Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Brett Kimberlin Gets Spanked

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“Brett Kimberlin does not want people writing about his past — a past that includes convictions for serial bombing, drug smuggling, perjury, and even impersonating a member of the military.”
— Ace of Spades, June 8, 2012

Another day, another denial — actually Brett Kimberlin had two motions denied today by U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel in the federal lawsuit that John Hoge has dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

Hoge has the latest letter order, in which the judge denies (a) Kimberlin’s request for additional time to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, and (b) Kimberlin’s request for a ruling on his previous attempt to disqualify Paul Alan Levy, who is the lawyer defending Ace of Spades’ anonymity. Both of these denials were delivered with decisive brutality — the judge saying in effect, “Stop bothering me with your badly argued and legally flawed nonsense, you creep” — but Kimberlin got taught an especially embarrassing lesson on the Levy matter:

Finally, Plaintiff has sent a letter to the Court (see ECF No. 174) urging the Court “to rule on [a] Motion to Disqualify [Counsel]” (see ECF No. 174) that Plaintiff previously filed on February 26, 2014. See ECF No. 93. That motion, however, is no longer pending on the Court’s docket. In fact, that motion has not been on the Court’s docket since March 4, 2014, when the Clerk of Court terminated it due to Plaintiff’s failure to comply with the Court’s February 21, 2014 Letter Order. See ECF No. 96. Obviously, the Court cannot rule on a motion that is not currently pending on its docket. If Plaintiff wishes to file a Motion to Disqualify Counsel, he must file a Request pursuant to and in accordance with the requirements set forth in the Case Management Order. See ECF No. 97

Here’s the thing: Kimberlin seems to have been so overcome by wrath toward Paul Alan Levy — and gosh, I wonder why — that Brett completely forgot that his original attempt to have Levy removed from the case had never even been accepted by the court, because Kimberlin had failed to comply with a previous order by the court.

Aaron Walker, who has endured more of Kimberlin’s abusive lawfare than anyone, explains the larger significance of all this:

As you might remember, when Paul Levy entered the case Brett when into full whine mode and filed an improper motion to have Levy disqualified.  This was just after the court first decided to attempt to restrict the flow of filings in this case (more than 80 documents ago), and rather than obey the court’s order and request leave to file a motion to disqualify, he just filed it, and the judge returned it to him as improper.
But that is not what this is really about.  What this is really about, in my humble opinion, is that Paul Levy wrote a fairly devastating blog post last week about the case. Really, seriously, read all of it. Not only was that pretty harmful to Brett’s public reputation (based on facts that cannot be denied), but it was pretty widely read.  For instance, it was Instalanched. And it was WashingtonPostalanched, via the Volokh Conspiracy.  Long time readers know that Mr. Volokh helped me out last year when Brett obtained a blatantly unconstitutional peace order forbidding me to even mention Brett Kimberlin’s name for six months.

You can read the whole thing. Aaron also discusses the “scattered” thinking behind Brett’s motion in regard to Ace’s anonymity, from which I’ll quote this little sample paragraph:

Contrary to counsel’s argument, Ace of Spades engaged in wholesale and per se defamation against Plaintiff, not once, but multiple times. . . . For example, he falsely stated, imputed and published in five articles that Plaintiff committed the crime of “swattings,” that he was involved with “terrorism” and “murder,” that he was trying to “kill” people,” that he is a “thug” and “nefarious,” that he is running “scams,” that he is engaged in “lawless vigilantism,” the he is involved with “ongoing crimes,” that he is engaged in “alarming harassments,” that he is a “menace,” that he is a “one-man crime wave,” the he is “escalating” his criminal activities, that he is engaged in a “crime in progress,” that he is “abusing and corrupting” the justice system, that his life is one of “escalat[ing] risk taking,” that he is “a dangerous man,” that he is engaged in “digital” and “real life terrorism,” that he is a malicious threat to society,” and that he is engaged in “lawfare.” Not only did Ace of Spades make these defamatory statements and publications, he demanded action by others, including Congress, to stop Plaintiff through various actions including passing a bill of attainder. His publications were a call to arms against Plaintiff based on defamatory hysteria — either stop Plaintiff or terrible things will happen. Ace of Spades was using his defamatory statements to destroy Plaintiff by any means.

To which Ace’s lawyer should reply: “You mad, bro?”

“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, Oct. 10, 2010


By the way, in one of his motions in the separate Maryland state case Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., this is Kimberlin’s Exhibit A:

Why did Brett Kimberlin insist on making that Twitter message a part of the public record in his $1 million lawsuit? I don’t know.

Just reporting the facts here, folks.

Maybe you think Brett Kimberlin is a nefarious thug and a malicious threat to society, and nobody is preventing you from researching Kimberlin’s criminal career and judging for yourself. Whatever you do, don’t include a Pedobear cartoon of Kimberlin in a Twitter message, or the (alleged) “one-man crime wave” might sue you for a million dollars.

Consider yourself warned.

