Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

The first “SWATting” generally mentioned in connection with Brett Kimberlin involved a man who had never heard of Kimberlin at the time. Mike Stack of New Jersey was targeted in June 2011 because of his connection to exposing the “WeinerGate” scandal:

Neal Rauhauser’s involvement with Brett Kimberlin apparently began in 2011. In February [2012], Rauhauser published a bizarre eight-page document (“Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”) expressing the belief that he and Kimberlin were targets of a conspiracy involving Andrew Breitbart and many others, including Mike Stack, who played a key role in exposing Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online sexcapades.
Rauhauser is a fanatical “Weiner Truther,” believing in a conspiracy theory version of the WeinerGate scandal in which the congressman was the victim of a “set up” hoax perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart and/or shadowy Republican operatives. This left-wing tinfoil-hat stuff doesn’t really interest me, but it explains Rauhauser’s apparent obsession with Mike Stack . . .
What do “SWATting” victims Patterico and Mike Stack have in common, other than the fact that, as Patterico himself notes, Rauhauser hates their guts?

You can read the whole thing to refresh your memory. Because the federal RICO lawsuit (“Kimberlin v. the Universe, al.“) makes much of the claim that bloggers have accused — or “imputed” — Kimberlin of SWATting, it’s important to point out that my most in-depth article about this whole complex situation makes clear that Neal Rauhauser was a far more likely suspect. And, of course, it was Rauhauser’s status as Brett Kimberlin’s self-described “associate” that drew my attention to Kimberlin in the first place.

What about Kevin Zeese? In May 2012, on the letterhead of Kimberlin’s 501(c)4 group Velvet Revolution US, Zeese wrote a letter threatening legal action against Ali Akbar. In his lawsuit, Kimberlin doesn’t even mention his role with Velvet Revolution, just as he does not mention his associates Rauhauser and Zeese. This is interesting, because Rauhauser and Zeese were connected in a February 2012 episode in which Zeese and his partner Margaret Flowers wrongly accused Mike Stack of “infiltrating” Occupy protests:

A few days later we uncovered the second infiltrator, Michael Stack, when he was urging people on Freedom Plaza [in Washington, D.C.] to resist police with force. We later learned he was from the Leadership Institute which trains youth in right wing ideology and tactics. We were told he had also been at Occupy Wall Street provoking violence.

This was false. Mike Stack never set foot at either the “Occupy DC” or “Occupy Wall Street” protests, and Mike Stack never had anything to do with the Leadership Institute. Zeese and Flowers repeated this smear even after Mike Stack had already debunked it, and the acknowledged source of this smear was Neal Rauhauser.

Keep in mind: This happened in February 2012.

Three months before I had ever written a word about Brett Kimberlin, SWATting target Mike Stack was being smeared by Kimberlin’s associates Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese. The only reason Stack had been targeted by Rauhauser was the same reason Rauhauser targeted Patrick Frey — i.e., both played a role in exposing the 2011 “WeinerGate” scandal. And pay close attention to what Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”) did at Daily Kos:

By July 27, 2011, Rauhauser declared that Patterico “looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate.”
Patterico had been one of Kimberlin’s prime targets since October 2010, and by late July 2011, Rauhauser was using his DailyKos diary to attack Patterico every other day. If you’ll read Rauhauser’s July 4 post, you’ll find that this isn’t exactly a coincidence:

Who has been in sight, frantically flogging explanations that don’t add up, is Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Patrick Frey . . .
And when someone forwarded me the complaint regarding Frey running a cyberstalking campaign in conjunction with South Easton, Massachusetts resident Seth L. Allen, well, maybe this whole situation is about to become much clearer. . . .

Three days later, on July 7, Rauhauser announces on DKos his plan to move from Illinois to Washington, D.C., for a job that would “provide for me more in a week than I make for a whole month at my part time day job here in Illinois.” And in October 2011, Rauhauser described himself as doing “protective service work” for a client who is “the head of a Washington D.C. NGO.”
This description fits Kimberlin, whose 501(c)3 Justice Through Music Project has collected about $1.8 million in contributions since its founding in 2005. In December 20, 2011, Seth Allen himself made that connection in a post titled, “Sadistic Cybersmearing and the Roots of Blogging Fascism.”

If you’ll follow that Seth Allen link, you’ll notice Rauhauser invoking “an annoyed FBI agent who will confirm the back story” of what Rauhauser called “a credible death threat” by Allen against Rauhauser’s self-described “client,” Brett Kimberlin. And, as Allen said, Kimberlin in December 2011 was “attempting to have [Allen] imprisoned for contempt of court.”

