Brett Kimberlin and ‘False Narratives’

Posted on | March 11, 2014 | 20 Comments

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

“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

Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with! . . .
Hence, horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!
— Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4

As much as I’d rather be reading the latest news or the several freebie books I picked up at CPAC last week, instead I’ve been reading Brett Kimberlin’s conspiracy theory masterpiece, “Second Amended Complaint for Damages, Violation of Civil Rights, RICO and State Law Torts.” I first saw this Saturday, so while Dave Weigel was getting the story of Steve Stockman’s awesome hot tub party, I was actually sitting amid the revelry  in the same hotel suite (#4105) skimming through the Pro Se Pipsqueak’s 83-page farrago of lies. Here you go:

ECF 100-2 Redacted

By my count, Kimberlin uses the phrases “false narrative” or “false narratives” 61 times. On at least one occasion, he uses these phrases three times in the same paragraph, although I’m not sure if the convicted perjurer ever explains what exactly is false about these “narratives” with which he seems so evidently obsessed. And really, this was the problem with the whole story from the start, long before I’d ever heard of the name “Brett Kimberlin.” In October 2010, Patrick “Patterico” Frey published an extensive account of Kimberlin’s “history as a convicted bomber, drug smuggler, perjurer, and suspected murderer.” In response, Kimberlin threatened to sue Frey, who replied:

My post is based primarily on a number of published news articles. I ask you to specify anything in my post that you claim is false. If I have made any mistakes I am always happy to correct them. But I won’t take down anything that is true.

To this, Brett Kimberlin infamously replied:

“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 . . .”

Patterico repeated his request that Kimberlin specify any falsehood in the post which, so far as I know, Kimberlin still never has.

Eight months after that e-mail exchange, in July 2011, Patterico was SWATted. This may be Just Another Random Coincidence, but Patterico doesn’t think so, and the question of who actually perpetrated that SWATting — or the SWATtings of Mike Stack (June 2011), Erick Erickson (May 2012) and Aaron Walker (June 2012) — has never been determined as a matter of law. Why? Because the FBI’s cybercrime unit is totally incompetent? Because protecting the First Amendment rights of bloggers is a low priority for the Justice Department? Hey, I’m just asking questions here, but according to Kimberlin’s RICO suit, Patterico actually knows for a fact that Kimberlin had nothing to do with his SWATting, yet nevertheless deliberately “imputed” that Kimberlin was responsible, then conspired with others to spread this malicious falsehood. And anyone who says different — anyone who argues that Patterico’s suspicions are sincere, who believes Patterico would be happy if the FBI could actually solve these SWATting cases — is thereby part of “an online mob engaged in a multi-year defamation campaign,” furthering “a conspiracy to threaten, assault and intimidate Plaintiff,” according to Kimberlin’s Second Amended Complaint.

The phrase “according to Kimberlin” is worth noting, because one of the additions to the perjuring plaintiff’s Second Amended Complaint (in paragraphs 33-37, pp. 7-10) begins like this:

In 2009, three military intelligence contractors, HBGary, Berico Technologies and Palantir created a secret group called “Team Themis” to destroy progressive organizations and their staff on behalf of corporate clients and federal agencies, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and FBI.

What follows in the next three pages is about 900 words of evidence that the tinfoil in Brett Kimberlin’s hat isn’t very effective in blocking out the Secret CIA Mind-Control Beams. It’s basically an adaptation of the conspiracy theory Neal Rauhauser published in February 2012 as “Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”

This theory was paranoid gibberish when Rauhauser first published it, and it is still paranoid gibberish now that Rauhauser’s “client” (or “associate”) Brett Kimberlin recycles it in his vexatious federal lawsuit. Apparently, then, Kimberlin decided that the problem with his original complaint was that it wasn’t insane enough, so he added an extra helping of crazy, and now expects U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm to approve a lawsuit which claims that nearly two dozen defendants are part of a clandestine plot against Kimberlin “on behalf of … federal agencies, including the … FBI.” Welcome to Crazyville, Your Honor.