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

Neal Rauhauser’s ‘Lubed Up’ Criminal Pervert Buddy, Thomas Retzlaff

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Neal Rauhauser (@nrauhauser) is sufficiently notorious that I hesitate to describe him, knowing that most regular readers here are thoroughly familiar with this heinous Internet troll. He was a Democrat campaign consultant and Daily Kos contributor who, in 2010, was accused of running a weird online harassment scheme that became known as “TwitterGate.” In 2011, Rauhauser re-emerged as a so-called “Weiner Truther,” promoting a conspiracy theory that the Anthony Weiner sex scandal was a “hack” perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart. Subsequently, Rauhauser was part of what Patrick “Patterico” Frey called a “campaign of political terrorism” that Frey said was directed at him and other enemies of Brett Kimberlin. At one point, Rauhauser used the online alias “Gaped Crusader” to smear and harass Frey. It was Rauhauser’s connection to Kimberlin, a notorious criminal, that first attracted my attention to the Kimberlin case, which has resulted in two lawsuits where I am named among the defendants.

So, if you previously had no idea who Neal Rauhauser is, now you know.

More recently, Rauhauser has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by James McGibney of Bullyville.com. One of Rauhauser’s co-defendants in that lawsuit is Thomas Retzlaff, a Texas resident with a frightening criminal history. Bullyville has posted a 1998 court document filed by Texas officials, which reads in part:

During the course of [Retzlaff’s] ten-year-marriage to [his ex-wife] … [Retzlaff] participated in several extra-marital affairs. . .. He also owned a collection of pornographic books, magazines, and videotapes which were often left in areas of the home accessible to the children. . . . He kept these materials for the purpose of masturbation. . . . [Retzlaff] often masturbated in the living room using a can of Crisco while the children were home and able to observe him. . . .
[His wife] witnessed [Retzlaff] videotaping himself and his girlfriend having sex in the living room. . . . On another occasion, [Retzlaff] videotaped himself forcibly sodomizing his wife in the living room while the children were in their bedrooms. Toward the end of the videotaped scene, his wife is screaming in pain.

Thomas Retzlaff is a real classy guy, eh? Exactly how Retzlaff got mixed up with Rauhauser, and with Rauhauser’s known associate Lane Lipton (a/k/a “Qritiq”) is a very interesting story:

You can click to see it larger, but let me quote:

“Defendant Thomas Retzlaff was a prolific use of these ‘revenge porn’ sites. Plaintiff Mr. McGibney has identified at least 18 victims (mostly female) whose personal information and/or nude images Retzlaff has posted on revenge porn sites . . .
“It has also been proven that Defendant Retzlaff posted his own daughter on numerous revenge porn websites. Within one site, where he uploaded naked images of his own daughter, he stated, ‘I wanna rape her, I will see u in El Paso Brittany.'”

Here’s more (click to enlarge any image):

You can read the rest of that in McGibney v. Retzlaff, et al. The way I became familiar with all this? Well, this morning, I got a call from someone on Rauhauser’s enemies list. This person explained a pattern of harassment familiar to me and, realizing the common denominator involved, I issued a series of Twitter warnings:

Do I know exactly what kind of online mischief Neal Rauhauser has been involved with the past few months? No, but when Rauhauser’s enemies find themselves being harassed, it’s a reasonable surmise to suspect Neal is behind the harassment.

Yeah, Neal’s a sick freak, and his friends are all creepy, too.

 



 

 

 

Paul Alan Levy on Brett Kimberlin, Defamation and the ‘Streisand Effect’

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“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, Oct. 10, 2010

“It looks to me as if Brett Kimberlin is digging himself a deeper hole with every paper he files . . . He may well be at the point that he is the one who needs to get out of the litigation as quickly as possible, lest he make matters worse for himself and his family. Whether he has the self-restraint, and the good judgment, to seek that way out remains to be seen.”
— Paul Alan Levy, Aug. 1, 2014

Everybody knows what the “Streisand Effect” is, right? In the Internet age, attempts to suppress information usually have the opposite effect, calling widespread public attention to whatever fact it was that someone tried to conceal from public view.

This is what happened to Brett Kimberlin: When bloggers began calling attention to Kimberlin’s notorious criminal history, Kimberlin first sued one of them — progressive blogger Seth Allen — and threatened to sue both Patrick “Patterico” Frey and Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy. That was in fall 2010, and set in motion a chain of events that led to a courtroom conflict between Kimberlin and Aaron Walker. When Walker published his 28,000-word account of that conflict in May 2012, I started reporting on the activities of Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser. Four days later, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, ranting about how I was “harassing” Kimberlin. As a result, I departed Maryland for an “undisclosed location” and relocated my family.

These events raised a general alarm among conservative bloggers, which resulted in “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” on May 25, 2012. At every step, Kimberlin’s effort to suppress reporting and commentary about him had the opposite effect of what he evidently intended. Then, in fall 2013, Kimberlin filed two lawsuits: The Maryland case Kimberlin v. Walker, et al. — against five defendants — and then a federal RICO lawsuit against two dozen defendants, which John Hoge dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

These cases have been proceeding through the preliminary stages for the past several months and, knowing that I have myself become bored with all the legal back-and-forth — motions, replies to motions, orders from judges, yadda yadda yadda — I’ve been remiss in keeping readers updated, not wanting to subject y’all to the tedium. Both John Hoge and Aaron Walker have been blogging regularly about the proceedings. We may be just days away from seeing the Maryland state suit either thrown out on summary judgment or going to trial. Obviously, I’d prefer the former to the latter, but having no doubt of my innocence, I have the serenity of a Christian holding four aces, either way.

