The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

World’s Youngest Blogger Game Face

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

I don’t know if I’m really keen on soccer as a kid sport. Football turned me off in 7th grade when I realized the other kids were more interested in causing lots of injuries than actually, you know, playing the game.
For team sports with testosterone, it’s probably lacrosse in summer and hockey in winter. Or whatever the WYB wants to do. I’m just the facilitator.

Fear. You can start feeling it early.

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Team Kimberlin’s Busted Hustle Now Beginning to Unravel Rapidly
UPDATE: Perhaps Not a Coincidence

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 48 Comments

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

“Who wants to get involved? Easier, and surely safer, just to duck one’s head and hide, and hope the danger visits someone else.”
— Ace of Spades, “Kitty Genovese and the Conservative Media,” May 21

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Until a month ago, Brett Kimberlin and his associates had recorded what must have seemed, from their perspective, to be an uninterrupted series of victories in their ruthless war against their chosen targets. They had sued Seth Allen, threatened Patrick “Patterico” Frey, gotten Aaron Walker and his wife fired from their jobs, and harassed or menaced in various ways a number of other people, including Mandy Nagy, James O’Keefe and the late Andrew Breitbart.

What is amazing is how this intimidation campaign had gone on for months, dating back at least to October 2010 and involving multiple targets, without gaining wider attention.

Today — 30 days since Walker published his 28,000-word account of how he says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him on a bogus assault charge — the tables have clearly turned. More and more people are learning the shocking truth about Brett Kimberlin, his criminal past, the suspicious activities of Kimberlin’s 501(c) non-profits, the bizarre behavior of Kimberlin’s associates and the still-mysterious “SWATtings” of Mike Stack, Patterico and Erick Erickson. Members of Congress have called for an investigation and major organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice have become involved.

Friday night, we got yet another Memeorandum thread, this one on David Hogberg’s report at Investors Business Daily that criminal charges against Aaron Walker have been dismissed, although the ridiculous “peace order” against Walker apparently remains in effect. Michelle Malkin calls it a “free speech win,” but warns that there is still “a long fight ahead on many fronts.”

Indeed, while we are clearly winning, we have not yet won, and there can be no letting up in this fight so long as “Team Kimberlin” (to use Ken at Popehat‘s excellent phrase) continues to menace innocent Americans whose only “crime” is telling the truth. Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints is fond of quoting General Patton’s famous lecture on tactics:

“Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that ‘we are holding our position.’ We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!”

Every day, we grab hold of some piece of the Kimberlin saga — some previously unreported fact or overlooked detail, some development on the legal or political front — and we push it as hard as we can, making the story new and fresh every day. One month into this epic battle of informational warfare, there is now a nationwide readership of thousands following this story with fascinated interest, and I am keenly aware of the need to keep moving the ball down the field, like a football team driving toward a touchdown.

Thursday at Brooks Baynes’s site The Trenches, Patrick Read published an e-mail from Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser to Michael Stack that is another eye-opener about Rauhauser’s secretive disinformation operations:

Let this email serve as an example of how Neal Rauhauser . . . and his associates “infiltrate the right-wing,” per his now-deleted-from-the-internet article (here).He uses intimidation, references to the FBI & threatens others with “lawfare” (frivolous lawsuits) to gain alliance & information.

Please read the whole thing. As Patrick Read remarks, Rauhauser’s actions appear very much like witness tampering.

There is much, much more of this stuff that has yet to be revealed and explained. Like Patton said, “We are advancing constantly.”

UPDATE: Patterico has video of Michelle Malkin speaking at Right Online about the bloggers who have been threatened and harassed by Brett Kimberlin, and also video of a certain “hockey mom” from Wasilla saying “the SWATtings must stop.”

Unfortunately, although I was invited to Right Online, I wasn’t able to attend this year’s conference — I had to travel to the D.C. area Friday for a meeting with a source — but Ali Akbar is in Las Vegas representing the National Bloggers Club.

