The Other McCain

Bill Schmalfeldt ranting, 2011. (Image via Thomas Anderson at Vimeo)

Am I now or have I ever been engaged in an interstate racketeering conspiracy? No, and the allegations by Brett Kimberlin in his federal lawsuit (which John Hoge dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.) are utterly absurd. Yet the manifest absurdity of Kimberlin’s conspiracy theory is no deterrent to the bizarre revenge fantasies of deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt. And his enthusiasm for the RICO suit highlights Schmalfeldt’s role in “Team Kimberlin.”

Occasionally I am reminded of the multiple ironies of my circumstance as a civil defendant. Perjuring bomber Brett Kimberlin claims in his Maryland lawsuit, Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., that the five defendants have conspired to defame him, and that one of those defamations is to use the phrase “Team Kimberlin” to describe the various persons and online entities that have harassed Kimberlin’s Enemies List. If you are unfamiliar with the background, or have forgotten how this story developed, let me remind you:

1. The initial cause of my interest in the Kimberlin case was the involvement of disgraced Democrat consultant Neal Rauhauser;
   and
2. Rauhauser’s role in the story connected the Kimberlin saga directly  to the “WeinerGate” scandal of 2011.

The significance of this is that Rauhauser was evidently the first member of “Team Kimberlin,” and that it was the attempt at “brass knuckles reputation management” — the online harassment of Patrick Frey, Mandy Nagy, Andrew Breitbart, Aaron Walker and others, in which Rauhauser’s involvement was self-evident or strongly suspected — which made Brett Kimberlin an object of widespread attention in 2012. So while Kimberlin now claims in court that he has be wrongfully “harassed,” this is all ultimately a result of Kimberlin’s association with Neal Rauhauser, and yet anyone who mentions the harassment by “Team Kimberlin” (which Rauhauser seems to have coordinated) is accused of defamation.

Whether Bill Schmalfeldt was original a volunteer or a recruit in “Team Kimberlin” is irrelevant to the fact that he is now the most prominent advocate of Kimberlin’s cause. And the closeness of the connection between Kimberlin and Schmalfeldt is that less than 72 hours passed between the time I filed my motion to dismiss in the RICO case and the time Bill Schmalfeldt obtained a copy of that response and began ranting about it online this morning.

Neal Rauhauser was yammering about a RICO lawsuit — aimed at Andrew Breitbart and Patterico, among others — for months before I ever became aware of Brett Kimberlin, and as soon as Kimberlin’s lawsuit was filed in October, Rauhauser bragged online that he has been involved in “research” for that filing. Every lawyer who looked at Kimberlin’s complaint immediately spotted fatal errors, and so I chose to expend minimal effort in answering it. Why should I sweat it, when top-dollar lawyers for my fellow defendants had so clearly pointed out the legal and factual flaws? So my own motion to dismiss was pretty simple:

Motions to dismiss have been filed by other Defendants in the instant lawsuit . . . Defendant McCain incorporates all those motions herein by reference and adopts the reasoning contained therein in support of this motion.

Piece of cake. Let Bill Schmalfeldt rant himself into a frothing fury.