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.
Always have lots of popcorn ready
when reading about how Brett failed
to suppress speech (again)
Update: we have added fresh allegations of document-related chicanery involving Brett Kimberlin.
So, dear reader, I am going to break my blogging hiatus to talk about the latest Peace Order hearing, held yesterday. And if you want to understand what peace orders are and some of the law behind them, go herebut essentially it is what most states call a “restraining order” when issued between people who are legally strangers (in other words, not family, not lovers, etc.).
Now, as usual, I try to protect the innocent from the collateral damage done by Mr. Kimberlin’s “brass knuckle reputation management.” This is particularly tricky here, because an innocent is the center of the story, Brett Kimberlin’s eldest daughter, who I will call K. Kimberlin or something like “his teenage daughter.” There is an argument to be made that by allowing herself to participate in an attempt to censor Brett’s enemies, she made it fair game to take the gloves off. But I still am willing to accept that she still might ultimately be as much a victim of her father as anyone else, and given that ambiguity, and the fact we are talking about a fifteen year old girl, I won’t even name her in this article. It isn’t hard to find her name (her father has seen to that), but I am not going to be the one to make that connection. And we will talk about how her father saw to this in a moment.
Anyway, so it was “K. Kimberlin v. William J. J. Hoge, III,” case number: 0601SP012712015. And of course William is generally known as John.
So let’s set the table a little more, folks. While I have mentioned it on Twitter, I have not talked in detail about the peace order petition. This was at the request of John’s lawyer, Patrick Ostronic. But that embargo ends now. So let’s start with the actual petition itself. Let me suggest you neither drink liquids nor hold anything in your hand, because you are likely to either do a spit take or throw something across the room. It is both silly and infuriating, depending on your disposition:
K. Kimberlin v. Brett Kimberlin Peace Order Petition (Redacted)
So you see once again, Brett’s name at the top. That is because he is acting as next friend to K. Kimberlin. She is legally incompetent to sue, so parents have to sue on their behalf, even in the case of a peace order. And then there is the typewritten portion, which is the ridiculous/infuriating part. And please note that this is not written by K. Kimberlin. I see no sign she was there.
First, let us note that although Brett clearly sought a temporary peace order based on “stalking” he was nowhere near meeting the Maryland Code’s definition of the term. Bill Schmalfeldt has been treating that as gospel truth—John stalked K. Kimberlin, etc. but even in an ex partehearing (with John excluded) where the judge must only find “reasonable grounds” (a very low standard) that the acts were committed, the judge didn’t find any stalking occurred. Brett only got it for harassment, an offense which I previously explained, here.
But what is this about, really? Besides Brett’s never-ending quest to silence his critics, there are two other things this is about. Well, I believe it is two things, and you can decide for yourself if my theory is right.
First, over at Breitbart Unmasked (which gets no links because it actually has been known to carry viruses) they wrote an article about John that contained numerous defamatory statements against John and myself. I will focus on John, specifically the claim that John stalked this girl. This was a ridiculous claim, and so John gave notice that he was going to sue.
Well, that scared the hell out of the people at Breitbart Unmasked, because in such a case, John would soon reveal several secrets that they want to keep hidden. So this peace order was designed to try to get a verdict that John had stalked, or at least, harassed this girl. And they failed.
The other reason why they did this, and why in general they have gone so hard against John lately is because John’s wife has come down with cancer and they think that he is weak. For those who don’t know, basically it broke her back, more or less, and she had to have back surgery to fix it. So Brett Kimberlin and his allies are “wilding” him right now, hoping to break his will. They have always gone hardest against those they perceived to be the weakest.
As for the official reason for this, safety and sanity of his daughter, that seems to be very low on Brett’s list.
Anyway, so last Friday (March 6), they got a temporary peace order.
And how did he do it? By lying, and when he wasn’t lying, weaving a half-truth. Let’s fisk this bastard for a moment, with Brett’s text in red (because a fine whine should be red)...
Mr. Hoge ... has been harassing and stalking my family...*
These are of course legal conclusions, which we now know is false.
I have repeatedly asked him to leave us alone.
