Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Aaron Walker Court Hearing Confirms Kimberlin-Rauhauser Collaboration

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Democrat campaign consultant Neal Rauhauser accompanied convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin to a Tuesday court hearing in Maryland, confirming their continued collaboration in an apparent effort to harass and intimidate conservative bloggers.

Kimberlin appeared in Montgomery County (Md.) District Court for a final hearing Tuesday on his “peace order” against blogger Aaron Walker, who was arrested at the conclusion of the hearing on charges that he had violated terms of a previous peace order through “incitement.” Judge C.J. Vaughey ruled that Walker’s blog was responsible for encouraging death threats to Kimberlin, who was convicted in 1981 for a series of bombings in Indiana.

Investor’s Business Daily reporter David Hogberg attended the Maryland hearing and reported that he spoke to “Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser” at the courthouse in Rockville. Kimberlin was spotted earlier this month at a New Jersey courthouse where Rauhauser faced charges of harassing Mike Stack, an Internet activist who played a prominent role in exposing the Anthony Weiner sex scandal.

The partnership of Kimberlin and Rauhauser is one of the elements of a lawsuit Walker filed in January against them and former Raw Story editor Ron Brynaert, which alleges:

“Defendant Kimberlin had on some date prior to November 14 [2011] formed a conspiracy with Defendants Brynaert and Rauhauser to stalk, harass, defame, intentionally inflict emotional distress and commit other illegal and/or immoral acts against any person perceived as an ‘enemy,’ particularly anyone who dared to accurately describe Defendant Kimberlin’s criminal past and any person seen as helping any target of this conspiracy.”

Walker, a Virginia attorney, was apparently targeted for harassment after he provided legal assistance to Seth Allen, a liberal who had blogged about Brett Kimberlin’s criminal history. Like Walker, Allen was also arrested on charges of harassing Kimberlin. Patterico writes of Kimberlin’s “abuse of process” in such proceedings:

Kimberlin learned a technique that he later used against Walker: namely, having your critics arrested in civil court.
Namely, this serial litigant [i.e., Kimberlin] forces his critics into his jurisdiction with a frivolous civil action. If Kimberlin’s critics complain that the action is frivolous, he calls that criticism “harassment,” and through a process of seeking frivolous peace orders and/or filing frivolous criminal complaints, obtains an arrest warrant for the critic. When the critic shows up to court as required, he or she is arrested on the trumped-up charges.
Success! The story becomes about the critic’s arrest. The critics look worse because authorities seem to take Kimberlin’s side; and he gets the satisfaction of putting his critics behind bars, even if for a short time.
Alternatively, Kimberlin and his supporters can use the threat of arrest to try to frighten civil litigants into staying out of court.

Patterico — the blog name of Los Angeles deputy district attorney Patrick Frey — has accused Kimberlin, Rauhauser and Brynaert of engaging in a “campaign of political terrorism.”

Frey was the target of “SWATting,” wherein hoax phone calls are used to deceive police into believing the target has committed a violent crime in his home, resulting in police raiding the location in anticipation of a confrontation with an armed suspect. The late Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, who was identified as an enemy by Kimberlin, discussed “SWATting” in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt shortly before Breitbart died in March. Frey and Walker discussed their experiences with Kimberlin in an interview last week on the Glenn Beck radio program.

Rauhauser is a Democrat social-media consultant who has described himself as a “hacker.” Rauhauser is a founder of the consulting firm Progressive PST and was a speaker at the 2010 “NetRoots Nation” conference sponsored by Daily Kos, a popular liberal blog. Using the blog pseudonym “Stranded Wind,” Rauhauser in September 2010 urged DailyKos readers to “put an end to [Glenn] Beck’s career.” (Rauhauser’s Daily Kos blogging privileges were revoked in July 2011.)

In September 2010, blogger Patrick Read described how Rauhauser “organized a squalid group of anonymous twitter-users as a means to attack the tea party and conservatives alike.” Rauhauser’s so-called “beandogs” used Twitter messages with what Read described as “extremely graphic language including masturbation, pedophilia, violent threats, racism, sexism, religious bigotry.” Read observed that Rauhauser’s “beandogs” showed “a penchant for exposing personal information about their targets and misrepresenting factual information.” Rauhauser’s activities, exposed by Read and Tea Party activist Michelle Lessick (@ZapEm on Twitter), became known as “TwitterGate,” which I wrote about in October 2010:

Rauhauser has claimed that the TwitterGate accusations were a “smear” and a “paranoid delusion.” Claiming that Allen’s writings about Kimberlin were a “smear,” Rauhauser falsely asserted that Kimberlin “was cleared of” his criminal convictions “almost 20 years ago.”

