrick Frey, he accused Frey of conspiring with Seth “Socrates” Allen:

I have just sued Socrates on which you rely for cyber stalking, defamation, libel, violation of privacy and interference with business.  Socrates has been banned from many sites and forums for stalking many people including me.  He is under criminal investigation for cyber bullying and cyber stalking.  By corresponding with him and relying on his defamatory posts, you are conspiring with him and are just as liable as he.
Most of the things you write about in your post are false.  If you have not removed the defamatory piece within 24 hours, I will proceed with legal action against you and will serve notice on your service provider that you are violating your terms of service by engaging in false, defamatory and abusive postings.

In other words: “Seth Allen is a liar, and I have sued him. I will now sue you for conspiring with Allen to repeat his lies, and I’ll also get your blog shut down for a violation of terms of service.”

Questions Accumulate, Answers Await

Kimberlin uses his own civil action against Allen as evidence to discredit Allen, thus to discourage Frey (or anyone else) from relying on Allen’s work. So when we see Kimberlin attempting to employ spurious legal complaints to discredit Aaron Walker, we know that eventually Kimberlin will accuse others of criminal wrongdoing because of their relationship (real or alleged) with Walker.

Accuse the accusers — and then use your own accusations as “evidence”!

Are we therefore to think it a mere coincidence when Mike Stack gets an e-mail from Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser, saying that Stack has made statements “based on information he has received from people around John Patrick Frey,” some of whom are also “connected to Robert Stacy McCain,” making reference to a “federal hate crimes investigation” (!) and telling attorney Jay Leiderman that Stack “is willing to talk to the FBI to get at these guys for what they have done to him”?

Did Brett Kimberlin — whom Rauhauser has described as his “client” — authorize Rauhauser to write that e-mail? Is this part of a deliberate effort by Kimberlin and Rauhauser to discredit those on their enemies list? And given that there is supposed to be an ongoing federal investigation of the SWATtings of Stack, Frey and others (most recently including Aaron Walker), couldn’t these actions be construed as obstruction of justice?

Such questions proliferate as I continue reporting this story. Every time Brett Kimberlin goes to court against his enemies, he creates more news for me to cover, and every time Kimberlin goes to court, it seems he brings along Neal Rauhauser as part of his entourage. Their evident inseparability would seem to lend credence to the belief that Rauhauser is a partner in everything Kimberlin does, and vice-versa.

Questions have been accumulating, and the problem is that neither Kimberlin nor Rauhauser has been compelled to answer these questions.

Yet.

Just wait, however. This story is a long way from over.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 
Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!
 

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES: