This is the latest post in what I
half-jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga®. If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not
everyone reads my blog. The short
version is that convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin has been harassing me for
over two years, his worst conduct being when he attempted to frame me for a
crime. I recognize that this might sound
like an incredible claim, but I provide video and documentary evidence of that
fact; in other words, you don’t have to believe my word. You only have to believe your eyes. And more recently when his wife came to us
claiming that this convicted terrorist had threatened her harm, we tried to
help her leave him, and for that, he is suing myself, John Hoge, Robert Stacy
McCain and Ali Akbar for helping his wife and he is suing Hoge, McCain, Akbar,
DB Capital Strategies, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Patrick “Patterico” Frey,
Mandy Nagy, Lee Stranahan, Erick Erickson, Breitbart.com, the Blaze, Mercury
Radio Arts, Red State, the National Bloggers Club, and others alleging that we are all in organized
crime for reporting factually about the spate of SWATtings committed against
myself, Frey and Erickson. So, if you
are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has
been happening.
Hey, can I go
a little off track today? It seems
appropriate, because I have a lot on my mind. But, dear reader, before I am done you are going to get the latest filings in the Brett Kimberlin RICO case.
As you know by
now, about three Islamofascist terrorists went and murdered nearly a dozen
people in Paris, France, starting their rampage at Charlie Hebdo, which isn’t a
person, but the name of a satirical magazine.
You can read about one of many accounts, here. The prevailing belief is that this was done because
they often published cartoons mocking Mohammed.
Here’s an
example of one, allegedly:
I say
allegedly, because I don’t read a word of French. But the overwhelming claim is that this is
Mohammed in these pictures. Certainly
they had insulted Mohammed in caricature form now and then.
And so that
goes back to something I was reasonably deeply involved in, the first Everyone
Draw Mohammed Day, way back on May 20, 2010.
I even started a site called “Everyone Draw Mohammed” that I let go
defunct for a number of reasons, and, yes, might be resurrected now.
The reason for
that protest, as I saw it, was summed up in the mission statement I wrote ,
which has been recently recovered and I will update slightly:
Mission Statement
Freedom
of speech is at stake here, don’t you all see?
If anything, we should all make cartoons of Mohammed and show the
terrorists and the extremists we are united in the belief that every person has
a right to say what they want. Look
people, it’s been really easy for us to stand up for free speech lately. For the past few decades, we haven’t had to
risk anything to defend it. One of those
times is right now. And if we aren’t
willing to risk what we have now, then we just believe in free speech, but won’t
defend it.
--Dialogue
from South Park
It
is time for we the people to fight for freedom of speech.
Freedom
of speech has been under attack much of my life. It started with Salman Rushdie. He dared to write a book in which a fictional
character said something bad about Mohammed, and for that they put out a
fatwah, a decree that he should be murdered.
And many people died bravely to bring that book to market. It continued when Theo Van Gogh made a movie
critiquing how Islamic culture treated women.
They killed him for that. Then
the Danish created cartoons and we didn’t stand with them. Finally, South Park made a two part episode in
which they took on the controversy and Comedy Central censored the image of
Mohammed, explicitly citing the fear of violence. And for their 200th and 201st episodes, the
guys at South Park did it again, and under threat from a bunch of idiots called
Revolution Islam, Comedy Central censored them again. They even censored a speech about the need
for courage.
This
has got to stop. Someone has to stand up
for freedom of speech.
In
this the government has failed us. How
is it that Revolution Islam is allowed to threaten these people’s lives, and to
extort them into silence, and walk around as free men? Many reports say that they didn’t
“technically” threaten them, but the law of extortion doesn’t rest on whether
you technically say, “do this/don’t do that or we will kill you.” You only have to communicate a threat in
language that an ordinary peson would understand to be a threat. Everyone knows they are threatening
them. So why isn’t the police in New
York beating down their doors?
In
every stage of this, the government has failed to protect us. As a generally libertarian guy, this is one
of the places where I say that government positively has a role to play—to
ensure our freedoms not just by avoiding a violation of our rights, but
actively standing between us and anyone who would use violence and threats to
take that freedom from us.
So
we the people have to step up.
The
idea didn’t start here. Indeed, the
person who kicked it off changed her mind, or maybe didn’t seriously mean
it. But it’s not her decision anymore.
The
idea is simple. On May 20, 2010, we will
all draw Mohammed cartoons. And if you
would like to publish them, cheap and easy, I am here to help.
Ideally,
you should give your real name, and maybe the general town in which you
live. I’ll start. My name is Aaron Walker. I live in Manassas, Virginia. And pretty soon I will inflict upon you my
artistic skills.
And
if you want to publish your creation here, just send it to me. If you can give your real name and town, that
would be good. But even just an image
would be fine. There is no censorship in
this, except you can’t actually be pornographic. But otherwise, be as offensive as you
want. And you can include anyone else in
the depiction. But, and this is key, you
must depict Mohammed in some clear way, preferably with a label. So if you show a picture of a toilet and call
it “Mohammed” we are good.
Also
if you know if anyone else creating their own cartoon, send me a link to their
site. If anyone else does this, I want
to know. Let’s all create a nice little
network of sites. Let’s in a virtual
way, lock arms together and sing, “we shall overcome.” As Benjamin Franklin once said, “We must all
hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
But
Ann Althouse and James Taranto [links lost] (who gives a nice backgrounder)
reply (in paraphrase) “but you will offend moderate Muslims.” Indeed we will and I want to be very
clear. If I could think of any other way
to do this, I would do it. I berated
Althouse on her blog over and over, “what is the alternative.” No one has offered anything.
But
they are correct that there is a cost to this approach. We will be posting messages that are dang
near guaranteed to offend good Muslims who both respect their prophet and the
freedom of speech. To them I say your
sensibilities are collateral damage in the fight for freedom. To them I say it is a necessary evil.
A lot of water
has flowed under the bridge since then.
At the time Revolution Islam was walking around free, but after that,
they were busted and eventually forced to plead guilty to a multitude of
crimes, including threatening the creators of South Park. Still most of it remains true.
And in other
posts, I talked about the idea that this was like this great scene from Spartacus:
If you haven’t
watched the movie, Spartacus is about a Roman slave, forced to be a gladiator
who leads a rebellion of slaves against their Roman masters. In this scene, close to the end, their
rebellion had been defeated, and the Romans were saying to the slaves: we’ll go
easy on you, if you just tell us which of you is Spartacus. On one hand, Spartacus would then get the
worst of it. On the other hand, if they
didn’t turn him over, they would all be killed—and not just killed, but
crucified.
So Spartacus,
played by Kirk Douglas, tries to identify himself. But just as he stands up, a man next to him
falsely says “I am Spartacus!” And then
another and another, until pretty much his whole his army was saying it: “I am
Spartacus.” It means a lot in that moment. It meant each of them were volunteering to
suffer the worst of the punishment, and eventually the entire slave army was
saying, “you are not going to single any of us out. If you are going to kill one of us, you will
have to kill all of us.” And it was a
democratizing moment, too. The Romans
believed Spartacus deserved the greatest punishment as their leader, but what
they were also saying was, “don’t go thinking we only did this because
Spartacus told us to. We rebelled
because we wanted to. We each decided
to. We are as responsible as he is.” I can’t tell you if that scene is based on anything
real, but it is powerful, for all of those reasons and Douglas’ performance is
exquisite.
So by drawing Mohammed,
each of us were saying, “if you are going to kill everyone who draws Mohammed,
you are going to have to kill all of us.”
The idea was in part to flood the zone with so many targets we would hope
the terrorists would despair at trying to kill all of us and give up this
foolishness. Yes, saying “We are all
Charlie Hebdo” or “Je Suis Charlie Hebdo” in French is nice (which I understand
to mean the same thing). But if you
really want to show solidarity with the men who were butchered today, you do
the very same thing, draw Mohammed, and say to the terrorists “you are not
going to intimidate me.”
Anyway, so
that was the idea behind the original Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, and it came
and went and honestly, I thought we had partially accomplished our mission. I want to be clear that I was only one of
literally hundreds of thousands of people who participated in it, so I don’t
want to sound like I am taking credit for others. But I had two goals in my participation: 1)
reduce the danger by spreading it around and 2) make the major media stop being
afraid of the terrorists, or at least embarrass them into showing courage. And while the second goal wasn’t
accomplished, I believed the first had been.
