When terrorist Brett Kimberlin was convicted of multiple felonies in 1981,
he could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison.
FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin on Monday continued his effort to silence those who write about his criminal past by contacting my wife’s employer, claiming that I was “harassing” him. The resulting security concern required immediate relocation if I was to be able to continue writing about the case of Kimberlin, a violent felon, perjurer and admitted tax cheat who is employed as the director of a 501(c)3 non-profit that has collected $1.8 million in contributions since 2005.
Kimberlin was convicted of multiple federal felonies in 1981 and sentenced to 50 years in prison after he terrorized a small Indiana town in a brutal crime weeklong bombing spree. Law enforcement officials told the Indianapolis Star they believed the bombings were committed in an attempt to distract authorities investigating the 1978 murder of a 65-year-old grandmother, a crime in which Kimberlin was a suspect.
In recent months, Kimberlin has used a strategy of legal intimidation and workplace harassment in an apparent attempt to silence his critics, including blogger Seth Allen, Virginia attorney Aaron Walker and Los Angeles deputy district attorney Patrick Frey.
Walker says he and his wife were fired from their jobs because of Kimberlin’s harassment. Walker did legal work for Allen, who was sued after writing about Kimberlin’s criminal career. On Thursday, Walker published a 28,000-word account of how he says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him on a bogus assault charge.
Kimberlin is a known associate of Neal Rauhauser, a Democrat campaign consultant who has described himself as a computer “hacker.” Kimberlin, director of the tax-exempt Justice Through Music Project, is also involved in another tax-exempt group, Velvet Revolution, which has gained national attention by demanding criminal prosecution of high-profile figures including Republican strategist Karl Rove, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, and the late Internet news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. Kimberlin’s name also surfaced last year in connection with the so-called “Anonymous” international hacker conspiracy. Kimberlin has pursued numerous strategies to harass journalists and bloggers who have attempted to call attention to his criminal past and his notorious dishonesty — a “top-flight con man,” as Publisher’s Weekly called him in a review of award-winning journalist Mark Singer’s 1996 book, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin.
Convicted of drug smuggling and forging documents as well as numerous violent felonies, Kimberlin claims to have ceased his lifelong criminal career after being released from federal prison in 2000. Yet his habitual dishonesty – Kimberlin was first convicted of perjury at age 18 – appears unchanged. As recently as 2007, Time magazine reported that Kimberlin was gaining notoriety on progressive blog sites by “repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true.” According to Walker, Kimberlin falsely accused him of assault after a courthouse encounter in which Kimberlin attempted to photograph Walker in violation of court policy. Walker says Maryland officials have refused to investigate his complaints of criminal actions by Kimberlin, and has asked his blog readers to contact those officials to demand action:
Attorney for Montgomery County
50 Maryland Avenue, 5th Floor
Rockville, Maryland 20850 [email protected]. 240-777-7300
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Until I read Walker’s story Thursday morning, I had never heard of Brett Kimberlin. The story was so obviously newsworthy that I spent the next four days writing about it, including these items:
Particularly intriguing to me was the fact that Kimberlin is the director of a 501(c)3 organization which has received as much as $558,543 a year (in 2008) in contributions, including grants from major philanthropic foundations. Several people who have examined IRS filings by Kimberlin’s Justice Through Music Project and the 501(c)4 non-profit Velvet Revolution have told me they have concerns about the “thinly documented” filings (to quote one person experienced in non-profit work who wished to remain anonymous), that appear “very sketchy” (to quote another person who has examined the IRS Form 990’s for the two tax-exempt groups).
These concerns about Kimberlin’s “non-profit” activities raise intriguing questions, Walker observed Monday, considering what Singer wrote in his 1996 book about Kimberlin:
[Kimberlin] had not not yet turned nineteen when he first sought professional tax advice. “When I first started dealing dope, I went to see a lawyer in New York, who told me how to beat the tax people,” he said. “I had to pay this guy $2,500 or $3,000 for a couple of hours of consultation. Plus I had to fly out there. But it was worth it.” Other than driving an expensive car and owning a small airplane, he avoided ostentation and, along the way, the scrutiny of the tax authorities. Each year, he figured out how much he’d spent, extrapolated the income that would be required to support such a life, added ten percent, and filed a short-form tax return, taking the standard deduction. The tax code did not specifically require him to list his occupation, so he left that space blank. The only money he ever put in the bank, he said, was the money he used to pay taxes. He wrote only two checks a year — one to the Internal Revenue Service, and the other to the Indiana Department of Revenue.
Such boastfulness about his successful federal tax evasion make Kimberlin a very dubious person to be entrusted with the directorship of a tax-exempt non-profit organization that would seem to be his only source of legal income. His recent harassment of those who have written about his criminal career appears to have created renewed interest in Kimberlin’s activities. Major news organizations are rumored to be working on stories about the latest bizarre developments in the strange saga of the violent criminal known as the “Speedway Bomber,” who once falsely claimed to have sold drugs to a college-aged Dan Quayle.
My own encounter with Kimberlin’s attempted intimidation appears typical of his modus operandi, which students of psychology recognize as the habitual behavior of a deviant sociopath: Attempting to distract from his own malevolent actions by accusing his targeted enemies of doing to him what he is doing to them – and to many others. Several sources to whom I have spoken in recent days, who for obvious reasons wish to remain anonymous, have expressed suspicion that Kimberlin is doing this not only to hide his criminal past, but also in a misguided attempt to conceal his current malicious (and perhaps felonious) activities.
These are not accusations I make; rather, these are crucial elements of a newsworthy story that I am attempting to report. Kimberlin seems to be determined to prevent me – or anyone else – from reporting this story. In order to continue reporting it, without jeopardizing the safety of my family and other innocent people, I have been compelled to leave Maryland. Many people have responded to my appeal for prayer and financial assistance in this difficult crisis, but it is important to emphasize that this story is not about me.
This story is about Brett Kimberlin, a criminal of infamous reputation whose recent actions indicate that he fears widespread scrutiny. His attempts to suppress the truth have only generated more of the scrutiny Kimberlin had hoped to prevent, so that Monday for the first time his story merited a thread on the political news aggregation site Memeorandum.
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The National Bloggers Club, Inc, a non-profit organization that organizes the annual Blog Bash event celebrating free-market bloggers, is making available a press contact for those interested in learning more about this story:
[email protected]
Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!
An excellent question: Why would Barbra Streisand’s “philanthropic” foundation donate money to a 501(c)3 whose director is a violent felon notorious for his dishonesty (a “top-flight con man“) to say nothing of the other heinous crimes Kimberlin has committed? Leaving aside entirely the “lawfare” harassment strategy Kimberlin has used against Patrick Frey, Seth Allen and Aaron Worthing, doesn’t that situation — hiring an infamous liar and admitted tax cheat to run a tax-exempt non-profit — strike most people as incredibly reckless?
Normally, I use the Shoe Leather Fund to pay travel expenses while I’m out on the campaign trail. This sudden and unexpected journey to an Undisclosed Location, however, has helped raise more money than any other road-trip I’ve ever taken, and I am extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed, as this will help pay to relocate my family.