The collaboration between Rauhauser and Kimberlin apparently began, sources say, because of Kimberlin’s use of his tax-exempt non-profit group Velvet Revolution (of which liberal blogger Brad Friedman is director) to attack the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the cybersecurity firm HBGary, alleging among other things that “Gary was hired . . . by the Chamber to infiltrate and destroy [Velvet Revolution] and its staff.”

HBGary’s Internet accounts were hacked by members of the “Anonymous” criminal conspiracy last year, and several members of the group (the so-called “LulzSec” hackers) have been indicted on felony charges. As I reported last week, federal officials are continuing to investigate the “Anonymous” conspiracy, and those sympathetic to “Anonymous” say they suspect that the group’s former public spokesman Barrett Brown may be one of the unindicted co-conspirators identified in court documents as providing evidence against the accused hackers. Since publishing my May 24 post about the “Anonymous” probe, I have been told that investigators have been working for “six to nine months” to “build evidence” against additional suspects in the hacking conspiracy.

Rauhauser is suspected of using the “@AnonyOps” Twitter account. On Tuesday, after the Maryland hearing where Walker was arrested — a hearing that Rauhauser reportedly attended — “@AnonyOps” posted a link to an image of Judge Vaughey’s ruling in the Kimberlin-Walker case:

The “@AnonyOps” Tweet was sent at 11:31 a.m. Tuesday, just half an hour after Judge Vaughey’s ruling was issued, and was re-Tweeted 12 minutes later by “@OccupyRebellion,” another Twitter account believed to be associated with Rauhauser and/or Kimberlin.

In February, Rauhauser posted an eight-page PDF document entitled “Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?” The acronym “ISR” apparently refers to the military term “Intelligence, Security and Reconnaisance.” In that document, Rauhauser suggests that Breitbart was doing the bidding of HBGary, with Thomas Ryan of Berrico Technologies acting as a “cut out” between Breitbart and HBGary CEO Aaron Barr. This suspicion on Rauhauser’s part was apparently based on a single e-mail from Barr to Ryan — one of the thousands of e-mails that the “Anonymous” hackers stole from HBGary — in which Barr cited an October 2010 article about Brett Kimberlin by Breitbart.com contributor Mandy Nagy, written under her Internet pseudonym “Liberty Chick.”

In October 2011, Rauhauser described himself as doing “protective service work” for a client who is “the head of a Washington D.C. NGO” — a description that might fit Kimberlin, whose 501(c)3 Justice Through Music Project has collected about $1.8 million in contributions since its founding in 2005.

If indeed Kimberlin is now a “client” of Rauhauser, this would explain their evident collaboration in targeting Aaron Walker, Patrick Frey, Seth Allen, Mandy and other critics of Kimberlin for harassment and intimidation. Whether fees paid to Rauhauser involved the use of tax-exempt funds obtained by Kimberlin’s non-profit organizations, and whether such “protective service work” — which looks very much like an orchestrated effort to stifle First Amendment rights — would be legal under IRS regulations, remains to be determined.

It was Aaron Walker’s 28,000-word account of his ordeal with Kimberlin on May 17 that drew my attention to the case of Brett Kimberlin, the infamous “Speedway Bomber” terrorist who briefly gained notoriety in 1988 by claiming to have sold drugs to Republican Dan Quayle. While I had never heard of Kimberlin before May 17, the mention of Rauhauser in Walker’s account caught my eye because of Rauhauser’s previous involvement in the “TwitterGate” controversy and the fact that Rauhauser has worked for a number of Democrat candidates.

— Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 


UPDATE: Linked by The Rhetorican, Dan Collins at the Conservatory, Bill Quick at Daily Pundit, Perpetually Aggreived, Damn Dirty RINO and Hogewash — thanks!

UPDATE II (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

Undisclosed Location Springs Leak!

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by Smitty

A picture of Stacy McCain beavering away on the blog surfaced today through means that remain obscure:

American Glob straight up plays the “They Told Me If I Voted. . .” card, and points to Munsey’s Technosnarl, with an eyewitness account of today’s court circushearing at Munsey’s Technosnarl.

But, Walker didn’t press the credibility of Kimberlin enough. He was too easily sidetracked by the latter’s machinations, and every time Walker veered off, the Judge got madder.

Read the whole riveting thing.

At any rate, the story owned the top 9 bullets at Memeorandum, and will get us in the range of 35k hits by midnight. No’ so bad.

Secret locations don’t come cheap. Please consider making use of this button:




Otherwise, Andrew Sullivan may make Stacy McCain say something nice about Tabitha Hale, who, notably, emailed the link to the Aaron Walker arrest link to the BlogCon group. Stay awesome, Tabitha!

Update: via The Camp of the Saints,
David Hogberg at IBD:

The judge then said that Walker was the type who didn’t want to get into it “mano-y-mano” with Kimberlin but “you want to get together with all of your friends, who have nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion … and you are creating a conflagration, and you don’t care where it goes. And so you get some freak out in Oklahoma with nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things he can to this poor gentlemen (Kimberlin). What right does he have to do that?”
“He has no right to do that, your honor,” Walker replied.
“But you incited him,” Vaughey said.
The judge then went into brief discussion on how these things were settled where he grew up in Brooklyn.

What a travesty.

REPORT: Aaron Walker Arrested After Maryland Hearing on Kimberlin Case UPDATE: Walker Now Released

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UPDATE 6:25 p.m. ET: Sources say that blogger Aaron Walker has been released from custody in Rockville, Maryland. He was charged with “incitement,” but released on his own recognizance. Readers are encouraged to donate to the National Bloggers Club to help support Aaron’s defense against Brett Kimberlin.

*** PREVIOUSLY (11:59 a.m.) ***

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Aaron Walker, whose complaint against convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin became a conservative cause célèbre this past week, was reportedly taken into custody today after a court hearing in Rockville, Maryland.

One person who attended the hearing in Montgomery County District Court said that Kimberlin asserted that Walker’s continued blogging represented a violation of a “peace order” Kimberlin had obtained against the Virginia attorney, who says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him for assault earlier this year.

During the course of the hearing — which reportedly lasted about an hour — Judge C.J. Vaughey appeared to become increasingly hostile toward Walker, who was taken into custody when the hearing concluded.

On Thursday, May 17, Walker published a 28,000-word account of his experience being targeted by Kimberlin, which soon caught the attention of leading figures in online New Media, including University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who writes the popular Instapundit blog, and bestselling author Michelle Malkin, who warned her readers, “Please remember: Kimberlin is a radical, violent, lying, dangerous felon.”

UPDATE: According to a source, Kimberlin claimed during the hearing that he has received death threats as a result of Walker’s violation of the peace order. In 1981, Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for his crimes, including the 1978 terrorist bombing that brutally maimed Vietnam veteran Carl DeLong.

UPDATE II: A copy of the “final peace order” (time-stamped 10:52 a.m.) states that Kimberlin is “in fear of imminent serious bodily harm” as a result of a “countless number” of death threats, and that “there is clear and convincing evidence that [Walker] is likely to commit a prohibited act in the future against [Kimberlin].”

UPDATE III: To understand what is going on here, please see my column today at The American Spectator:

During his time in federal prison, [Kimberlin] became a prodigious jailhouse lawyer, filing more than 100 actions on his own behalf, and his litigious habits have continued until this day. When Patrick Frey, the blogger known as Patterico, wrote about Kimberlin’s criminal past in 2010, he was immediately threatened with a libel suit. By then, Kimberlin had already sued Seth Allen, who eventually got legal assistance from Aaron Walker, a Virginia attorney who had blogged under the pseudonym “Aaron Worthing.” This evidently made Walker a target of Kimberlin’s harassment tactics, with the result that Walker says both he and his wife lost their jobs. . . .
Kimberlin’s critics say his litigation against Allen and Walker, and threats of action against others, are a type of “lawfare,” which is defined as “the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a public relations victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent’s time so that they cannot pursue other ventures such as running for public office.” And this is part of what many see as a wide-ranging strategy of intimidation waged against conservatives . . .

Read the whole thing. I’m still trying to confirm facts about Walker’s hearing and reported arrest.

UPDATE IV: Just spoke to a source who confirms that witnesses saw Walker led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Ali Akbar, president of the National Bloggers Club, Tweets:

Will know more on Aaron’s situation at 3:30/4:30pm.