Indeed even today we have see both the New York Daily News and the AP
blur out images of Mohammed when showing the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo
published, an act of cowardice. The Daily
Caller has a complete list of cowardly news organizations and has this
amusing note:
NOTE:
For the record, The Daily Caller has decided to publish the photos when
necessary — partly as a stand for free speech, but mostly out of a complete
disregard for staff safety. Look, here’s one now!
 |
| When I was arrested for engaging in free speech, manypeople made this their avatar. I don't know if I ever told them how much I was moved by that. |
In the
meantime, I became Spartacus. I tangled
with a convicted domestic terrorist named Brett Kimberlin who also had a hang
up about free speech. In short, he
wanted to silence all of his critics for the more practical reason that
speaking freely about his past and recent criminal conduct hurt his “charities’”
ability to get funding. For instance, up
until people like me started writing about him, his Justice Through Music
Project was allegedly getting State Department Funding so this convicted serial
bomber could train “activists” from Iran.
But when people started noticing how questionable it was to have a
terrorist training activists from Iran, the State Department allegedly stopped
funding this group.
So this
terrorist, Brett Kimberlin, started a campaign of harassment against me. If you are new to the story and you want to
start to get some idea of what all has been going on, go to the sidebar
for a partial overview of the last three years’ events, although that page is
in need of update. But he has sued me
four times, he has succeeded in getting me fired from my job, he tried to frame
me for a crime after he committed a slow-motion
SWATting of my wife and I, and he is the lead suspect in the normal-speed
SWATting I suffered, coincidentally on the same day my freedom of speech
was restored to me.
Toward the beginning
of all of that, Lee Stranahan announced an Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day. The idea was similar to the Everyone Draw
Mohammed protest and I noted it at
the time:
Obviously,
the comparison is to Everyone Draw Mohammed Day (EDMD). As you know, EDMD arose from the failure of
the institutions that normally were supposed to stand up for freedom of
speech. First, our governments were
supposed to intervene. As our
Declaration of Independence tells us, we have an inalienable right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And it says something else that is crucial but often overlooked:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among
Men." In other words government
exists not for its own benefit, but for the purpose of securing our sacred
rights, not the least of which is freedom of expression, and freedom of
religion.
And
when our government failed to deal
appropriately with the use of terrorist threats to silence others—saying they
would murder anyone who dared to draw
Mohammed—this was a failure of our government to perform one of its most basic
functions. And I thought, "well, at
least the press will probably stand up against this. After all, freedom of expression is what they
are all about." But instead the
press did not. They refused to show the
cartoons in the Danish cartoon controversy, even though basic reporting almost
demanded it. Can you think of any other
controversy over any other work of art (defined loosely), where they didn't
start by showing you the item that is creating all the fuss? Whether you are talking about the infamous
Piss Christ or the painting of the Holy Virgin Mary made with elephant dung,
they always showed you the artwork in question.
Here is one example and here is another. But suddenly in this case, no
one was willing to show the cartoons even in a news story. I even saw a shameful article on Cnn, where
they showed one of the Mohammed cartoons but blurred out Mohammed himself,
which meant that they showed a blurry piece of paper on television. I mean, why bother? So the institutional press failed us.
So
We the People had to step up. But I always felt it was a second-best
solution. The best would be for the
Federal Government to have done its duty, but it didn't. And the reason why it was a "second
best" solution, is that EDMD necessarily offended the vast majority of
Muslims who 1) hate terrorism, 2) love freedom of speech and religion, but also
3) don't enjoy seeing their prophet insulted.
I said to them that the offense to their reasonable sensibilities was
collateral damage that sadly we could not avoid as we secured our God-given (or
perhaps Allah-given) right to choose what we say and believe freely. It was a dilemma that led people of good
conscience who probably normally would have supported EDMD to refuse to do so,
such as James Taranto and Ann Althouse.
And if someone had another solution that didn't offend those good
Muslims and still protected our sacred freedoms, I would have happily done
that.
(I
mean I suppose vigilantism would have worked, but I am opposed to that.)
And
that is the beautiful part of this current protest. The only person who is offended, is the
person actually attempting to suppress free speech.