Actually I don’t remember him asking us to leave his family alone, but regardless, we have. We have even left Brett alone. We don’t write to him, call him, send him text messages, etc. We simply write about him, to the world at large, which is our right under the First Amendment (barring any actual threats, defamation, incitement or any other category of speech that isn’t protected).
The only exception to all of that, is that we have been in contact with his wife, especially when she sought us out, including my legal help. And guess what? Brett Kimberlin doesn’t get to tell anyone who she can talk to.
He stated that he investigates every aspect of my family, my business and me...
This is simply a lie. John has stated no such thing and he has done no such thing. He doesn’t investigate Brett’s family.
He stated that he has conducted forensic analysis of photos and videos associated with me and my family...
Um, another lie. He has done some forensic analysis of Brett’s photos—particularly when he stalked my wife and sent pictures of her to the aforementioned Breitbart Unmasked, but he doesn’t get that deep into anything about his family.
…a disturbing level of interest in my 15-year [sic] old daughter...
Another lie. We ran searches of John’s site and other sites that he frequents. He barely mentions her, often saying simply that she was there at this hearing or that in passing while discussing her father’s antics. He’s just not interested in her, except in relation to when he tried to help her mother (T. Kimberlin) in her fight to get custody of her children, and even then she was at best mentioned in passing.
He has attacked her repeatedly directly and indirectly through his online presence by falsely accusing me of sex offenses and insinuating and imputing that my daughter is in danger from me.
Of course, we didn’t falsely accuse him of being a pedophile or having engaged in sexual offenses. We said it truthfully. And having lost a defamation suit on this point, he is estopped from denying it. Naturally, claims John falsely accused him of crimes is equally false, but notice how much of this is about John v. Brett, not his daughter v. Brett. And as for the danger to his daughter, here’s the thing: John didn’t say anything like that. But, I wrote this: “And I ask everyone to spare a prayer for T. Kimberlin, her boyfriend Jay Elliott, her daughters, and all of the other people's daughters within Brett Kimberlin’s gaze.” And, bluntly, I think he is a danger to any underage female. I hope and pray my fears are misplaced, but if I was a family law judge, he would have zero chance of getting custody.
He has stated that he needs to protect her from me by having me arrested so he can save her.
Which is something else John hasn’t said. As for me, I might have said something to the effect that his family is safer if he is arrested. I don’t remember saying it, but if I think it, as I do, I usually say it eventually. He’s a violent bomber. Everyone is safer if he is in prison. That’s almost as simple as basic arithmetic.
He has said that if she only knew the truth about me, she would let him save her.
Again, John said nothing like that. But I wrote this:
Also, I will as usual be redacting personal information from it, as well as any information about Brett’s eldest daughter. One of the more unfortunate facets of this situation is the effect it is having upon his children. Indeed, given that she has only heard her father’s side of it, she probably thinks we are horrible people. She probably doesn’t know about how her father tried to frame me for a crime; how he had me arrested for bogus reasons (just like her mother) and obtained a flagrantly unconstitutional peace order against me; or how he personally stalked my wife. She probably thinks Dad is an innocent guy who we just picked on for no good reason.
She probably even believes her father when he says that I commented on the article about her successful YouTube video. Little does she know that Dan Collins aka @vermontaigne, has publicly stated he is the author.
For me, one of the great underappreciated clauses of our Constitution is in the Treason clause. It says: “but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.” The second part of that is fairly easy to understand, but what about the first. What the hell do they mean by the corruption of the blood?
Well, the answer is they are saying you cannot punish the family of a traitor as though they were traitors, too. It is a talisman of what makes this country great. Fundamentally we don’t care who your ancestors were. They could have been kings, they could have been beggars. They could have been heroes and they could have been terrorists. We don’t care. Because you are judged as you.
So not knowing this girl, she enjoys the presumption of innocence that belongs to all strangers. Given the way Brett Kimberlin lies about everything, I have no reason to think he is telling her the truth about what is going on and therefore I have no reason to think she approves of what is actually happening here. If she knew the truth she would know that her father has been working for years to suppress the truth about his illegal and immoral conduct, and his criminal and immoral conduct, combined with his attempt to silence his critics, has brought all this attention on this family.