UPDATE II: Linked by That Mr. G Guy — thanks! — and by Doug Hagin at Daley Gator, who invokes a famous general’s words. The same general also once advised:

“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.”

UPDATE III: Want to see something that completely exposes the dishonesty of Team Kimberlin? As I explained Thursday, Neal Raushauser has been obsessed with Patterico for nearly a year, and this obsession is shared by the site I call “Not Brett Kimberlin,” which denies its association with Kimberlin, even as it relentlessly targets the people on Kimberlin’s (and Rauhauser’s) enemies list. Here is the topic-cloud from that site:

You see that Patterico and Aaron Walker are the two most common topics on the Not Brett Kimberlin site, which is ostensibly devoted to “Unmasking the Hidden Truth About Andrew Breitbart.” Yet Breitbart himself (with whom, perhaps not coincidentally, Rauhauser was also pathologically obsessed) has been dead for three months, and this anti-Breitbart site continues stumbling on in zombie fashion, ranting against Patterico, against Walker, against me — against anyone, that is, who threatens to expose the misdeeds of the Kimberlin-Rauhauser axis.

Kimberlin, Rauhauser and their associates evidently think they are so much smarter than everyone else that they can do stuff like this without their motives and purposes being obvious to us all. Their imagined mental superiority leads them into foolish blunders — as when the Not Brett Kimberlin site hilariously declared in March that Ace of Spades is actually a woman — and is fundamentally symptomatic of their profound personality disorders.

There was some political utility, from the perspective of the Left, in having a site devoted to “unmasking” (by which they mean, smearing) Andrew Breitbart, a famous figure in conservative New Media. But now that Breitbart is dead, the Not Brett Kimberlin site exposes itself as the outworkings of a deranged mind, haphazardly smearing a bunch of people most Americans never heard of, but who loom large as demonized scapegoats in Rauhauser’s paranoid worldview. A couple of useful questions:

  1. What was the very first post at Not Brett Kimberlin? It was an attack on Breitbart for his role in the Citizens United documentary Occupy Unmasked (the link is through an “anonymizer” filter, because that site is infested with spyware viruses and other creepy hacker stuff.)
  2. What was the subject of Neal Rauhauser’s September 2011 e-mail on behalf of Kimberlin’s 501(c) Velvet Revolution? He was reaching out to leaders of “Occupy Boston,” via an introduction made through Gregg Housh of the “Anonymous” hacker conspiracy

Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

UPDATE IV: The new (anti-Kimberlin, pro-freedom) Velvet Revolution blog has video of the reaction when the latest news about Aaron Walker’s case reached a certain bunker in Berlin:

Friday at Right Online, they had a special remembrance of Andrew Breitbart, and let’s not forget this warning from Andrew:

 

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

UPDATE V (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE VI (RSM): Also now a Memeorandum thread, and be sure and read the latest: “‘Scrubbed’ Writings Show Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser’s Obsessions.”

 

 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 


Category: The Kimberlin Files

FMJRA 2.0: Saturday Afternoon Baseball Edition

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 12 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A High Time on the Low Road: Smears Target Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List UPDATE: SWATting Supect ID’d?

‘Team Kimberlin’ Meltdown Continues

Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Their Transparent Empire of Lies UPDATE: ‘Anonymous’ Connection

HUGE! Neal Rauhauser’s Vicious Lies Exposed by Yet Another Leaked E-Mail

TEN MILLION HITS! and Presenting … Our Top 20 Most Commented Posts

‘Why In The Hell Is Eric Holder Still Attorney General?’

Neal Rauhauser’s Game Plan Involving Velvet Revolution and Anonymous

#BrettKimberlin Says He Was ‘SWATted’; Why Do Maryland Cops Say Otherwise?

Neal Rauhauser’s Online Slander Factory

FMJRA 2.0: Exactly What You Wanted

‘Making Love Out of Nothing At All’ #VanJonesTearJerkers

Rule 5 Sunday: Train In Vain

LIVE AT FIVESIX – 06.11.12

The Lonely Conservative Completely Wrecked My Morning

Florida Rep. Sandy Adams Leads 85 House Republicans in ‘SWATting’ Letter

LIVE AT FIVESIX – 06.12.12

Private Sector’s Doing Fine

Time to Ask: What Did Brett Kimberlin Know and When Did He Know It?