So the
philosophy behind Lee Stranahan’s idea was easy for me to grasp, but I couldn’t
quite ask my readers to participate. I explained
how I felt as follows:
I
can’t ask you to do this. It’s not
because of this peace order against me—Judge Johnson has made it clear that the
peace order statute cannot forbid protected speech. And this is protected speech. But as much as we use the “I am Spartacus”
concept in this situation I am the guy who really is Spartacus. I'm Kirk Douglas, more or less. Watch this clip again:
[I
embedded the same clip from Spartacus]
If
you watch closely, the real Spartacus was ready to identify himself. So he didn’t ask his fellow slaves to stand
up beside him. They just did. So I’m not
going to ask. Perhaps the truly
courageous thing would be to say, “No, don’t do this.” But I won’t do that, either. I’ll just say... decide for yourselves.
The idea
obviously was, at the very least, “Brett Kimberlin can’t sue all of us.” And then...
Brett tried to prove us wrong. In
October of 2013, he sued around twenty bloggers and prominent conservatives,
including myself, in federal court, claiming that we constituted an unlawful
mafia against him. And that is separate
from his lawsuit where he tried to punish me, John Hoge, Robert Stacy McCain,
Ali Akbar and the blogger or bloggers known as KimberlinUnmasked for calling
him a pedophile. That case was recently
resolved with him becoming an adjudicated
pedophile. As we often jokingly say,
“how is that brass-knuckle reputation management going for him now?”
No, at the same
time he was suing me in Maryland state court and rendering himself an
adjudicated pedophile, this RICO case was slowly lumbering forward. Brett was allowed to amend his complaint and
then we were off to the races, filing our new Motions to Dismiss. You can read mine, here. And Brett got to file his opposition,
which was really pretty poor even by his standards. And today, I filed my reply. Normally I wait to share this with you, dear
reader, until it appears on PACER (the electronic database for the Federal
Court system), but what is the point in waiting? I normally do this to avoid giving Brett
additional time to respond, but this is it, he gets no further response. So it doesn’t help him one whit to see it
sooner rather than later.
So here you
go, with only minor redactions:
And you see
two exhibits talked about, too. The first
is simply a list of the acronyms used in the filing, so, here’s that (sorry for the formatting problems):
H&WOpp: The Plaintiff’s first Opposition to Mr. Walker’s
first Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 29.
H. Reply: Mr. Hoge reply to Plaintiff’s Second Opposition to
Mr. Hoge’s second Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 236.
MTD: refers
to any motion to dismiss.
Omnibus Opp.: The
Omnibus Opposition filed by the Plaintiff, ECF No. 231.
SAC:
Second Amended Complaint in the instant case, ECF No. 135.
TOpp.: The
Plaintiff first Opposition to Defendant Malkin and Twitchy’s first Motion to
Dismiss, ECF No. 29.
W. Reply: Mr. Walker’s reply to Plaintiff’s first Opposition
to Mr. Walker’s first Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 55.
And the second
exhibit, is just a declaration, which I will embed here:
As per usual, the
only differences between the original and the final is 1) no signatures and 2) personal
information was redacted. I will say
that I am less witty than usual because I didn’t have the space to be
funny. But I think I got a few good
zings to spice things up.
But one thing worth
talking about for a moment, is also the settlements in that case. A number of people, such as Patrick “Patterico”
Frey and Lee Stranahan called out Simon and Schuster and the American Spectator
for settling, being quite angry about the matter. For instance, this
is what Mr. Frey wrote about the Franklin Center caving.
Now, if you
scroll back and look at all I said about Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, you might
think I am about to say something similar.
I have nothing but scorn, for instance, for a news outfit that refuses
in the wake of what happened in Paris to show the offending cartoons,
especially if they go on and on about the courage of the editors of Charlie
Hebdo.
But then if
you read what I wrote about Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day, you might
realize that however valid I might find their logic, I can’t bring myself to
say what they said. There is a world of
difference between saying, “we should rise up to protect this stranger I never
met” and “you should rise up to protect me.” And just as I couldn’t ask you to join in at
the beginning, I can’t chide anyone for leaving. What am I supposed to say, “come back! You’re supposed to be protecting me!” I’m not saying Patrick, Lee or anyone else
calling them out for caving are wrong. I
am just saying I personally can’t say what they are saying. I don’t have the heart for it.