The federal case has become rather interesting. Kimberlin sought Judge George Hazel’s permission to file a “sealed” motion for a preliminary injunction, and was quite briskly spanked by the judge who, among other things, referred to “Plaintiff’s checkered past with representations to the Court” — a polite and euphemistic way of saying that the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak is a proven liar.

Given that Kimberlin’s July 22 letter to Judge Hazel is now a matter of public record (ECF No. 165) let’s quote some of it, eh?

Several of the unrepresented Defendants, including Walker, Hoge, McCain and Akbar, have not only failed to remove content, but they collectively use every opportunity to use this case to engage in a continuing campaign to defame and harm me and my family.  Virtually every single day, Defendant Walker and Hoge post defamatory statements on their blogs and on Twitter and use titles with defamatory adjectives calling me a terrorist, forger, perjurer, pedophile and other invectives.

Can you believe it? This lying scoundrel has the effrontery to sue us for $1 million in state court and $2 million in federal court and then — adding insult to idiocy, as it were — claims that it is “a continuing campaign to defame and harm” Kimberlin for us to inform the public of proceedings in this case! By God, the man has no shame, but even that pales in comparison to this claim by Kimberlin:

Every day, I am under siege from a barrage of false and defamatory attacks on me. Several of the Defendants, including Defendants Walker, McCain and Thomas, have attacked my teenage daughter to such a degree that she has been bullied out of two high schools. . . . Everyone knows the devastating effect of bullying on young people, especially girls. And the Defendants are directly responsible for the bullying of my daughter.

Kimberlin’s claim that I have “attacked” his teenage daughter is simply false. Somebody on Twitter once sent me a message about her singing career (which Kimberlin has promoted with tax-exempt funds from his non-profit Justice Through Music Project) and I replied that she can’t carry a tune, or words to that effect.

Once. End of story.

But can it be possible that Brett Kimberlin really wants to discuss what is harmful to “young people, especially girls”? A dead grandmother can have a “devastating effect” on a girl, I guess.

You see that the infamous liar Brett Kimberlin is making these false claims against me in court documents, in an effort to convince the judge that where there is so much “smoke” of allegations, surely there must be some “fire” of actual tortious damage. The judge’s reaction would seem to indicate that he is not deceived by Kimberlin’s mendacious game, but excuse me for burning with indignation that Kimberlin is permitted to engage in such heinous abuse of the justice system. He is a convicted felon who was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison in 1981 and yet he thinks the court must protect him from “defamatory adjectives”?

Maybe you understand why I’ve tried to ignore this case to the greatest extent possible. Every time I think about it, I get angry.

It is helpful, therefore, to read Paul Alan Levy’s thoughts on the case. Levy has volunteered pro bono, to represent Ace of Spades in a limited manner, to defeat Kimberlin’s effort to deprive Ace of his anonymity (trying to “dox” Ace, incidentally, was a project that Neal Rauhauser ineptly pursued for many months). Levy talks about Kimberlin’s motion for an injunction in the federal case:

Moreover, it does not seem to me likely that submitting affidavits about claimed harm are going to be enough — the defendants he seeks to restrain are entitled to be confronted by their accusers face-to-face, and to have the chance to cross-examine; and given the intense hostility between the parties that the courts have previously noted, there is no reason to think these pro se defendants might not want to take their pound of flesh. Indeed, considering that the judge has indicated that Kimberlin needs to make specific showings about the harm caused by the specific statements against which he wants relief, the defendants might well start asking questions about exactly why parents won’t let their daughters have sleepovers at the Kimberlin household. Is it because they learned that he used to be a major drug dealer, importing large quantities of drugs from Mexico? Or because he was convicted of a series of bombings that left some people severely injured? Or is it because they learned that a newspaper article in Indiana reported on the murder of the grandmother of a pre-teen girl who was worried that Kimberlin was going out with a daughter she considered irresponsible so that he could get access to the grand-daughter? Or maybe because, after he got out of jail, and already in his forties, Kimberlin was allegedly singing rock and roll songs about the joys of sex with teenage girls, and because a DC-area publication that interviewed him about the songs praised him for his honesty about how older men feel about attractive teenagers.  Or, was it some more recent, post-Second Amended Complaint statement that is depriving his daughter of sleepovers?
If Kimberlin seeks relief, he is going to have to show through the testimony of some person with personal knowledge just what the reasons are that his daughter’s friends parents are giving for getting in the way of his daughter’s social life. Presumably, that would be the daughter herself. The pro se defendants against whom relief is sought might choose to cross-examine her.

You really should read the whole thing, because Levy points out how Kimberlin’s lawsuit — his attempt to use the federal courts to silence his critics — is exposing to public scrutiny the very aspects of Kimberlin’s sordid past that he most wishes to conceal.

Even while I was writing this article, John Hoge noticed that the Washington Post‘s Eugene Volokh is now covering the case:

In this instance, it’s very hard for me to feel sympathy for Kimberlin. He has repeatedly demanded unconstitutional restrictions on his critics’ speech (see, e.g., the posts discussed here; I consulted with Aaron Walker’s lawyer on the case). His past crimes make it hard to know when he is telling the truth today. And beyond this, his litigation behavior in this very case has apparently been less than candid at times . . .