The National Bloggers Club has created KimberlinFiles.org to help call attention to the case and to enable “supporters to make financial donations to a relief fund as a show of support.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 




 

UPDATE V: Welcome Ace of Spades HQ readers!

Now a Memeorandum thread, with links by The Jawa Report, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, Wake up America, Bob Owens, Capitalist Preservation, Legal Insurrection, FilmLadd Blogs, That Mr. G Guy’s Blog and Truth Before Dishonor — thanks!

Michelle Malkin has been absolutely on fire over this.

UPDATE VI: Linked at Twitchy, Popehat, Nice Deb, Sooper Mexican, Darth Chipmunk, Daily Pundit, Andrew J. Patrick, Daley Gator, PJ Tatler and The Camp of the Saints — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE VII: A witness blogs about the hearing:

It went bad for Walker pretty quickly. . . .
Judge Vaughey had read up on the matter, knew Kimberlin’s history of felony convictions, but clearly was technically ignorant of even basic facts about what Twitter is, in one instance point saying “He Googled you 500,000 times” through the Tubes or whatever. The Judge had identified himself, earlier, as being “of the Royal Typewriter Generation,” and at another point, when confronted with the voluminous material from both sides, asked “don’t people have jobs, who reads this stuff?”
That said, Judge Vaughey did know a lot about the kind of respect a Judge is owed. He also, again, knew all about Kimberlin, saying “even a prostitute is entitled to protection.”
And Walker pissed him off. So did Kimberlin, but Walker identified himself as a Yale-trained lawyer, albeit one who was representing himself. Kimberlin made any number of allegations — essentially, everything that was said about his side -– issuing death threats, harming business interests, summoning SWAT teams to the home–was said by Kimberlin to have been done by Walker’s side.
The pair went back and forth, back and forth, with Walker getting increasingly flustered, and the Judge finally asking, “what did they tell you in Yale Law School about interrupting a judge?”

My own source who was on the scene said of Judge Vaughey: “He couldn’t find the Internet to save his life.”

 

Matthew Vadum Talks Brett Kimberlin

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
One of the very valuable advantages I’ve had in reporting on Brett Kimberlin’s activities is that I’ve got Matthew Vadum’s phone number in my speed-dial. An investigative reporter and author of Subversion, Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, Vadum is a leading expert on non-profit organizations. He has provided me with valuable information, including the IRS 990 forms for Kimberlin’s Justice Through Music Project (2010 form PDF, 2009 form PDF) and Velvet Revolution (2010 form PDF, 2008 form PDF).

On “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” Vadum appeared on Ezra Levant’s Canadian TV program to discuss the Kimberlin case:

You may also want to read Matthew’s column at Front Page Magazine, “Brett Kimberlin and the Hall of Fame of Leftist Terrorists.”

Somebody Tell Nina Totenberg Her Buddy Brett Kimberlin Is Making News Again

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“The tale-teller was a short fellow who needed to be looked up to, who consistently sought relationships with females much younger than himself, who could boast to an eighteen-year-old woman he’d just met on a bus that he was ‘one of the strongest men in the world.'”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996), Page 312

“In e-mails and Web postings from Kimberlin’s two organizations, Justice Through Music and Velvet Revolution, he intersperses occasionally useful pieces of information . . . with a hefty portion of bunk, repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true. . . . Kimberlin has found a home in the blogosphere . . .”
— Massimo Calabresi, Time magazine, “The Wizard of Odd,” Jan. 5, 2007

“Using two popular leftist blogs, the 56-year-old from Bethesda, Md., has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public and left-leaning foundations by promising to put conservatives he disagrees with in jail, often with offers of large rewards. So far — without success — he has called for the arrest of Karl Rove, Andrew Breitbart, Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship and other high-profile public figures.
“A review of tax filings for Kimberlin’s blogs, ‘Velvet Revolution’ and ‘Justice Through Music,’ raises troubling questions about whether his ‘nonprofit’ operations are dedicated to public activism — or are just a new facade for a longtime con artist.”
— Ed Barnes, Fox News, “Leftist Blogger’s Criminal Past Raises Questions About His Real Intent,” Oct. 19, 2010

“In sworn testimony in a court proceeding involving Seth Allen, Kimberlin falsely claimed to have been ‘secretly exonerated’ (???) of the heinous crimes for which he was convicted in 1981.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying,” May 24

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
In the fall of 1988, when convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin was still locked up in federal prison and claiming to have sold dope to GOP vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle, every political reporter in the country wanted to write about Kimberlin. In his 1996 book, Mark Singer recounts how National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg spoke to Kimberlin two or three times every day in late October and early November 1988.