Patterico: ‘Certain Big Media Reporters Are Scared to Write About Kimberlin’

Separated At Birth? JR/WJ Edition

‘Real Reporter’ @NYT_JenPreston vs. Blogger @Prepostericity (Seth Allen)

Top linkers this week:

  1. (tied) Lonely Conservative, The Camp Of The Saints, and The Conservatory (8)
  2. (tied) Daley Gator and Daily Pundit (7)
  3. Darth Chipmunk (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Links for next week’s FMJRA are due Friday, June 22nd.

 

Category: FMJRA Award

First Principles Blog Series On Taxation

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

First Principles was taking me to task in the comments over on the Norquist post. This is the kind of back-and-forth that can be highly educational, if one can dodge the temptation toward ad hominem.
FP:

When it comes to political hot points in conservative political circles in Nevada, the Grover Norquist/Americans for Tax Reform “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” may be the most singularly significant. It has become, for some, THE litmus test for who a “real” conservative is and isn’t. But is that fair? Does the pledge make sense politically, policy-wise, or philosophically?
This blog was conceived specifically to answer questions like that, and now – with several Republican primary races pitting Pledge-signers against non-Pledge signers (both arguing over who the “true conservative” is) – is as good a time as any to explore this issue.
This is often painted as a “pragmatist vs. purist” argument – but I think that is too glib, especially for something as complicated as tax policy. And it lets both signers and non-signers off the hook when it comes to truly understanding – and explaining to their constituents! – the complex budget bills they’re considering.
I’m going to explore this on multiple fronts and in multiple posts to follow, but the bottom line is this – the Pledge is an un-serious document, poorly tailored to promote sound, conservative economic policy.

Read the whole thing, including the outline for the series.

Reacting to that outline, what seems strange is the tacit acceptance that DC has eminent domain over the individual citizen wallet. While I stood chided for calling Norquist’s tax pledge “necessary but insufficient” (I guess the contention lies in the use of “necessary”), what I hope to see from FP is some discussion of the 1913 Wilsonian debacle of Amendments 16, 17, & the Federal Reserve Act.

It’s my contention that the Federalist chain of command, (local, state, and federal government entities) was short-circuited in 1913. When DC gave itself the power to inflate the currency, senators became beholden to voters and not their sending state governments, and your very wallet became a wholly owned subsidiary of the IRS, the course was laid in for our current crisis. States balance their books somewhat regularly, mainly because “Federal dollars” can be caused to appear when desirable to paper over the worst of the  embarrassments.

And I’m not a huge Norquist apologist. The commenters on the last post featuring him pointed out some border security questions. And his Pledge might be more honored in the breech than effectual. In a postmodern world, we have an Administration trying to argue that ObamaCare is a tax when you stand here, and a penalty when you stand there. So our government rapes us and refers to it as “intense massage” where taxes are concerned. Hence my sub-loyal approach to thinking about the GOP Establishment.

The argument that Norquist’s Pledge is worse than nothing seems over-stated. Efforts have to start somewhere. You can contend that the Pledge is sub-optimal. Fine. But some credit where due is in Order. Grover has helped call attention and trigger public involvement. That’s why the Left goes after him. That’s why he offers closing speeches at CPAC. Pretending that Norquist isn’t swinging a mean bat and isn’t contributing a hefty amount to the effort to recover liberty seems a trifle peevish, in my book.

Thus, I’m interested in seeing if FP is going to accept the cancer that is federal over-reach on taxation. Admittedly, any radical operation to remove the tumor by repealing Amendments 16, 17 & the Federal Reserve isn’t going to happen. But the historical evidence is that our current course is disastrous, and that DC has handled money and power like teenage boys with whiskey and car keys. I’d personally delegate tax collection back to the states, and let them compete economically. Let DC return to its enumerated powers, handling multi-state and international affairs, and checking the power of the states over individuals. Because I’m retro like that. Sure, we’re engineering in some inefficiency. Yes, it’s much harder for the aggregate muscle of the U.S. to be brought to bear internationally. The price of freedom and tyranny avoidance is both individual involvement and a measure of inefficiency.