So here you have Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese, both known associates of Kimberlin, involved in the smearing of Mike Stack, while Rauhauser was separately involved in the harassment of Seth Allen and Patrick Frey. Yet Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit says nothing about Rauhauser or Zeese, nor does Kimberlin’s lawsuit mention Velvet Revolution US, the organization that brought him to the attention of the bloggers he’s suing in federal court for allegedly “creating false narratives” about Kimberlin. But by omitting the involvement of Rauhauser, Zeese and Velvet Revolution from his version of events, it is Kimberlin who is creating a “false narrative.”

Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

 

 

RECENTLY:

• March 1: Flashback: Kevin Zeese’s May 2012 Lawsuit Threat Against Ali Akbar
• March 1: Why Would Brett Kimberlin Threaten to Sue the American Spectator?
• Feb. 28: Federal Judge Issues Devastating Opinion in Brett Kimberlin Copyright Case
• Feb. 28: Kimberlin Attacks @AceOfSpadesHQ’s Lawyer, Cites ‘Breitbart Unmasked’
• Feb. 22: Bad to Worse for Brett Kimberlin
• Feb. 21: Brett Kimberlin’s ‘Evidence’

 

One curious fact about Brett Kimberlin’s state and federal lawsuits is that in neither complaint does Kimberlin so much as mention Velvet Revolution US, the 501(c)4 group he formed with Brad Friedman. Nevertheless, it was the activities of Velvet Revolution US — specifically its July 2010 demand for prosecution of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles — that first made Kimberlin an object of interest to conservative bloggers. (See Mandy Nagy’s 3,600-word October 2010 article for background.) On May 31, 2012, Velvet Underground lawyer Kevin Zeese sent this letter:

Velvet Revolution May 2012 Lawsuit Threat vs. Akbar

There are a couple things worth noticing here:

1. The letter was written two days after the May 29 Maryland court hearing at which Kimberlin had Aaron Walker arrested on criminal charges, an event that catapulted this story into the stratosphere. See Ken White at Popehat, “Forgetting Brandenburg And The Rule of Law: Brett Kimberlin Censorship-Through-Lawfare Update.”
2. The letter was sent not only to Ali Akbar, but also to Republican donor Foster Friess, who had helped sponsor Blog Bash at CPAC 2012. One might interpret that inclusion as an effort to intimidate a contributor to the National Bloggers Club.

No lawsuit was ever filed by Velvet Revolution US. It’s been more than 21 months since Zeese sent that letter, so one may speculate why Velvet Revolution lost interest in pursuing legal action, just as one may speculate about Kimberlin’s curious omission of Velvet Revolution from his lawsuits both in Maryland (Kimberlin v. Walker, et al.) and in federal court, where John Hoge has dubbed the RICO conspiracy case Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

Honestly, I’d forgotten about a lot of this stuff — tempus fugits — but as I mentioned earlier, Brett Kimberlin has threatened to sue the American Spectator, so I went back and re-read some of what I’d written there, including “Online Armageddon,” June 8, 2012. That article mentions a lot of stuff I’d forgotten, such as this:

Senator Asks DOJ to Investigate
SWAT-ting Attacks on Conservative Bloggers

That was the headline on an article by Arlene Saenz of ABC News published June 6, 2012. For some reason, Kimberlin hasn’t sued Arlene Saenz, ABC News, or Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who called for the investigation. A rather selective litigation, it would seem.

 

 

Aaron Walker discusses this at his blog, but the order itself is delightful reading in its own right, particularly when the judge recites the numerous federal cases Brett Kimberlin has filed previously:

Memo Opinion

 

What’s the Latin phrase for “pimp slap”?

 

Brett Kimberlin got bad news with this past week’s decision by Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy (and also the Maryland chapter of the ACLU) to defend Ace of Spades in the federal lawsuit that John Hoge calls Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

Kimberlin got worse news, perhaps, on Friday when attorney Mark Bailen filed his motion to dismiss on behalf of the defendants Erick Erickson, Red State, James O’Keefe and Simon & Shuster. Bailen does an excellent job of documenting key aspects of the case, notably (a) Kimberlin’s status as a public figure with a notorious reputation, and (b) the lack of specificity in Kimberlin’s allegations.

The vague nature of Kimberlin’s allegations with regard to his claims of defamation is an aspect of the case that you probably have to be a First Amendment fetishist to understand. Winning a libel suit in this country is very difficult, because the First Amendment has been interpreted by courts to grant very wide latitude when it comes to reporting and commenting about public figures. This is the bottom-line explanation for why Brett Kimberlin’s lawsuits, both the federal RICO suit and the Maryland lawsuit Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., were filed pro se — any competent attorney would have advised him he doesn’t have a case.

Having once consulted an attorney myself in 2007 regarding one particular lying son of a bitch, I remember my buddy Bert the Samoan Lawyer explaining to me that I was a public figure under the Sullivan precedent, and this would make it practically impossible for me to win a libel judgment. This is just the way the law is — lying sons of bitches are usually in the clear, if the target of their lies is a public figure per the Sullivan precedent. (Sarah Palin could tell you all about it.)