So why, 24 years later, are Nina Totenberg and the rest of the elite media ignoring what their old friend’s been up to lately? Tom Blumer of Newsbusters asks, “Where Is the Establishment Press?”

Leading blogger Robert Stacy McCain has decided that he and his family must leave their home and that they can’t go back; he officially describes his location as “whereabouts unknown.” On Friday, Patterico, an assistant DA by day, revealed a campaign of harassment involving “workplace complaints, publication of personal information such as home addresses and pictures of residences, bogus allegations of criminal activity, whisper campaigns, frivolous legal actions, and frivolous State Bar complaints.” Oh, and he was “SWATted” — he had his home stormed by a SWAT team, complete with a police helicopter and a spotlight. Someone pretending to be him “called the police to say I had shot my wife.” An audio expert Patterico hired concluded that “it is probable” that the hoax call was placed by a Kimberlin associate known to have tweeted a public threat against himself and his family.
Erick Erickson of RedState got “SWATted” Sunday evening; this time, “Someone called 911 (pretending to be) from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.”

This is a complicated story and difficult to tell. So far as I know, it started in October 2010 when Mandy Nagy of Breitbart.com published her 3,600-word article about Kimberlin. Also in 2010, Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser, a Democrat campaign consultant, was accused in the “TwitterGate” episode of targeting Tea Party activists for obscene harassment online. (Also see, “Democrat Cyber Stealth Revealed: Neal Rauhauser & Radical E-Thugs,” Patrick Read, Oct. 13, 2010.) In 2011, one of the online activists who helped push the Anthony Weiner scandal into the news, Mike Stack got “SWATted” and has subsequently pressed charges of harassment against Rauhauser.

Liberal blogger Seth Allen (@prepostericity) was critical of Kimberlin and Brad Friedman, partners in the tax-exempt non-profit Velvet Revolution. Allen was sued by Kimberlin. Allen got legal assistance from attorney Aaron Walker, who blogged under the pseudonym Aaron Worthing. Walker then became a target of Kimberlin’s harassment, with the result that both Walker and his wife lost their jobs.

Such is the story that I learned on May 17, when Walker published his 28,000-word account of his entanglement with Kimberlin. Immediately recognizing this as a newsworthy story, I began reporting about it on my blog. Four days later, on May 21, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, raising security concerns for the employer and causing me to leave my home in order to be able to continue reporting the story without potentially endangering others.

Reacting to Kimberlin’s harassment of Allen, Walker, myself and others, Lee Stranahan declared that Friday, May 25, would be “Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day” — with remarkable results. As a journalistic fugitive, I continued reporting the story:

The story continues gaining momentum. The Sunday “SWATting” of Erickson, a CNN contributor, guarantees that this story won’t go away soon. Michelle Malkin has published a “to-do list” for those who want to put a stop to the intimidation and harassment:

The massive blogburst about convicted bomber and online terrorist ringleader Brett Kimberlin ended on Friday, but this is an ongoing legal, financial, and emotional morass for the targets. And it has now entangled new victims. It is precisely because each and every blogger, Twitter users, activist, talk show host, and podcaster is potential new prey for sicko Kimberlin and his cabal that we must all stand together.

“Online terrorist ringleader” is a rather strong term. I prefer Jimmie Bise Jr.’s neutral objective phrase, “Lying Felon Brett Kimberlin,” but why quibble over semantics at this point?

What we have here is a remarkable news story, and the story is not about me. It’s not about Aaron Walker or Mike Stack or Seth Allen or Patrick Frey or Erick Erickson or Mandy Nagy.

This is a story about Brett Kimberlin. What is truly dumbfounding is that Kimberlin’s old media buddies like Nina Totenberg think we’re too stupid to notice them ignoring it. 

 Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

UPDATE: Linked by Andrea Shea King at Radio Patriot, Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints, That Mr. G. Guy, Da Tech Guy, That Innocuous Girl and The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Thanks also to all the many readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to help defray the expense involved in this unexpected road trip to the Undisclosed Location.

 




 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 

ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The news reached me by phone tonight, just as I was trying to get to sleep: Someone has targeted Red State’s Erick Erickson with the same dangerous hoax that had previously been used against Patterico.