But allegedly a few people have harassed her online, on her facebook and the like. There is always concern, of course, that Brett or his allies might be faking a lot of that behavior. But regardless, if any person draws any negative conclusion about her based on her father, they are not being charitable enough. They are forgetting that even when we are talking about Benedict Arnold, we do not hold the child responsible for the conduct of the father.
Anyway, I wish there was some way to bring Kimberlin to justice without his elder daughter or any of his family being dragged into this. But Brett has made that impossible. Still, I can limit the damage as much as possible, hence why I will be keeping her name off my blog as well as her younger sister.. Other people feel like what Brett has done makes her name newsworthy, and I will respect that view, but I will not follow their approach.
So you can see I supposed she might not know the truth and might not support Brett’s conduct if she knew the truth simply to explain why I am very tolerant of some very questionable behavior. You see, if she knew the truth, if she knew how Brett tried to frame me for a crime, or stalked my wife and put pictures of her on the internet, and she still supported what Brett was doing, that would make her culpable—although even then her youth and the fact she is being raised by a sociopath would reduce her culpability even then. But why should I think she gets anything like the truth? T. Kimberlin didn’t get the truth.
And of course none of that is anything more than protected opinion. Brett has increasingly put his daughter in the middle of this story and he can’t then whine that someone pays attention to her. Court cases are public events. Any member of the public can watch and can report on it, as Dave Weigel did in August. The fact he has committed crimes against me or the fact I am her father’s critic doesn’t strip me of those rights. And other reporters would not be as careful to avoid harming K. Kimberlin.
And we have never spoke of anyone saving his daughters, except either their mother or child protective services. We are not, and never will be, vigilantes. We obey the law, for the simple reason that it is the law.
He launched an unwanted and unilateral fundraiser... to save her and my wife from me.
By which he means that John helped launch a legal fund to help T. Kimberlin afford a family law attorney who could help her win a custody battle with Brett. And notice that most of that line is true, but badly distorted, pretending that a legal fund is something sinister. I suppose he didn’t like the NAACP, Inc, fund, either. Of course one part definitely wasn’t true: it was wanted, not unwanted. T. Kimberlin wanted it, and John donated several thousands of dollars to it, with the hope he could be paid back a large portion of that money.
He has trolled her social media accounts... He has orchestrated campaigns…
This is a hallucination. Indeed, I don’t know how he could pretend to know this even if it was true, and he ultimately presented no evidence that John had done this.
He has undermined her budding musical career...
He never even explained what that meant.
He has attempted to friend her and follow her on twitter.
Actually, he hasn’t. But I kinda, sorta did in relation to twitter, by accident. I’ll talk about that more when I discuss the hearing. Likewise, I will save this next part for when I talk about the hearing:
She construed these as attempts to have personal contact with her.
But it is worth talking about this for a moment:
On March 3, 2015, he posted her birthday and age in the comment section of a blog post by one of his close associates discussing a fantasy of a sexual pervert “hunger[ing]” over her at a middle school basketball game.
This is referring to this post over at the blog Thinking Man’s Zombie by the anonymous blogger who writes as Paul Krendler who, as part of his schtick, pretends he is an unusually literate zombie, where he says that this thought makes him calmer:
Somewhere, in a park eating ice cream or at the mall food court munching a soft pretzel or eight rows up in the bleachers at a middle school basketball game, there’s a skeezy 35 year old dude in a ratty Motley Crüe t-shirt giving Brett Kimberlin’s daughter the same kind of hungry eyes that he used to give Sandi Barton’s daughter.
And Brett Kimberlin knows it.
The deep thought Krendler seems to be having is 1) these perverts are an unfortunate part of life and we will probably never eliminate them entirely, and 2) he seems to assume that Brett’s guilty conscience would eat him up in fear of someone else leering at his daughter. I get what he was going for, but I communicated to him later that it’s pretty dubious to be making any joke about that, and needless to say the optics can be atrocious. It isn't a crime, but it is a joke I wouldn't have told. And then of course in the comments, someone said that the girl was fourteen years old. So, John being the nerdy, persnickety guy he can be, corrected the record. I mean you can see it in the thread. It was innocent, but it gave Brett something to distort with a grain of truth in it.