Yeah, Brett: So now you can sue the Washington Post and claim you were defamed by a constitutional law professor, OK?

Meanwhile, you just keep on telling lies about me, and I’ll keep telling the truth about you, and we’ll see who wins in the long run. I’ve got good people praying for me, and I have no fear.

Readers: This is still a Shameless Capitalist Blog. Please keep in mind The Five Most Important Words in the English Language . . .

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

Nice Reputation, Jesse

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Ace of Spades calls Jesse Ventura a “conspiracy-addled asshole” and he could have added “selfish,” “dishonest” and “vindictive” to that description without fear of being sued for defamation. The reaction to Ventura’s suing a Navy SEAL’s widow for $1.8 million is ironic: Ventura claimed that his reputation was harmed by Chris Kyle’s book; yet Ventura has inflicted more harm on his own reputation by suing than Kyle ever could have imagined inflicting on Ventura.

Having some direct experience with conspiracy-addled assholes who file lawsuits, and having been a journalist for more than 25 years before convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin had the unmitigated gall to claim I had “defamed” him, let me point out something that is being generally overlooked in the reaction to the verdict in Ventura v. Kyle.

Jesse Ventura’s opposition to the Iraq War, and his paranoid views about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are a matter of public record, as Noah Rothman says at Hot Air:

Ventura is a noted conspiracy theorist whose kneejerk impulse [is] to blame the American government for everything from the 9/11 attacks, to the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound, to the JFK assassination has netted him frequent appearances on networks like Russia Today.

One can describe Ventura thus, on the basis of information plainly in evidence, without having defamed him. And to voice negative judgments on Ventura’s character — to call him a “kook,” a “crackpot” or a “bully” — is merely to express one’s opinion formed on the basis of readily available information about Ventura, who is a public figure per the Supreme Court’s Sullivan standard.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

How, then, did Ventura prevail in court against Kyle? We can blame the judge and the jury and call the verdict a travesty, yet there is one element of Kyle’s case any newspaper editor would immediately spot as a vulnerability: He asserted private knowledge.

This is a line that no smart journalist would ever cross: To claim to know something bad about somebody, a private fact otherwise unknown, on the basis of information not publicly available.

Any reporter could publish a story about the conflict between Ventura and Kyle — the alleged barroom confrontation at the heart of this lawsuit — and write that Kyle says X, Y and Z happened, including Ventura’s denials that any such confrontation occurred, without fear that his reporting could be construed as libelous.

Kyle’s problem was that, if his altercation with Ventura actually occurred, it was not a matter of public record. Nobody called the cops; there was no police report filed. In fact, it appears that Kyle’s editors at Harper Collins recognized the potential liability involved in publishing that anecdote, so that Kyle’s book referred to Ventura as “scruff face.” It was only in subsequent media interviews that Kyle himself said that Ventura was the subject of the anecdote, and thus the truth or falsehood of Kyle’s version of events — his claim that Ventura said vile things, and that he knocked Ventura down — was central to the defamation lawsuit.

The statements that Kyle attributed to Ventura are certainly consistent with Ventura’s general hostility to the Bush administration and its policies in Iraq. One can easily believe that if Kyle and Ventura got into a quarrel at a bar — and, it is important to note, Ventura does not deny that he was in that bar on the night in question — that Kyle would have taken a swing at Ventura, and it is plausible that the young man in his vigorous prime could have knocked down the older man with a single punch. However, to say that Kyle’s anecdote is credible is a different thing than saying it is provably true. And so it was arguably an unwise risk for Kyle to describe this alleged event as a fact — to assert private knowledge.

All that being said, I do not believe this case was correctly decided. In a defamation case, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove that the defendant knowingly or recklessly published a falsehood. Based on what has been reported of the trial, Ventura and his witnesses cast doubt on Kyle’s story, but did not disprove it, as witnesses for the defense testified that Kyle told the truth.

If lawyers for Kyle’s estate appeal the case, I feel they have a good chance to overturn the verdict. Meanwhile, we are just days away from the next hearing in the Maryland case of Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., in which the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak is suing me and four co-defendants for $1 million. The prayers and continued financial support of readers are most earnestly solicited.





 

‘This Is How Bullies and Abusers Function. … They Will Stop at Nothing to Silence Their Victims’

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Why does this seem so familiar to me?

She said this man had sexually assaulted her. Shortly thereafter she published a post detailing her account. The post was circulated widely among the progressive community. He had his lawyer contact her and demand she remove the post. He threatened to sue her if she spoke of the allegations publicly. She took the post down.
As you’ve probably gathered, I still don’t feel I can “name names” with regard to the alleged perpetrator. I have no doubt that I, too, would be threatened with legal action. . . . This is how bullies and abusers function. With threats. They will stop at nothing to silence their victims and to maintain their positions of power. They need to control the discourse. They are looking out for number one — always.

You can read the whole thing, in which a feminist condemns her fellow feminists who have evidently taken the side of the man (who we can infer is an influential progressive) accused of assaulting a woman. It’s kind of like the Feminist Presidential Knee Pad Brigade that rallied around Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.