UPDATE: Erickson writes at Red State:

Last week we spent a lot of time writing about Brett Kimberlin and the incident involving blogger Patterico where someone spoofed his phone number and told 911 he had shot his wife.
Tonight, my family was sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner when sheriffs deputies pulled up in the driveway.
Someone called 911 from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.
It wasn’t nearly the trauma that Patterico suffered, but I guess the Erickson household is on somebody’s radar.
Luckily it was two sheriffs deputies who knew me and I had already, last week, advised the Sheriff’s Department to be on the look out for something like this.

It’s no secret that I sharply criticized Erickson during the 2012 presidential primary campaign, but last week he mentioned me in writing about the Kimberlin case, which was a gracious gesture. This situation is more important than individual personalities.

UPDATE II: Instapundit: “Really, if the goal is to keep people from writing about Brett Kimberlin, this doesn’t seem like the way to do it.”

Indeed, given that Erickson is a CNN contributor, this incident certainly should provide the mainstream media a solid reason to stop ignoring the Kimberlin case.

UPDATE III: Patterico: “Anyone else think CNN is going to talk about SWATting now?”

UPDATE IV: Now the top thread at Memeorandum.

Brett Kimberlin’s Heiress Aunt Helping Fund His Tax-Exempt Harassment

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Convicted felon Brett Kimberlin is the nephew of a wealthy Maryland woman who has contributed to a foundation that helped fund a 501(c)3 organization of which Kimberlin is the director. Kimberlin’s activities have recently attracted widespread attention because of his attempts to intimidate and harass bloggers who wrote about his criminal history.

Harriet Crosby, 66, reportedly an heiress to the General Mills fortune, was one of the original donors to the Threshold Foundation, which contributed $20,000 to Kimberlin’s Justice Through Music Project in 2008, according to database research I reported May 19.

The Threshold Foundation was started by a group of wealthy devotees of environmentalism and trancendental meditation. The foundation’s “very liberal” view, researcher Ron Arnold has written, “saw American society as rife with injustice and in need of radical transformation.” Threshold has been affiliated with the Tides Foundation, linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.

A 2009 profile of Crosby in the alumni magazine of the elite Putney School — a private academy in Vermont, where the annual tuition is $46,900 for boarding students — described her as “active” in the tax-exempt non-profit group Velvet Revolution, which Kimberlin helped start in association with liberal blogger Brad Friedman.

Velvet Revolution gained notoriety by making unsubstantiated claims that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election through vote fraud. A 2007 Time magazine profile of Kimberlin described how he “found a home in the blogosphere” by “repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true.” At one point, Kimberlin offered a $100,000 reward for proof of his assertion that President George W. Bush’s re-election was obtained through vote fraud, a reward that was never paid. Velvet Revolution has also unsuccessfully sought criminal prosecution of various public figures including GOP strategist Karl Rove, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the late New Media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart.

The connection between Kimberlin and Crosby — verified by a 2009 article in the Montgomery County (Md.) Gazette — was reported today by Tee Zieldors, who credits independent blogger Seth Allen (whose Twitter account is @Preposterocity) for the tip. 

It was Allen’s writings about Kimberlin that resulted in him being the defendant in a lawsuit brought by Kimberlin. Allen’s lawyer, Aaron Worthing, subsequently drew attention to his own experiences with Kimberlin in a 28,000-word account on May 17.

Kimberlin is scheduled to appear in a Maryland court Tuesday for a hearing about a “peace order” he has sought against Walker.

* * * * *

The National Bloggers Club has created KimberlinFiles.org to help call attention to the Kimberlin case and, as the non-profit goup’s president Ali Akbar says, to enable “supporters to make financial donations to a relief fund as a show of support.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

UPDATE: Linked by Legal Insurrection, Da Tech Guy, The Camp of the Saints, Little Miss Attila, That Innocuous Girl and Daley Gator — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:


Brett Kimberlin Really Hates Racists, Eh?

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“For three months, Kimberlin resided at the federal prison in prison in Terra Haute, Indiana, in a unit reserved for convicts awaiting long-term assignments to other institutions. . . . He had resisted a sexual predator by tossing powdered chlorine cleanser in his face. The predator was African American, Kimberlin told me, and as he fended him off he shouted, ‘You f–king n–r! You motherf–kng n–r! Get the f–k away from me! I’ll kill you, you motherf–r!’ Kimberlin enjoyed telling this story.”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996), Page 183