Anyway, Brett repeats his oft-repeated complaint that his daughter keeps having to change schools. And then he ends with the allegation that John will try to kidnap his daughter. Do I have to tell you that while nothing would make us happier than those children getting away from Brett, the only way we envision it is either by their mother, or by child protective services? Do we have to say that such vigilantism is not on the table?
So that covers the ridiculous petition. And the important thing is that even if it was all true, though, it would not be harassment. There is largely nothing there but John saying things to the world at large, which is excluded from the statute. And even if he attempted to follow or friend, a single attempt isn’t stalking or harassment.
So that takes us to the hearing itself. Let me set the table a little more by telling about the judge that day. For a moment we heard that Judge Eric Johnson was sitting in the district court. He was the very excellent Circuit Court judge who heard our case last august. He retired in August, but like many judges he was still willing and enabled by law to lend a hand and apparently that is what he was doing that day. I literally prayed that he ended up taking the case if only because we knew he was so good.
What we got instead was a gifted “rookie.” This is Judge Zuberi Williams:
And you can look at his linked in page, here. And if you read this Washington Post story, you will learn that he was one of the “midnight appointments” made by outgoing Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley. That is, O’Malley (like many politicians) added several appointments at the last minute as he left and was replaced by a republican. But lest you think this is more likely to produce bad judges, let’s not forget that this is how Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was appointed. In any case, whatever such a process is more likely to produce, in this case it did give us one of the better judges we have seen at the district court. He was just about the polar opposite of Judge Vaughey, which is a good thing.
For instance, Judge Vaughey seemed to have little understanding of social media, although I thought that was less relevant than others did, writing:
And there is one other observation that I wanted to make, but I couldn’t until this unconstitutional prior restraint on my Freedom of Expression was removed. It was in limited defense of Judge Vaughey. Of course there is much that was simply awful in his conduct that day as you can sense from my outline above, and I think there is even more to be infuriated with as you read the transcript. But there is one charge thrown at him that is perhaps not fair: that he didn’t understand the internet.
I mean look, by the end of the hearing I am not sure he knew what a twitter was, or a blog or anything like that. But you don’t really know all the details to get it as Judge Eric Johnson demonstrated in the April 11 hearing, when he said this:
This Court doesn’t blog. I don’t even know what it is. I wouldn’t know how to set-up one and I don’t know if I’ve even read one since I don’t know what it is, but I can imagine it is a medium in which published material can be made available to the public. I can imagine that a blog might be likened to a magazine except that it’s electronic and it’s not on paper, unless of course it’s printed out.
Johnson didn’t understand blogging in most ways, but he understood what was essential in terms of the law and that was sufficient.
And likewise, I believe by the end of it, Judge Vaughey might not have understood Twitter down to every detail or what a blog was. And I can’t point at any specific word he said, but I believe that when I explained to him that this was communication to a general audience, that I was not talking to Kimberlin but to the whole world that Judge Vaughey got that.
So he may have opened himself up to criticism technological backwardness with comments about the Royal Typewriters and all of that, but I don’t think his mistake was in a failure to grasp the technology. Like Judge Johnson, I believe he understood it well enough to reach the correct answer if he applied the correct law. And therefore his mistake was not in his understanding of the technology but in his understanding of the law. At least that is my sense of it.
Judge Williams, by comparison, was extremely conversant in modern social media. He knew how twitter worked, he understood LinkedIn better than I did, and he even got the concept of “nesting” comments in a blog. His knowledge of social media was nothing less than encyclopedic. And while he didn’t impress on the First Amendment, as you will see, it might be because he didn’t feel he had to get to that: John won because the elements just weren’t there, so he didn’t haveto talk about free speech.
Anyway, so we watched a few hearings and got a sense of Williams. John certainly felt that he was a “no bulls--t” judge and of course that matches the official editorial position of this blog.