Category: End The Fed

What? Paul Lemmen Challenges My Title to ‘King of Butt-Hurt’ Championship?

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 39 Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
And, indeed, he’s got a right to complain about not receiving appropriate recognition:

Nota Bene to those who are using the intel I gathered and shared without so much as a hat tip or other acknowledgment of my involvement: You’re welcome. I know you probably simply forgot where you got those 5K plus words or something.

Go tell Paul I said, “Good job burning Neal Rauhauser.” But nobody — nobody — can out-butt-hurt me!

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Non-Standard Families A Sign Of Progress: Blaspheme Not Holy Progress!

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Heritage (neither a dog nor a whistle, yet likely to be accused of being a dog whistle in 3…2…) points to the intense blowback over the New Family Structures Study:

The author of a new study showing some negative outcomes for young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships is under attack because his findings conflict with what, in some corners, has become conventional wisdom.
Apparently, the idea that there is “no difference” between children of same-sex parents and their peers raised in traditional married mother-and-father households has become so entrenched among some advocates that new research presenting a contrasting picture is unwelcome—to put it mildly.
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’s New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a large, nationally representative random sample of 3,000 young adults ages 18–39. It found better outcomes for those raised in intact biological families when compared to peers in seven other family structures.
Despite the quality of the sample and the wide range of findings, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) called it a “flawed, misleading, and scientifically unsound paper that seeks to disparage lesbian and gay parents.” A writer at The American Prospect said it was “appalling and irresponsible.” An assistant editor at The New Republic called Regnerus a “retrograde researcher” and suggested that this study should “mark the beginning of the end of Mark Regnerus’s credibility with respectable news outlets.”

You figure that HRC and GLAAD should welcome bad research. Such should serve up easy meat for them in their relentless quest to prove that up is the new down.

That, instead, you get a bunch of finger pointing and rhetoric could be an indicator that the study is well founded. It’s as if HRC and GLADD folks were dysfunctional products of New Family Structures.

I’m all for creativity (as this blog may in fact bear out, for regular readers). Invariants like the building blocks of society, e.g. families, may not be the best place to get all wildly experimental.

Category: Culture, Family

A Little Campaign Ad Help For Mitt

Posted on | June 15, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

HotAir has the new Romney ad, and there isn’t really anything wrong with it, per se:

But can’t we just tart things up a bit, amidst our financial apocalypse, with some retro Zappa that is totally apropos #OccupyResoluteDesk?

Sage advice for the Obama Administration:

But you should be diggin’ it
While it’s happening. (Yes!)
But you should be diggin’ it
While it’s happening
’cause it just might be
A one-shot deal

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Barack Obama

Neal Rauhauser’s Game Plan Involving Velvet Revolution and Anonymous

Posted on | June 15, 2012 | 55 Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Neal Rauhauser is crazy and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and his boastful arrogance has been his downfall before. So it is again.

In a message posted in the comments of a blog in October 2011, Rauhauser explained that he and someone he describes as “a very big dog from the Anonymous pen” conspired to use Brett Kimberlin’s non-profit Velvet Revolution as a vehicle to exact vengeance on (a) his personal enemies, (b) the security firm HB Gary and (c) “Breitbart associates.”

The campaign of harassment and intimidatiion we have seen carried out in recent months apparently is the product of that game plan — and Rauhauser boastfully explained how he developed that plan quite publicly more than eight months ago.

Rauhauser’s Familiar Pattern

Before I share that with you, however, let me preface it by explaining that the claim to victimhood that Rauhauser presents in this 970-word treatise is false. His exposure in the 2010 “TwitterGate” affair was the result of his open incitement of his s0-called “beandogs,” the gang of online thugs who obscenely harassed Tea Party activists on Twitter. His public Tweets to the “beandogs” were screen-capped and documented by Patrick Read, Michelle Lessick and others, and Rauhauser’s role was clearly evident.