Of course the irony
of all of this is that in my opinion the strongest argument for dismissing the
case is res judicata. If you haven’t
read my reply, I think this part is really, really important, so I will cut and
paste from my reply, here:
II.
EVERY CAUSE OF ACTION AGAINST MR. WALKER
IS BARRED BY RES JUDICATA
This court has probably noticed that between the filing of
Mr. Walker’s original motion to dismiss and today, Mr. Kimberlin was able to
bring his “related” state case, Kimberlin
v. Walker, et al., to trial against four of the same Defendants: Messrs.
Walker, McCain, Akbar and Hoge. The suit
had counts alleging harassment, stalking, malicious prosecution (involving the
same suits he complains about, here), abuse of legal process, defamation, false
light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. All but the counts for defamation and false
light were dismissed on a motion for summary judgment. Those remaining counts went to trial, and at
the conclusion of the Plaintiff’s case, the judge issued a directed verdict in
the Defendants’ favor. A certified copy
of the complaint is attached as Exhibit C to “Defendant Hoge’s Reply to ECF No.
231, Plaintiff’ Omnibus Opposition to Motions to Dismiss” (ECF No. 236) (“H. Reply”). A certified copy of the entire trial transcript
is attached as Exhibits B-1 and 2 to H. Reply.
There is a great deal of overlap between the two cases.
As stated in J. Aron
and Co., Inc. v. Service Transp. Co., 515 F.Supp. 428, 438 (D. Md., 1981), “the
federal court for the District of Maryland must give to a prior Maryland state
court judgment whatever res judicata effect Maryland law or usage provides[.]” Meanwhile, Cochran v. Griffith Energy, 426 Md. 134, 43 A. 3d 999, 1002 (2012)
provides the test for when res judicata applies under Maryland law, requiring
that:
(1) the parties in the present litigation are the same or
in privity with the parties to the earlier litigation; (2) the claim presented
in the current action is identical to that determined or that which could have
been raised and determined in the prior litigation; and (3) there was a final
judgment on the merits in the prior litigation.
In relation to the first factor, the same Mr. Walker and
Mr. Kimberlin are present in both cases.
With respect to the final factor, the directed verdict represented a
final judgment on the merits.
In the relation to the second factor, nothing prevented
the Plaintiff from amending his complaint in the state case to include every
single cause of action asserted in the instant suit. As
this court can see, the final amendment in Kimberlin
v. Walker, et al., was entered on April 1, 2014, nearly a month after the
final amendment in the instant case. Obviously,
a Maryland state court can hear any claim based on Maryland common law, and Maryland
state courts routinely hear cases involving 42 U.S.C. §1983 and §1985, and RICO
(18 U.S.C. §1961 et seq.). Therefore, these claims “could have been raised
and determined in the prior litigation” and the Plaintiff is barred from
re-litigating them now.
This is sufficient reason to dismiss the case for Mr.
Walker, and, in the name of judicial economy, Messrs. Hoge, McCain, Akbar, and
every other defendant in this case.
This is because courts have regularly held that when defendants are alleged to be in a conspiracy with each
other by a Plaintiff, they are in privity for the purpose of defensive res
judicata. In other words, while the
Plaintiff has not made proper, non-conclusory allegations that some or all of
the Defendants have conspired together for the purpose of stating a claim for
which relief can be granted, the mere fact that he alleged one exists estops
him from denying it for res judicata purposes.
Every remaining Defendant is alleged to be in a civil conspiracy
together, and therefore dismissal is appropriate for all defendants under res
judicata.
I am cutting
out the footnotes, which includes some case law backing it up that doesn’t
appear in the text, but the irony of the whole thing is that Brett’s half-baked
claim of conspiracy, designed to vex the Defendants as much as possible, might
end up getting everyone out of the case, not just the four defendants in
common.
As for the
events in Paris, the obvious question is whether we should have another “Everyone
Draw Mohammed Day” and whether I will resurrect my old site. Of course, this has always been a grassroots
protest and they will make their own decision regarding whether there will be a
single day or not. I tend to think that
it would be hard in the viral organization of these protests to agree on a day
other than May 20, 2015, which is the fifth anniversary of the original
one. And bluntly, I don’t think we should
wait that long. I have urged people on
twitter today to do I right now and have contributed this atrocities on the
world of art:
Don't
just attend candlelight vigils!