Brett showed up, naturally, with his daughter and a bald man we have long joked was Brett’s “muscle” (and since we don’t know his name, that is what he will be called in this article). We have no idea who he is, but he often appears with this gentleman who seems reasonably strong, but not exactly Rambonian in proportions. Some asked if Craig Gillette, the convicted child pornographer that Brett met while in prison was there (hey, what did they have in common?) was there and he was not. I was there, naturally, as well as John’s son, who goes by William. One thing that struck me is that when K. Kimberlin went out for a minute, the Muscle stayed with Brett. Brett claimed he was terrified that something might happen to his daughter, but the Muscle stayed with him. By doing this, either he showed an indifference to his daughter’s safety, or he showed that he knew there was no real danger to her, after all.
When the hearing started, Ostronic raised two issues right off the bat. First, as I noted Brett was coming here as K. Kimberlin’s next friend, but he was purporting the present the case for her as well. I won’t give away legal citations, but in most places this is against the rules... as in, technically unauthorized practice of law. In other words, you can sue on behalf of your minor child but unless you are an attorney, you can’t represent that person before the court, presenting evidence, making arguments and so on. You have to hire a lawyer, or so we argued and so it is in virtually every state. Judge Williams didn’t bite.
On the other hand, he did decide Brett couldn’t testify. As you might remember, Maryland law has a specific provision that says perjurers cannot testify. One irritation was that Brett kept playing coy with whether or not he was convicted of perjury and the judge didn’t do the obvious thing: ask. But we produced several court cases that mentioned his record as a perjurer and as a bonus, the judge was exposed to the possibility that Brett was maybe not the innocent angel he wished to portray himself as.
One particular standout moment was when Brett said he had a right to testify and the judge immediately shut that down. I think he literally said, “no you do not.” He went on to theorize that there was a right to testify as a defendant, but not as a nonparty witness (because technically his daughter is the party, not him).
At that point, they invoked the rule on witnesses—namely that non-party witnesses were excluded from the courtroom. Brett demanded that I leave the room. As the judge started to state the rule, I smiled and said I knew the rule, making the judge smile. I think by then the judge was at least operating on the assumption that I was a lawyer. I can tell you, good folks, whenever you go to court, wear a proper business suit: that alone will make people think you might be a lawyer and treat you with more respect than usual. Which isn’t right, but why wouldn’t you want to get the good end of that?
So I missed the opening argument. I did specifically ask John afterward if Brett even mentioned his criminal record, and he says did not. As for the rest of it, I would suggest you read John’s post, as he is the only trustworthy journalist at the scene (with the caveat that he has an obvious, hidden bias).
After the opening statements, Brett called me to the stand. I’m not sure if he saw me smiling, when he called me. It was, as a matter of tradecraft, a bad presentation. The judge was quickly wondering why he was hearing from me at all—what bearing did I have on the case? And of course every time Brett asked a question I usually turned it around on him.
Like you saw in the petition for the peace order the claim that we are trying to kidnap his daughter. So he asked something like, “have you said you have tried to protect my daughter?”
My reply “I have said that I have tried to avoid her being harmed as collateral damage for your immoral or criminal conduct.” Of course these are not based on notes or recordings, so this is more like a very loose paraphrase, written from memory after the fact. I tried to get in that I have literally kept her name completely off my blog, but got cut off.
He asked if I ever tried to follow his daughter on twitter. I merely explained that someone once directed me to her twitter feed and I picked up my phone the wrong way and accidentally hit the follow button. And I immediately hit the unfollow button. Brett tried to make it into a claim that I was trying to open up communications with her. Assuming the judge didn’t know anything about twitter, I gave a quick primer, only to discover later that this was almost entirely unnecessary. The bottom line is a genuine follow is simply a command to twitter to send a person’s feed into your timeline. Like you might follow @cnn in order to get their news. It is not automatically an indication that you want to exchange direct messages or that you want to communicate with them at all, only that you wish to receive their feed.
So it was an accidental follow and it was not all that Brett hoped to make of it.
He also asked me about whether I wrote about his daughter, and I said (paraphrase, again), “I only write about her to the extent that she is relevant to the story of your misbehavior. For instance, you dragged them to court seeking a peace order against your wife’s boyfriend and you read in open court, in front of your two daughters, extremely graphic—“
“Objection!”