Furthermore, exactly as with his current role in the Kimberlin case, Rauhauser had described — publicly and in advance — his plans for an online war against the Tea Party, in two posts at the forum Open Left:

That was in August, not long after Rauhauser had been a speaker at the Netroots Nation conference. He was a consultant with the firm Progressive PST, which included several Democratic politicians (including Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva) among its clients.

Neal’s own description of his specialty? “Solving problems in the social media work space for political campaigns and causes.” But once he was busted in TwitterGate and someone called it to my attention, I did a post on Oct. 7, 2010 (“BUSTED! Video Documents Role of Democrat Consultant Neal Rauhauser in Smear Campaign Against Tea Party“) that was linked by Lonely Conservative, House of Eratosthenes, Liberty Pundits, Right Klik, Verum Serum, I Own the World, Memeorandum and The Blaze, to name a few. On Oct. 9, 2010, I did a follow-up post noting Rauhauser’s reaction to the exposure:

Rauhauser deleted [his “WingNutWatch” Twitter] account and protected [his personal Twitter account], the kind of gesture a detective might say was indicative of “consciousness of guilt.”
The obvious question: If Rauhauser has nothing to hide, why is he hiding? Let me suggest an obvious answer: Rauhauser is becoming an embarrassment to his Democratic clients, especially Arizona 7th District Rep. Raul Grijalva.
Rauhauser had boasted of his relationship with Grijalva — who sent the consultant a “thank you” note — and like so many other previously “safe” Democratic incumbents this year, Grijalva is in the toughest re-election battle of his career.

In late September 2010 — before I even noticed TwitterGate, but after Read, Lessick and others had begun exposing the “beandogs” operation — Rauhauser clearly realized his scheme was busted. Caught attempting to victimize others, Rauhauser declared himself the real victim in a Daily Kos post entitled, “Tea Party Stalks Me & My Kids.”

This tendency toward self-pity, blaming others for problems that he himself caused, appears to be a deeply engrained personality trait with Rauhauser. Incapable of accepting responsibility for his own failures, Rauhauser psychologically projects responsibility onto scapegoats, whom he demonizes and accuses of malicious motives and actions, as a means of justifying his attacks on them, attacks that he encourages others to join.

The Narcissist as Self-Imagined Hero

Soliciting assistance in his plots — recruiting a gang of followers — functions psychologically as a means for Rauhauser to validate his grandiose narcissistic conception of himself as a heroic leader.

Rauhauser is manipulative, and his boastfulness is part of his manipulations: He brags about his contacts with law enforcement, for instance, in an attempt either to intimidate his enemies or else to impress potential allies, conning them into believing he has “connections” who can help them accomplish his elaborate plans to inflict vengeance on their common enemies.

Keep all this in mind, then, as you carefully read the October 2011 comment Rauhauser posted at the Qritiq blog:

Neal Rauhauser (@NealRauhauser) Says:
October 5, 2011 at 3:08 pm
And here is the likely first cause behind all of this.
James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles clearly violated Maryland wire tap laws. You can’t record someone without their permission here — it’s just that simple.
The Baltimore city prosecutor begs off — too busy with violent crime, so the IndictBreitbart effort is launched.