However, that isn’t the only reason this seems so familiar to me: The wrongdoer who uses threats and lawsuits to silence those who speak truth about his wrongdoing? Yeah. Very familiar.

“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, Oct. 10, 2010

Nearly four years have passed since the convicted bomber made that threat to Patrick “Patterico” Frey, and some nine months have elapsed since Kimberlin sued more than 20 defendants — including Patterico and myself — in a ridiculous $2 million federal lawsuit that John Hoge dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

Bullies “will stop at nothing to silence their victims . . . They need to control the discourse,” and we should not forget the victims.

“Brett C. Kimberlin schemed to elude justice with a series of bizarre plots designed to murder, maim and rob his enemies, create havoc at Speedway and discredit the chief government prosecutor.
“These plots occurred as lawmen followed the trail of the man who terrorized Speedway with bombs in 1978. . . .
“Kimberlin seemed to be the only one with a possible motive — to distract police attention from the Scyphers murder and delay or halt their quiet investigation of him.”
— R. Joseph Gelarden, “Bizarre plots planned by Speedway Bomber; Kimberlin case a maze of murder, deceit,” Indianapolis Star, Oct. 18, 1981

The murder of Julia Scyphers is still officially unsolved, and there is no statute of limitation for murder. What caused Kimberlin to make his legal threat to Patrick Frey was a post in which Frey discussed Kimberlin’s history as a convicted bomber, drug smuggler, perjurer, and suspected murderer. In response to Kimberlin’s lawsuit threat, Frey repeatedly asked Kimberlin “to specify anything in my post that you claim is false.” Kimberlin never did so, and the obvious inference is because he can’t: Every word is true.

Honest people should never let a liar intimidate them into silence.

If you’re new to this story and are wondering why investigators said Brett Kimberlin had “a possible motive — to distract police attention from the Scyphers murder,” it involved a young girl. And we know about Kimberlin’s enthusiasm for young girls:

Not all the songs on his album — which Mahern characterizes as minimally produced and “pretty much Brett” — have political overtones, which in some respects may be unfortunate: While tracks like “Life’s a Bitch (For a Government Snitch)” and “Who’s Next” (a song about unfounded sex crime accusations) have a definite edge to them, others, like “Waiting to Meet” and “Teen Dream” (both about having sex with teenage girls) are lacking in subtlety and tend to make one squirm. But this is exactly what Kimberlin wants.
“I say things a lot of people are afraid to say. Yeah, ‘Teen Dream’ is about fucking a teenage girl. Every guy who’s seen a good-looking teenage girl has thought about it. I’m talking about that lecherous quality that every man, though he won’t act on it, has.”

Kimberlin was a 41-year-old recently released federal convict in 1996 when he proclaimed his desire to have sex with teenage girls.

In July 2013, Brett Kimberlin’s wife filed for a domestic protective order against her husband, which I described at the time:

The estranged wife of progressive activist Brett Kimberlin says he has been “mentally abusive” to her, claiming in a Maryland court that Kimberlin has been “threatening” her and trying to get her fired from her job at a Montgomery County daycare center.
Tetyana Kimberlin, 32, sought a domestic protective order this week, saying her husband had “been going by my work and telling my employer I am going to be arrested,” and that Kimberlin, 59, “had me arrested before on false charges.”
Brett Kimberlin was convicted in 1981 for a weeklong series of Indiana bombings and sentenced to 50 years in federal prison, but served only 17 years. While imprisoned, Kimberlin became briefly famous during the 1992 election campaign by claiming to have once sold marijuana to then-Vice President Dan Quayle. Kimberlin is now director of two progressive non-profit groups, the 501c3 Justice Through Music Project and 501c4 Velvet Revolution.
“He told me if I will try to take my kids with me he will hurt me and I will see what will happen to me,” Kimberlin’s Russian-born wife wrote in her petition for a protection order, a case that was heard Tuesday in Silver Spring, Maryland. “He tells my 14-year-old about his plans about me and what he is going to do with me.
Kimberlin has “been calling me terrible names … telling my children that I am mentally ill,” his wife wrote, saying she had been separated from him for seven months and now has a boyfriend, who also appeared in court Tuesday.

T. Kimberlin v. B. Kimberlin Petition for Protective Order 7.9.13 (OCR) by AaronWorthing

He was “abusive … threatening,” Kimberlin’s estranged wife told the court and, because of my reporting on this story, I’m one of five defendants he sued for $1 million in Maryland state court (Kimberlin v. Walker, et al.) in addition to the $2 million federal lawsuit.

The last time I updated readers on Kimberlin’s “lawfare” harassment was more than a month ago, on June 20, when the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak sent two letters to the judge in the federal case, and since then, my co-defendants Aaron Walker and John Hoge have kept their readers updated on proceedings, while I have been remiss.

Earlier this month, a judge in the state case granted our requests for summary judgment on the majority of Kimberlin’s claims, so that basically it’s now just a defamation case. Kimberlin’s failure to adequately comply with defendants’ discovery requests — you can see some of his non-responses here and also here — will probably be enough to get the rest of the case tossed out.