Of course, it is possible to believe two things simultaneously:

1. That Brett Kimberlin is suffering from paranoid delusions;
   and
2. That the defendants did actually conspire against Kimberlin.

But the question before Judge Grimm is not whether the Plaintiff is sane, nor whether there was a pattern of cooperation among the defendants, but whether Kimberlin has adequately pleaded, as a matter of law, that he has suffered actual injury as a consequence of illegal action. We haven’t reached the fact part of litigation and are still at the law stage. This means that Kimberlin’s strategy — allege! allege! allege! — is still less important than his competence in legal tactics. I’m not a lawyer, but his endlessly repetitive elaboration of claims seems rather unlikely to persuade Judge Grimm, e.g., paragraphs 76-77, pp. 22-24:

76. Plaintiff has been under siege by the Defendants for more than two years. They have been engaged in constant cyber bullying and cyber stalking of him and his family by using information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior to harm Plaintiff. He lives in constant fear for himself and his family because of the bullying and threats against him. Virtually every time Plaintiff appears in Court, Defendants Walker and Hoge have stalked him, and Plaintiff fears that Defendant Walker will assault him again. Both Defendants Walker and Hoge constantly write blog posts, some with photos of their shots at the shooting range, stating how they are armed and dangerous and will not hesitate to use their weapons against Plaintiff. Plaintiff has witnessed Defendants Walker, Akbar, McCain,Frey and Hoge attack anyone online who questions their conduct, and at least one reporter has received many death threats after writing about the Defendants.
77. Defendants Akbar, Hoge, Walker, Thomas aka KimberlinUnmasked and McCain have continued to defame and publicly attack Plaintiff after the filing of this Complaint with thousands of tweets and blog posts falsely calling Plaintiff a swatter and stating that he caused Defendant Walker’s termination. In virtually every post and tweet, these Defendants use Plaintiffs name along with a criminal accusation to have that title listed on Internet search engines in order to cause the maximum damage to Plaintiff, his reputation, his family, his businesses and his livelihood.

See, these claims that I am engaged in “cyber bullying” and “cyberstalking” of Kimberlin, that I “defame and publicly attack Plaintiff” are merely word games; I report and comment and Kimberlin seems to think that by applying pejorative labels to my writing, he has proven that I’ve done what he says I’ve done. He’s suing me in federal court for $2 million, and separately suing me in state court for $1 million, and I’m supposed to pretend this isn’t happening? I’m not allowed to update readers on the process? But never mind that: Where are all these “thousands of tweets and blog posts” I’ve supposedly published “after the filing of this Complaint . . . falsely calling Plaintiff a swatter and stating that he caused Defendant Walker’s termination”? For that matter, the sequence of events between (a) Aaron Walker becoming a target of Kimberlin’s wrath, and (b) Aaron Walker getting fired from his job, may be examined by anyone, and it is difficult to say that (a) was wholly unrelated to (b), even if Walker was otherwise somehow at fault.

Bad things happen to people Brett Kimberlin doesn’t like. Yet, according to Kimberlin’s theory, for us to observe facts plainly in evidence, and to draw from those facts the inference that there may be a non-coincidental relationship between these facts, is evidence of malice and intentional defamation. Meanwhile, however, Kimberlin alleges that there is a causal relationship between (a) the defendants writing about him, and (b) “many death threats” against Kimberlin.

Question: How many people have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted for making “death threats” against Kimberlin?

Not a single one, to my knowledge, so why am I being sued for allegedly having incited alleged “threats” for which the threateners themselves have never been prosecuted? And all of this, of course, ignores the landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio ruling.

If I were to write, “Michael Moore is a fat, worthless, America-hating commie who deserves to die a slow, painful death,” no court could hold me responsible if some misguided reader decided to kidnap Moore, tie him to a tree and dismember him with a meat cleaver.