http://indictbreitbart.org/index.php?q=node/237

This frightens and infuriates Breitbart, so his toadies come hopping along, they find poor Seth, and he’s just the right tool to get at the guys behind IndictBreitbart.org. The smear goes on for two long years, screwing up their fundraising.
Then HBGary CEO Aaron Barr mouths off about having information on Anonymous in the Financial Times. Sabu notices, and soon Mr. Barr is out of a job and his company’s email is spattered all over the net. I pick through the debris field, writing a report that is seen by House and Senate staff, and during that process I make contact with Velvet Revolution.
Now I had a problem last fall, some crazy guys making up this huge conspiracy theory about me (Google:Twittergate) and it did to me what Seth did to others — you can’t Google my name without seeing a big wad of troll droppings for results.
Greg W. Howard and Patrick Swift Read were always the public face of this attack on me, but hovering in the background was ZAPEM. I never could identify her, beyond knowing that she was female, and that she was probably in New Jersey.
But people just couldn’t shut up about Weinergate, and things started to fall out.
Howard and Read have offended a number of their supporters badly. I have a big dossier now on things they’ve done thanks to their poor relationships with others, stuff I’ve not released, stuff that doesn’t quite rise to the level of needing law enforcement attention, but I bet there will be civil suits sooner or later.
Patrick Read betrayed ZAPEM’s first name, Michele, in a ranting email to me a couple of months ago. We suspected that [redacted] was her last name from a slip she made in an obscure social media profile elsewhere.
Mandy Nagy, Liberty_Chick on Twitter, made another slip during hurricane Irene. She was having trouble traveling — a downed tree or some such, and she reached out to ZAPEM and Mike Stack, owner of the goatsred account of Weinergate fame.
I don’t have the specific tweet handy, but it basically indicated that they were near enough to rescue her and that she knew them well enough to trust them for this. Nagy, O’Keefe, Stack, and ZAPEM are all close enough to meet somewhere on short notice — if they feel the need for a long walk in an open area after reading this, Washington Valley Park is roughly the geographic center for their locations.
The name slips and the geographic slip, coupled with some other sleuthing I wasn’t directly involved in, yielded this Facebook profile. Others are quite excited, I am not yet 100% convinced that Michele [redacted] is both ZAPEM and sister or sister in law of Mandy Nagy.
I have to stress that this is NOT CONFIRMED. And all we need is another Jennifer George, dragged through the muck for something she didn’t do.
[link redacted – speculative]
Meanwhile, back on the intert00bz …
ZAPEM, determined to bring me down, unprotects her Twitter account, giving me all sorts of goodies, then she begins to harass various aspects of Anonymous. Not quite as grim as the provocation Aaron Barr offered, but eventually one of the little ones comes to me and asks about ZAPEM. I don’t share anything they couldn’t get from public searches, and I tease them with a bit of the information I provide here.
A few hours pass and then a very big dog from the Anonymous pen comes knocking, puzzled over why one crazy person with a Twitter account is so important.
People have a view that Anonymous is all crime, all the time, but that’s more properly the mysterious transnational behavior problem that is LulzSec. Most of the Anonymi are more interested in free speech and technology — “We don’t break into things, we break out of them”.
We start talking, comparing war stories clear back to the 1990s, and it turns out big dog and I didn’t know each other, but our circles did cross. Pretty soon an obscure IRC channel on an obscure network is full of people that went quiet ten years ago, all making popcorn and getting ready to watch the fun.
Fun? Absolutely — because now Anonymous understands that Velvet Revolution is the only victim of HBGary that has both standing and the will to pursue them. They understand that Velvet Revolution has faced an organized smear that is pretty transparently attributable to Breitbart associates. And now there may well be a connection between the two.
So ZAPEM went out in an ill advised effort to recruit Anonymous as her personal army, and instead she just put Breitbart & Co. square in their gunsights, with more than adequate reasons for them to take the same sort of interest in them that they did in HBGary.
Freedom of speech and association are inalienable rights. That isn’t a free pass to assemble a pack of yahoos and smear someone you disagree with, and if the purpose of that smear is covering a string of state and federal crimes calculated to interrupt the right of free assembly on election day for minorities and the poor?
No movie producer would go for this story line – it’s too far fetched. And yet here we are at the end of a long trail of bread crumbs, and while some of the particulars are up in the air, the overall pattern is pretty clear.
One final pithy quote:
“No one of us is as cruel as all of us.” -Anonymous

* * * * * *

The numerous falsehoods in this bizarre document — e.g., Rauhauser’s claim that Breitbart’s “toadies” had employed “poor Seth” [Allen] as “just the right tool to get at the guys behind IndictBreitbart.org” — are ultimately irrelevant, except as glimpses into the counterfactual conspiracy theories that seem to ricochet around constantly inside Rauhauser’s depraved mind.