#EverybodyDrawMohammed!
#EveryoneDrawMohammed
#DrawMohammedDay
#JeSuisCharlie
pic.twitter.com/WwhgIBnD88
—
Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) January
7, 2015
(Embiggen as
necessary.) Yep, that is terrible. But really artistic quality is beside the
point. The point is to commit the same “offense”
that got these men killed today and any depiction of Mohamed, however benign,
however inoffensive, will do that. It is
fatwa-worthy!®
As for
restarting the blog, I will sleep on it and think about it. Part of me prefers this to remain a social
media phenomenon, regular folks putting it on their facebook pages, or in their
twitter feeds, making hashtags like #EveryoneDrawMohammed
#EverybodyDrawMohammed #DrawMohammedDay and #DrawMohammadDay. Centralization to any degree seems like a bad
idea. But it might prove to be
useful. Still, I recommend that you draw
Mohammed, as I did, even if you lack any artistic talent. Unleash the Dreaded Stick Figures of
Blasphemy. And yes, feel free to call it
that. The very term
Here are a few
more examples of people drawing Mohammed:
FLASHBACK: On
#EveryoneDrawMohammed
day, 2010, Over the Hedge's @_MichaelFry
& T. Lewis struck this blow for freedom pic.twitter.com/FH8KVxY1Ni
—
Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) January
7, 2015
My favorite
cartoon from #EveryoneDrawMohammed
day in 2010 #CharlieHebdo
#JeSuisCharlie
@rsmccain
@ChuckCJohnson
pic.twitter.com/9Qewo1WAfn
—
Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) January
7, 2015
Tell the
terrorists, "if you kill everyone who draws Mohammed, you'll
have to kill me, too!" #EveryoneDrawMohammed
pic.twitter.com/oEYw201h0p
—
Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) January
7, 2015
When I decided
to draw that last one, I looked around for a blank sheet of paper. With a writing disability, I don’t keep much
around. But then I found the perfect
sheet: the back side of a copy of the first page of Brett Kimberlin’s RICO
complaint. If you look real close, you
can see the writing see through from the other side. Sometimes things in life dovetail together
very nicely.
In the end,
the real battleground isn’t the streets of Paris, a courtroom in Maryland, or
some desert in some kleptocracy. While
there is an appropriate role for law enforcement and the generous use of drone
strikes, the real battle is in our hearts.
We have to live brave lives. We
have to look terrorists in the eye and say, “you might take my life, but you
will never make me bow to you.” We might
or might not be killed for what we say, but if we refuse to bow to them, we
will never be defeated.
Or consider a
perfect story of defiance from the life of Kurt Cobain:*
A
more important lens through which to remember Cobain and his band is a story
relayed by his uncle at a public memorial service. As happened often, a neighborhood bully was
beating up a young Cobain, knocking him to the ground over and over again. But rather than punching the bully back or
cowering in fear, Cobain instead, after each knock down, simply extended his
middle finger in defiance.
Source. They can knock you down as many times as they
want, but don’t let them silence you.
Don’t ever let them silence you.
Take us out,
Tom Petty:
---------------------------------------
* If you don’t
who Kurt Cobain is, immediately download/buy/borrow a copy of Nirvana’s album “Nevermind.” You will thank me for it.
---------------------------------------
My wife and I
have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist (and
adjudicated pedophile) Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed
and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you
read starting here,
you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video
evidence. If you would like to help in
the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the donation link on
the right. And thank you.
Follow me at
Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for
snark and site updates. And you can
purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A
Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.
And you can read a little more about my
novel, here.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused
some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice
I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice
system. I do not want to see vigilante
violence against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the
particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part because
under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to
happen to him.
And for that
matter, don’t go on his property. Don’t
sneak around and try to photograph him.
Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision. Your behavior could quickly cross the line
into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not
contact his organizations, either. And
most of all, leave his family alone.
The only
exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course
nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any
stories you might report. And even then
if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request. That this is a key element in making out a
harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you
refuse.
And let me say
something else. In my heart of hearts, I
don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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