The judge in the federal case granted Kimberlin’s motion to amend his lawsuit for the second time. There have been a number of motions to dismiss this amended complaint. Click here to read the motion to dismiss filed by the lawyer for my co-defendants Twitchy and Michelle Malkin, if you want to get an idea of the numerous flaws in Kimberlin’s claims. This week, Kimberlin engaged in “abject stupidity” in the federal case, filing a “sealed” motion for an injunction; depending on how the judge reacts to the plaintiff’s idiotic gesture, it’s possible there will be more to say later.

Given how Kimberlin has boasted, in his October 2010 e-mail to Patrick Frey, that the purpose of his litigation is to “cost [defendants] a lot of time and money” to defend themselves against his meritless complaints, the courts should not only dismiss his lawsuits with prejudice, but also impose strong sanctions against Kimberlin, so as to discourage this infamously mendacious menace to society from ever again harassing honest law-abiding citizens in this manner.

There will be a hearing in the state case in two weeks, at which we have reason to hope that the judge will grant summary judgment, dismissing the remaining counts of Kimberlin’s worthless lawsuit.

In the meantime, please keep my family and me in your prayers and remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

“Hit the Freaking Tip Jar!”




 

Brett Kimberlin Annoys a Judge

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It’s been weeks since I’ve paid any attention to Brett Kimberlin’s ridiculous federal lawsuit, the one that my co-defendant John Hoge has described as Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al. The reason for this long silence is that there just hasn’t been any real news in the case. Judge Grimm issued a letter order that put a lid on the extraordinary number of filings made in the case, and the defendants are basically now waiting to learn (a) if Kimberlin’s motion to amend his complaint will be accepted or (b) whether the various motions to dismiss and objections to the amended complaint have sufficed to show that (c) the amended motion is futile and (d) the entire lawsuit should be dismissed. Meanwhile, the case has been handed over to a new judge, George J. Hazel, who has this week received two letters from the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak.

The first letter asks for more time to effect service on several defendants, including Ali Akbar and Breitbart.com, despite the fact that Kimberlin was already granted an additional 60 days on April 28. Now, having failed to effect service for more than six weeks — and with just days remaining until the June 28 deadline — Kimberlin wants to move the goal posts, asking that the court ignore his failure. Instead, Kimberlin wants the court first to rule on his motion to amend and then extend the deadline 60 days past that ruling.

Some of my fellow defendants (or their lawyers) are sure to point out what’s wrong with this: If the court denies the motion to amend — as I hope and expect they will — the suit would then be ripe for dismissal, except for the fact that not all the defendants have been served, some eight months after Kimberlin first filed his complaint. That would be extended to at least 10 months if Kimberlin were granted the delay he now seeks. Those defendants who have already responded to Kimberlin’s suit (including those who have spent money to hire lawyers) can very well argue that such a delay would be unfair to them, leaving them in limbo because of Kimberlin’s failures.

Of course, if the court should grant Kimberlin’s motion to amend, this would re-start the clock for everybody — but I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen, because the arguments made in opposition to the amendment were very strong. Kimberlin’s original suit is so badly flawed, as a matter of law, that it’s a slam-dunk for dismissal, and his proposed amended complaint did not substantially improve the suit, while adding numerous new errors in the process. When these problems were pointed out by the defendants in their opposition motions, Kimberlin’s response was just a lot of arm-waving and a repetition of his claims that the defendants are Very Bad People Who Do Very Bad Things.

Kimberlin’s second letter to Judge Hazel is simply absurd: He invokes the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling rejecting the defendant’s appeal in the case of United States v. Osinger. The irrelevance of this to Kimberlin’s case is obvious to anyone.

Here is a brief summary of Osinger’s crime:

Osinger was prosecuted for cyberstalking under 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. Among the things he did was create a phony Facebook page for his ex-girlfriend and post grossly inappropriate photos. He sent emails to her boss, co-workers and family members about it. And not to be subtle, he sent her about 40 texts over two days to let her know how he was going to destroy her life.

This was a crime, not a civil tort. Neither I nor any of the 20 other defendants in Kimberlin’s suit have violated 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. None of us have been arrested or indicted for violating 18 U.S.C. § 2261A or any other federal criminal statute, and no one is investigating us for such a crime. In writing to Judge Hazel, however, Kimberlin says he alleges that the defendants in his suit have “engaged in . . . criminal conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment.”

And the point is . . . what?

Anybody can allege anything, but the federal government has not appointed Brett Kimberlin to prosecute criminals, and his claims that he has been a victim of felonies by the defendants reminds me of nothing so much as it does an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show in which Gomer Pyle runs around shouting “citizens arrest.”

The law doesn’t work that way. If Brett Kimberlin has been the victim of felonies perpetrated by the defendants — who include Erick Erickson, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, among others — where are the indictments? Why isn’t the FBI slapping the cuffs on these alleged Very Bad People Who Do Very Bad Things?

Answer: Because Brett Kimberlin is full of crap.

Is it a federal crime to call somebody “full of crap”? I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know. Maybe you should hit my tip jar, just in case.