Of course, regular readers know how that story would end. He read off text messages by a man who said he was doing “donuts” in Brett’s car while Brett’s wife pleasured him orally, to put it in a far less crude way than the author did. And the kicker? It wasn’t even T. Kimberlin’s boyfriend, but his cousin which Brett dialed by mistake. So it was relevant to nothing. And do I have to remind you that his daughters were 10 and 14 at the time? There was literally no reason for his daughters to be there, but Brett was thinking only of himself and his martyrdom routine.
That objection was upheld, there was a different outcome with the next one. He asked me why I attended that hearing, which he falsely stated was about his wife’s mental health. As John explained the hearing was about two peace orders (between Brett Kimberlin and T. Kimberlin’s boyfriend, and vice versa) as well as a protective order sought by T. Kimberlin. Then she was handcuffed pursuant to a false petition to have T. Kimberlin committed, and that is when John and I left. We had mistakenly assumed she was arrested pursuant to criminal charges and believed that the only thing that would happen from there was her being taken away, and we wanted to find out what the charges were. What we didn’t know is that the Judge held a mental health hearing on the spot and she was released because she had nothing wrong with her.
So there were in fact four hearings that day, two peace orders, a protective order and a mental health hearing. Brett tried to lie to the judge and suggest that the mental health hearing was the only thing that happened that day, which was actually the only hearing that we didn’t attend that day.
In any case, as for why I attended anything I went to that day (paraphrase), “Because you have been harassing me for three years, Brett. You’ve stalked my wife—“
“Objection.”
This time the judge took the attitude that Brett did ask me why, after all, so after making sure I could finish, I went on (again, paraphrasing), “you can’t deny this. You sued me for saying that about you and last august you lost. I said you framed me for a crime, and that was in that case, and you lost. I said you cost me that job, that was in that case and you lost that, too. You are a very violent and dangerous man who is fixated on me, and I wanted to know what was going on in the mindset of my tormenter, in case you might become violent again.”
By then the judge was asking testy questions about what I had to even do with this case, and how Brett was turning the case into a circus. The judge even asked me to step out of the courtroom as they discussed the matter. And finally Brett threw in the towel—I think figuring out that I would make Brett bleed with every answer—and ended his questioning. Patrick had no questions, either and I was off the stand.
William (John’s son) gave me a fist bump. And a woman sitting in front of me whispered back to me, “he’s crazy!” I am pretty sure she was a lawyer and a definite lawyer came to me asking “who is this guy?” I explained he was a convicted bomber and even showed the woman a copy of Kimberlin v. DeLong that I brought with me.
Next Brett called K. Kimberlin to the stand. She started off talking about how Brett showed her a copy of the Krendler post above and how upsetting it was. Which meant... she wouldn’t have been upset, but for her father exposing it to her. So... arrest him for harassment! Seriously, once again Brett’s desire to harm his enemies comes at the expense of his children’s welfare and in any case the fact her father caused her to read it was brought out on cross examination.
About then, the judge started clearing his docket, sending cases that were waiting out of the courtroom. He had figured out that this was going to be a while.
Brett then asked if she knew we had called him a pedophile (which we had, and a court found in our favor that this was not defamation to call him this last August). The judge didn’t understand the relevance, so he cleared the daughter out and they talked in open court. This is where Brett said something remarkable. First, he said falsely calling him a pedophile was harassment, as expected. Second, he said “even if it was true, which it is not, that is harassment. It’s like calling a person who is gay, gay.” Now look, if you are a gay dude walking down the street and I am shouting after you, “gay guy! Look that guy is gay!” over and over, yeah, that is harassing. But simply writing it, to third persons? No. But as I said to Will, this was further proof (as if I needed it), that Brett thought of being a pedophile as simply an orientation, no different than being gay, and that he believed that someday everyone will agree that those opposed to pedophilic relations are intolerant. Which is insulting to gay people, obviously, but it is what a contingent of pedophiles who believes it, and I believe Brett is one of them and that he agrees with that philosophy.