Michael Moore is indeed both fat and worthless, but no court would rule that even the most vehement expression of contempt for him would be “likely to incite or produce . . . imminent lawless action.” My reference to Moore’s “slow, painful death,” could easily be interpreted as the hope that he’d suffer a fatal immune system breakdown resulting in his entire body being covered in oozing herpes lesions.

If Brett Kimberlin “lives in constant fear,” why is that?

His own guilty conscience, I dare say. Like Macbeth facing Banquo’s ghost, perhaps Kimberlin is haunted by the thought that “blood will have blood,” that the departed spirits of Carl DeLong and Julia Scyphers still moan in the quiet hours of night, demanding justice.

Does the plaintiff dislike being reminded that there is no statute of limitation for murder? So be it — such reminders are not torts.

In his Second Amended Complain, Kimberlin cites a May 29, 2012 article I wrote at the American Spectator which described him as “a dangerous man who by all rights should still be behind bars.” In point of fact, in 1981, Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Because he was sent to prison before the passage of federal “Truth in Sentencing” laws, Kimberlin served only 17 years of that sentence and, I am informed, is still a parolee and will be until 2030. Is it controversial to argue that persons convicted of serious violent crimes should be required to serve more than one-third of their sentences? So be it — but controversial opinions are not torts, either.

“Conspiracy, my ass. He chose poorly.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, July 31, 2013

Arguing with an “all-around sociopath” (to quote Slate’s description of Kimberlin) is never a pleasant experience. Fortunately, Michelle Malkin’s attorney Michael F. Smith does masterful work:

Mr. Kimberlin’s conduct has taken this Court into uncharted waters. Twitchy’s research has not found a single case, Federal or State, involving a party’s forgery of a court summons — much less, the subsequent sending of it through the U.S. Mail with the intent to deceive. This is a serious matter, and obviously one that calls for a severe sanction. . . . [D]ismissal with prejudice and a significant award of fees against Mr. Kimberlin is warranted. . . .
[T]he questions raised to date regarding Mr. Kimberlin’s “summons” to Twitchy and other certifications to the court, against the backdrop of his many crimen falsi convictions, make this lack of authentication central. Neither the defendants nor this Court can have any confidence that anything Mr. Kimberlin attaches to his filings, is what it purports to be.
None of the additional factual material [in Kimberlin’s response to Malkin’s motion to dismiss] is relevant to the issue before this Court: whether Mr. Kimberlin validly has stated a claim, or whether dismissal is appropriate. . . . All of it is simply an attempt to portray himself as persecuted, and use this Court as a “trampoline” for his excess energies and need to have the last word. . . .
Mr. Kimberlin and the nearly two dozen defendants he has sued have diametric political views and philosophies, and when three conservative bloggers/commentators found themselves “swatted,” various defendants commented publicly about the unusual coincidence of their criticism of Mr. Kimberlin. Reading the allegations of the [First Amended Complain] in a light most favorable to him . . . what Mr. Kimberlin brings this Court is a garden-variety defamation complaint that he seeks to whip into a massive conspiracy and treble-damage claim under RICO. . . .
The outrageous parallel Mr. Kimberlin tries to draw between himself and various persecuted individuals and groups through the ages is preposterous, and deserves no response other than to note that none of those tragic victims ever blew anyone’s leg off, perjured themselves, or concocted a lie specifically designed (and timed) to throw an election for the Presidency of the United States. . . .
[T]he conduct at the heart of Mr. Kimberlin’s supposed “conspiracy” is protected by the First Amendment; his Response fails to counter that. Dismissal is appropriate.

You can read the whole thing. Having spent all day plowing through Kimberlin’s crap, I’m ready to write about something cheerful and encouraging: Sarah Palin’s unwanted “neighbor” died. Also, you’ll be glad to know Justin and Selena are back together.

 

Comments