 

Kimberlin Hearing Today

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‘Speedway Bomber’ Brett Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in 1981

“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another
one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand,
it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”

ROCKVILLE, Maryland
More than nine months after convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin filed his vexation Maryland lawsuit, Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., we’re still wading through the preliminary motions. I’m here today for another hearing in these tedious proceedings. John Hoge has mentioned the hearing. We will update you if anything newsworthy happens.

 




 

Lies, Errors, and Tendentious Mischaracterizations of Facts

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“Vile Lie-Peddler @Karoli Kuns,” as I have sometimes called her, is one of the members of Team Kimberlin whose harassment of the perjuring bomber’s Enemies List is intermittent, rather than habitual and constant. It has been months since I paid any attention at all to her and, honestly, the whole Kimberlin drama has begun to bore me. The $1 million Maryland lawsuit Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., continues shuffling along in zombie fashion, while the $2 million federal lawsuit (Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al., as John Hoge calls it) seems to be approaching the point at which, as the lawyers say, it will be “ripe” for dismissal.

The fundamental dishonesty of Kimberlin’s litigation, however, is a self-evident fact with which my readers are so abundantly familiar by now that I don’t see much point in updating regularly — “Oh, look, another lie from the Pro Se Pipsqueak!” — and I’ve resolved personally to pay as little attention to it as a defendant must necessarily pay.

Maybe I should have included a “Trigger Alert” for those who have traumatic reactions to Bill Schamfeldt’s face. With a truly amazing persistence, Schmalfeldt has continued his obsessive fixation on John Hoge, who many months ago seems to have decided that stoic indifference was an insufficient response to Schmalfeldt’s sadistic harassment. Hoge has been quite active in seeking to hold Schmalfeldt legally accountable. Predictably, Schmalfeldt has turned this around in his demented mind, absurdly claiming that Hoge is harassing him, whereas the truth of the matter is, of course, the exact opposite of what Schmalfeldt says. It is now 10 months since a Carroll County judge granted Hoge’s peace order against Schmalfeldt. All that is required of Schmalfeldt is to cease his harassment of Hoge, but Schmalfeldt is like that old Led Zeppelin tune, “I Can’t Quit You Baby”: He’s hooked. He’s addicted. He’s got a monkey on his back. He’s got a harassment jones.

“He’s banned on Daily Kos. He’s banned at the Examiner. He gets angry about being ignored, and erupts in frothing rage. So then people pay Bill the only kind of attention he deserves — pointing out that he’s a brain-damaged troll — at which point he claims victimhood. Then the cycle begins again, and Bill makes new threats . . .”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Oct. 6, 2013

So the endless provocations continue — “How Many More Times,” another early Zeppelin classic — and when Hoge responds to Schmalfeldt’s provocations, this gives Schmalfeldt a new occasion to claim helpless victimhood. Bill’s existence has become a Mobius Loop of self-inflicted humiliation.

Schmalfeldt has a penchant for “monkey see, monkey do” mimicry, and anyone who has ever been in conflict with Bill quickly learns to recognize how he habitually imitates whatever rhetorical method his antagonist employs against him. Call attention to Schmalfeldt’s characteristic remorseless sadism, then start the clock to count the moments until he accuses you of sadism. And as often as we have remarked the obsessive nature of Schmalfeldt’s harassment of Hoge — this is an indisputable truth — yet we have now become accustomed to Bill claiming that he is the victim of harassment and that Hoge is obsessed with him. There’s an alternative universe inside Schmalfeldt’s mind, you see, where everything is the mirror reverse of reality, and his delusions would only be of interest as a clinical study in dementia, were it not for the fact that Schmalfeldt continues publicizing his perverse fantasies on the Internet.

Enter, now, Karoli Kuns . . .

What inspired the Vile Lie-Peddler to take an interest in Bill Schmalfeldt’s imaginary victimhood? I have no idea, but she evidently decided to recycle Schmalfeldt’s intentionally dishonest (or, perhaps, delusionally paranoid) version of events at Crooks & Liars:

How Maryland’s Domestic Violence
Laws Became A Right Wing Weapon
Of Personal Destruction

You can click the headline and read it — it’s nearly 3,000 words — but permit me to excerpt just a few choice selections:

Right-wingers have discovered that it is a relatively simple trick to turn a legal process intended to protect those at risk of domestic abuse into a weapon of personal destruction. All that’s needed is a friendly judge, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, a deep mean streak, and time. On one level, this is the story of one man’s experience with vicious right-wing online operatives. On another, it’s representative of the overall right-wing strategy of using scorched-earth tactics to discredit and destroy their opponents. . . .

(In her opening paragraph, Karoli uses “right-wing” three times, which functions to prejudice progressive readers who are willing to believe any evil thing anyone says about right-wingers.)

In 2012, a group of right-wing bloggers decided to go after Brett Kimberlin — a guy with a past ripe for exploitation. . . .

(Which is not what happened, actually. There was no “group” decision, despite the conspiracy theory Kimberlin offers in his federal lawsuit. What happened was that Aaron Walker published a lengthy account of his legal battles with Kimberlin, mentioning also the role of Kimberlin’s “associate” Neal Rauhauser. My previous familiarity with Rauhauser, a disgraced Democrat political operative, caused me to take an interest in the story. Four days after I began writing about this, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, ranting feverishly and accusing me of “harassing” him. This resulted in a security alert at my wife’s place of employment, which led me to depart to the “Undisclosed Location” so that I could continue covering the story without endangering my family or my wife’s employer. This action drew widespread attention, and Lee Stranahan decided to declare the next Friday — May 25, 2012 — “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” a declaration that resulted in the story gaining national attention. We now return to Karoli’s version of events . . .)