In any case, Patrick made the point that this was an issue of Brett v. John, not K. Kimberlin v. John and Brett had to try to find a way to tie this back to his daughter, and so he attempted to do this by talking about her experiences in school. She explained that kids in her school kept finding out about her father, and they would stop being friends with her, make fun of her, wouldn’t come over for sleepovers. Which, um, seems like a lot of sleepovers. So she switched schools and somehow the kids at the next school found out. In her current school, she claimed that they literally google new students and figured out who her dad was and the cycle started anew.
So, a few things about that. First, I have previously stated that I think her father manipulates her into lying, so with that background I don’t entirely trust her. But I believe it is true that kids are finding out, I just am not sure they being as cruel as depicted. The reason why I believe they are finding out, is remembering what kids were like back when I was a kid, I could easily picture some of them, having a tool like google, using it to investigate some of their classmates. And in professional life, whenever I deal with a new case, I google the opponent and then his or her lawyer. Most of the time, it just tells me a bit more about what makes them tick; but other times I find people making dumb comments online that undermine their case, and in one case I discovered a “lawyer” engaged in unauthorized practice of law. In law that is just basic due diligence. On the other hand, I think it is a bad idea in a social setting, but kids are not always known for respecting boundaries.
So needless to say, if the story of how she was treated is true, that is terrible. If any of those students read this, be nice as humanly possible to K. Kimberlin. It’s not her fault who her father is.
Finally, ask yourself a simple question: how would those classmates link the two? I mean if you come to my blog, or John’s you are not going to find K. Kimberlin’s real name there. So how would anyone guess that Brett Kimberlin is her father?
Oh, maybe because the Washington Post tells you so. And so does the Bethesda Gazette. And not only do those articles talk about K. Kimberlin, the Gazette article even providing a fairly recent picture of the girl. And then both articles mention Brett Kimberlin. For instance, this is from the Washington Post:
Remember that guy who said during the 1988 election that he'd peddled pot at a Burger Chef to a dude named Danny Quayle? That was Brett. His Quayle revelation came from the clink, where he was serving time for a series of Indiana bombings, one of which wounded a Vietnam veteran. Kimberlin always contended he wasn't guilty of the bombings and would have been paroled earlier, except for the government machine trying to keep him quiet about Quayle, who said he never had met the man.
While Stacy McCain was right to excoriate the author of that piece for soft peddling Brett’s past, she still said enough to make a smart Googler to say, “wait, what bombings?” And that might in turn have led those kids to google “Brett Kimberlin” all by itself, or to start to type in “Brett Kimberlin bomber,” only to accept the suggestion that they search for “Brett Kimberlin Speedway Bomber.” And while the Gazette article doesn’t give as much to go on, he does admit he has made mistakes and people are calling him terrible names. That would at least lead them to google his name.
What is obviously happening is that every time K. gets a little publicity, Brett uses that as an opportunity to elbow into her spotlight. Most parents would be happy to let their children shine, but the little narcissist can’t resist. So someone googles K. Kimberlin’s full name, and soon they are reading about a father who is a bomber. So if Brett wants to know why these kids keep figuring out who is daughter’s father is, maybe he should look in the mirror.
The only other example I can think of where K. Kimberlin is named as the daughter of Brett Kimberlin, is where Dave Weigel wrote a piece about the trial last august. But Brett made his daughter part of the story, just as he made her part of the story in this post. In Weigel’s case, she was part of the story because Brett put her on the stand. And while her testimony was irrelevant, but it gave colorful elements that even led to the title: “The Weirdest Story About a Conservative Obsession, a Convicted Bomber, and Taylor Swift You Have Ever Read.” The Taylor Swift bit came from K. claiming that Taylor Swift retweeted a tweet about one of her songs, a legal irrelevancy in that case, but it helped make the story more colorful.
In any case, at that point the judge pursued an interesting line of questioning. He asked K. what these kids were citing? New posts, or old posts. She admitted they were old, well past the thirty day requirement for peace orders—that is the underlying conduct justifying a peace order has to have happened in the last 30 days. So while my posting on the internet about her father to the world at large can’t be harassment, it can’t support a peace order in any case because of that thirty day statute of limitations.