If the law protects lying sons of bitches, certainly it must protect people who tell the truth about lying sons of bitches.

“The Wizard of Odd,” as Time magazine called Brett Kimberlin, is not only a liar, but also a public figure, and so therefore any competent attorney looking at this situation would have declined to take his case. In fact, Paul Alan Levy indicates Kimberlin tried to get him to help with the RICO suit and Levy told Kimberlin “that his campaign to suppress criticism though litigation had rather gone overboard” — which was our basic point to begin with, to say nothing of the other forms of harassment Kimberlin’s critics have endured.

We cannot forget the threat Kimberlin sent to Patterico in October 2010: “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.” That could be construed to indicate vexatious intent, i.e., that Kimberlin sues people as a means of harassment and intimidation and, in Mark Bailen’s Friday filing in the RICO case, he included a crucial footnote.

“Kimberlin’s claims … are sufficiently meritless to suggest bad-faith or vexatious conduct, justifying an award of attorneys’ fees as a sanction,” Bailen argues in a footnote on page 31, citing the 2004 award of attorneys’ fees to the defendants in the Byrd v. Hopson case, in accordance with “dismissal of plaintiff’s ‘baseless’ claims, which alleged a ‘wide-ranging conspiracy against her’ that was guilty of civil rights violations, RICO violations, and state law claims, some of which were barred by the statute of limitations.”

Not being familiar with Byrd v. Hopson, I am not in a position to judge the resemblance between the issues in that case and the “meritless” Kimberlin RICO claim, but considering how many defendants there are in this case — some of whom have yet to file their motions to dismiss — what would the total cost of the defendants’ attorneys’ fees be? Many tens of thousands of dollars, for sure, and if the judge were to award  attorneys’ fees to the defendants . . . Well, it would be a lesson that the students of Acme Law School would not be likely to forget any time soon.

 

BOMBER SUES BLOGGERS

 

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

Brett Kimberlin’s Maryland lawsuit Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., is a nuisance and a distraction, and it angers me that I should be required to prove a fact that is abundantly self-evident to anyone who cares to investigate: Brett Kimberlin is a liar.

So if Brett Kimberlin files a lawsuit claiming I have defamed him, harassed him, stalked him, etc. — “Mopery With Intent to Lurk” — common sense suggests that the judge would take one look at his lawsuit and say, “Oh, this is Brett Kimberlin, the guy convicted of perjury in 1973, ‘a man whose idea of the truth is utterly malleable,’ ‘the convicted bomber, habitual liar and all-around sociopath‘ — that Brett Kimberlin? Yeah, he’s full of it. Case dismissed.”

Unfortunately, the legal system doesn’t operate on the basis of common sense,  which is why we need lawyers to prove the obvious, that I am innocent and Brett Kimberlin is a liar:

Plaintiff’s motion includes 38 pages of attachments in supposed support of his request. Yet those attachments do nothing to support Plaintiff’s request for so drastic an action as removing and suppressing the reportings and opinions of Mr. McCain. In particular, the motion and accompanying exhibits do not include even one example of a defamatory posting by Mr. McCain …
Plaintiff’s Exhibit D is supposed to provide examples of how Mr. McCain (and the other defendants) “dramatically title their posts and fill them with highly charged accusations such as rape, pedophilia, sex slave, domestic abuse … See, e.g., Exhibit D.”
As part of Plaintiff’s Exhibit D, Plaintiff includes a single blog posting by Mr. McCain. The “dramatic” title of Mr. McCain’s blog post is “Motions, Motions, Motions — Judge Grants Brett Kimberlin a Delay.” Mr. McCain is therein reporting on a ruling (in Plaintiff’s favor) in a federal lawsuit initiated by Plaintiff against Mr. McCain and a host of others. That same posting goes on to report and opine on other aspects of that case. Notably, the following words and phrases are never once used: “rape,” “pedophilia,” “sex slave” and “domestic abuse.”

And the “dramatic” title of that document is “Defendant McCain’s Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction.”

Kimberlin v. Walker – McCain – Opposition to Preliminary Injunction by Robert Stacy McCain

This goes to show the fundamental problem we’ve been dealing with: Kimberlin merely alleges this, that and the other, but the way civil court procedure works is, he doesn’t actually have to prove that I wrote anything defamatory — and of course, he can’t, because I didn’t — in order to drag me through all this preliminary bullshit. Hell, his complaint didn’t include a single example of anything I wrote that could even plausibly be construed as defamatory, yet still the judge let the case go forward because (and I quote from memory, but I’m pretty sure these are her exact words), “there’s enough alleged here.”

It’s like the Supreme Court abolished common sense or something.

 

BOMBER SUES BLOGGERS