Schmalfeldt wrote stories in Kimberlin’s defense which took dead aim at the Breitbart cabal. In the process, Schmalfeldt became an easy proxy for their real target. Disabled and housebound, Schmalfeldt’s ability to write and speak was his outlet for activism, which he used liberally.
Schmalfeldt wasn’t gentle. In some cases, he stepped outside the boundaries of normal journalistic standards and climbed down in his opponents’ gutter. At other times, he hit them just a little too close to home for their comfort, exposing lies, funding sources and possible motives for their anti-Kimberlin campaign. . . .

OK, I’ll stop with the back-and-forth now. Anyone familiar with the trajectory of Schmalfeldt’s antics clearly recognizes that Karoli Kuns’ telling of the tale is a cloud cuckooland fantasy.

After July 5, 2012 — when a Maryland court lifted a previously imposed gag order on Aaron Walker — the Kimberlin story faded away and would have ceased to be a story at all, were it not for the fact that a discernible Enemies List (including Walker, Patterico, Ali Akbar, Lee Stranahan, Brandon Darby and others) continued to be targeted for a steady stream of harassing tactics. Mostly, this took the form of Twitter stalking, and most of it I suspected was incited or orchestrated by Neal Rauhauser. The question of Rauhauser’s motives, especially whether he was being paid by Kimberlin to mastermind this troll operation, has been much disputed. Nevertheless, Neal’s distinctive fingerprints were visible often enough (mainly because Rauhauser is such an inveterate braggart) that I inferred that the visible incidents were evidence of a vast iceberg of behind-the-scenes activity by Neal.

Such was the case when Barrett Brown began harassing me right before I left to cover the 2012 Democratic convention — provably the result of Rauhauser’s incitement — and, after Brown melted down and was arrested by the FBI, I noticed a steady escalation of harassment directed at me by Bill Schmalfeldt.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Well, I’ve never claimed that this was the case. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that after Rauhauser tried (and spectacularly failed) to use Barrett Brown as a weapon against me in September 2012, Bill Schmalfeldt became increasingly obsessed with me in October 2012. For a couple of weeks, I simply ignored Schmalfeldt’s trademark tactics — making lurid accusations and demanding that I respond — because I was busy covering the presidential campaign. But that last weekend before Election Day in Ohio, when Bill was sending me dozens of hostile messages daily, I finally took notice: “Monsters on the Internet: Sociopathic Sadism and Bill Schmalfeldt’s Madness.”

Implicit message: “Don’t mistake my silence for cowardice and don’t imagine that you are deceiving anyone about your motives.”

If Bill wanted to play games with me, he wasn’t going to be able to dictate the rules of the game and, predictably, my refusal to cooperate with his agenda enraged him to the point that, over Thanksgiving weekend 2012, Schmalfeldt sent me more than 200 hostile Twitter messages in the span of 48 hours. His motives were no secret.

Everybody saw what Bill Schmalfeldt was doing, and everybody knew why he was doing it, yet he continued escalating the harassment until, in February 2013, Lee Stranahan got fed up with it. Stranahan flew from Texas to Baltimore to swear out a peace order complaint against Schmalfeldt. John Hoge gave Stranahan a ride from the airport to the courthouse for the purpose, which is how “Destroy John Hoge” became Schmalfeldt’s Prime Directive. Hoge then decided to seek his own peace order against Schmalfeldt, which was granted in June 2013. This court order — in effect, a judicial declaration that Schmalfeldt is guilty of harassment — has been upheld on appeal, and in December 2013 the order was extended another six months.

So now, evidently hoping to generate sympathy for Schmalfeldt, Karoli Kuns has volunteered her, uh, creative abilities on his behalf. John Hoge refutes a few of her falsehoods here, and I noticed a commenter on the Crooks & Liars post employ the phrase “Hoge and McCain and ilk.” Being lumped into an “ilk” pissed me off, so I replied in a comment that I suspect C&L will delete, and which I therefore repeat here:

It is perhaps of no interest to you, but nonetheless relevant, that during this long ordeal that began (for me) nearly two years ago, I have never sued anyone, never sought a peace order against anyone, and never filed criminal charges against anyone.
The facts of this can be ascertained by anyone who cares to investigate. Likewise, any curious person can easily learn that the person who initiated this entire chain of extraordinary events — lawsuits, peace orders, criminal charges, et cetera — was Brett Kimberlin.
People can believe what they want to believe, but this does not change the facts which are, as John Adams said, stubborn things.

Their attempt to re-write history so as to transfer agency — to blame the consequences of their own actions on the innocent people they have wronged — is destined to fail. Nothing enrages the dishonest and evil so much as when honest people refuse to be intimidated. And they shriek as if they had suffered a fatal injury every time readers hit my tip jar.

Fuck you, Bill Schmalfeldt. And fuck you, Karoli Kuns.