Anyway, next Ostronic cross examines her and he did a good job doing so without coming off as a jerk. Besides the aforementioned admission that she wouldn’t know what was written at Krendler’s blog but for Brett exposing her to it, Patrick also got her to admit that she had put her birthdate on the web herself on her personal website. And she admitted that John had never made any effort to contact her. Contrary to what Brett would claim later, she never claimed that John tried to follow her on twitter or friend her on facebook. On redirect, she claimed that she told John to leave her alone, which is contradicted by John and his son. I believe them, frankly.
We were past noon by then, having started sometime after ten. K. Kimberlin left the stand and in a particularly creepy moment walked past Brett’s “muscle” who leered at her behind as she passed him. John was ready to take the stand as the defense began, but Judge Williams decided we needed a lunch break.
It is worth noting that we were also worried that Brett was attempting to get John arrested on trumped up charges. This fear was based on two things. First, there was past history. Pattericohas already detailed how Seth Allen and I were hit by the same “ambush” tactic and I suggest you read the whole thing. But as alluded to above, Brett also used the same technique on his wife. Specifically, she went to the court seeking a protective order—that is, she asked the state of Maryland for protection from this convicted terrorist. And instead she came out of the hearing in handcuffs, indeed he hoped to lie until she was committed. Thankfully, Judge Mitchell saw through the whole thing and released her fairly quickly. The other reason why we thought John might be arrested was Brett’s allies were talking about it all week.
So I had set up a person to keep checking maryland’s docket while we were in that court. So I wanted to talk to that person as I went to a café, in order to make sure everything is cool on the arrest front. And what happens? I end up standing but a few feet away from the judge, whom I absolutely must not taint, because he seemed to be leaning toward our side. This led to awkward conversations on the phone, where I have to apologize for not being able to talk and talking in thin code, as in: “so I assume no news is no news?” (meaning the fact they hadn’t texted me that John had a warrant meant that he didn’t to the best of his knowledge. Life is like that, sometimes.
At some point as we were waiting for the court to pick up again, John said he talked to one of the bailiffs to let them know who they were dealing with. “Oh yeah, we know,” one replied, according to him, “the Speedway Bomber.”
When I told that later to Patrick Frey, aka Patterico, he said, “of course they know. They talk to each other. It’s not every day you have a convicted bomber in your courthouse.”
“It is in Montgomery County,” I quipped.
So we got back after lunch and John went to the witness stand—Judge Williams was unusual in that he required all witnesses to testify from the witness stand, instead of letting them testify from their seats, which I think professionalized the atmosphere. I am pretty sure they had finished John’s direct examination, which essentially brought out that he didn’t ever contact K. Kimberlin. Then near disaster struck the Kimberlin camp.
Brett had been trying the judge’s patience all day. He was typically more expressive of his impatience, but weirdly ultimately more patient. I mean this was the longest district court case I had ever seen, over three hours. For instance, when discussing the issue of perjury, Patrick presented two federal cases that mention Brett’s conviction for perjury and Brett objected on the grounds that the decision of a federal court is not evidence. The judge looked at Brett, paused, and then said firmly, “overruled.” And then deep in K.’s testimony, the judge says to Brett, according to my notes, “I’ve given you some latitude. That ends now.” John states he said something a little different, but it was really a firm, “you’re not getting any leeway anymore” type of statement. And it was during cross examination that Brett made some comment and the judge said, “that little commentary—don’t wink at me—not appreciated.” It was in that context, just as Brett began to cross examine John and said something about his daughter that the judge suddenly asked, “where is your daughter?”
She wasn’t in the courtroom. Brett explains that he had sent her to school because her principal demanded that she come in. About then Judge Williams said, “the principalfthe was not appointed by the Governor and approved of by the senate,” which elicited a laugh. The judge explained that his need for her presence there outweighed her principal’s wishes and that normally if the petitioner is gone, the case is dismissed. The judge told him to leave the courtroom and take five minutes to on her way back. Somewhere in that Brett became sullen as he does, and the judge said, “Don’t get an attitude. You didn’t tell me. I brought it up.”
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