What is actually important are these assertions by Rauhauser:

  • After he wrote a report about the HBGary hacking that was “seen by House and Senate staff” — ! — Rauhauser made “contact with Velvet Revolution,” one of Brett Kimberlin’s tax-exempt non-profit groups.
  • Rauhauser spent enough time cyberstalking various of his “enemies” — Michelle Lessick, Mandy Nagy, James O’Keefe and Mike Stack — to learn they all lived in New Jersey and that, according to his “sleuthing,” Lessick and Nagy are related by blood or marriage.
  • Rauhauser is contacted by “a very big dog from the Anonymous pen” intrigued by Rauhauser’s interest in Lessick, and Rauhauser then engages in a conversation with Anonymous members on “an obscure IRC channel.”
  • Evidently, during that conversation, Rauhauser convinced his Anonymous friends “that Velvet Revolution is the only victim of HBGary that has both standing and the will to pursue them” and “that Velvet Revolution has faced an organized smear that is pretty transparently attributable to Breitbart associates.”
  • Rauhauser uses this argument to persuade Anonymous to assist him and Velvet Revolution in getting revenge on his enemies.

It is important to explain that the conspiracy theories Rauhauser purveys are all demonstrably false.

There were no “victims” of HBGary, because HBGary never got the contract to do the devious “Nixonesque” things that were discussed in the e-mails that the LulzSec hackers illegally obtained. Aaron Barr of HBGary mentioned Mandy Nagy’s October 2010 article about Brett Kimberlin in one November 2010 e-mail, with the note, “We could do so much with this.”

Imagined Victims, Imagined Villains

What that e-mail showed was not evidence of the conspiracy that Rauhauser claimed to have discovered. Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution had been publicly calling for criminal prosecution of the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the potential client that Barr was eager to impress. Barr had found Nagy’s article and evidently believed it would be useful in helping them impress the client and land the contract.

This e-mail got scrambled around in Rauhauser’s mind. Conveniently forgetting that HBGary never got the Chamber contract, and thus that neither Velvet Revolution nor anyone else was ever a “victim” of HBGary, Rauhauser interpreted that one e-mail as evidence of conspiratorial collusion between HBGary, Nagy and Breitbart. But it simply wasn’t so.

Nor, contrary to Rauhauser’s assertion, was there any conspiracy between Seth Allen and “Breitbart associates.”

What actually happened was this: When Nagy published her article, based on her own research, Kimberlin jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Nagy relied upon Seth Allen as her source. In fact, Nagy is a veteran researcher and writer who once worked as an editor at Lexis-Nexis. But by the time Nagy published her article in October 2010, Kimberlin had spent more than a year trying to shut up Seth Allen, a progressive who had been calling unwelcome attention to Kimberlin’s criminal past on liberal blogs.

This is why, when Patterico did a post based on Nagy’s article, Kimberlin mentioned Allen (“Socrates”) in threatening to sue Patterico. Kimberlin (who knew nothing of Nagy’s research skills) seems to have assumed that only Allen could have been the source for the  information about Kimberlin’s past. So Patterico was accused of “conspiring” with Allen.

By now the astute reader understands — and I don’t really have to point this out do I? — that Kimberlin and Rauhauser’s belief in an imaginary conspiracy of their enemies led them into creating an actual conspiracy of their own.

It’s all right there, you see: Presenting himself as an agent of Velvet Revolution, Rauhauser elicited assistance from members of Anonymous in a conspiracy that “put Breitbart & Co. square in their gunsights.” What did Rauhauser mean by that expression? What manner of activity did Anonymous agree to conduct against the target “in their gunsights”? We don’t know.

What we do know is that, once more, Rauhauser’s compulsive bragging has led to the exposure of one of his schemes.

I believe the appropriate word for such a situation is “lulz.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: The Kimberlin Files
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