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 three 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. Indeed, he sued me for saying this and lost on the issue of truth. 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 sued 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.
So on Monday, I shared with you a redacted copy of Tetyana Kimberlin’s false charges and some of my general thoughts about them. Yesterday, I gave you my memorandum in support of my motion to dismiss. Now, today as promised, I will fisk the Application for Statement of Charges. As I often have in the past, what I am fisking will be quoted in red.
For starters there is even something to fisk on the first page, which relates to authorship. First, she gives her address as the basement of Brett's mother's house (which has been the marital residence), in other words where Brett is living now. We can only guess whether she actually lives there, especially as you can see that this was originally written as both her and Brett’s complaint. I will say that at one point she seemed to be dead set against ever moving in with Brett again and I would be somewhat surprised if that changed. It is also worth noting that the phone number, which I also won’t disclose, is Brett’s personal cell phone number, not hers.
Flipping to page 2 of the page, you see at the top it is presented as the “Statement of Tetyana Kimberlin and Brett Kimberlin...” This, combined with the fact that most if not all of the text is recycled from writings Brett definitely authored, it seems reasonable to think that these are his charges, and she just signed on the dotted line. That isn’t proof, of course, she might have decided for whatever reason to lie about us all day long. I report, and you decide.
Oh, and jumping ahead, here’s something else that is interesting. The last page of both of the Applications are handwritten. Here’s a screengrab of one of them:
Embiggen as necessary
I remember when charges were filed by Tetyana Kimberlin against Brett Kimberlin. Stacy McCain reported to me that Neal Rauhauser was claiming that someone else wrote up a false story and Tetyana Kimberlin just signed it. This was undermined when John obtained a copy of it and posted a redacted version, showing that while much of it was typed, there was about one sentence at the end. Thus, even if you imagined someone else wrote the typed portions, it was clear that she wrote the last part.
So at first blush, that might seem like a similar situation. You could imagine Team Kimberlin saying, “maybe Brett wrote the typed portions, but that is her handwriting.”
In fact, to finish my stroll down memory lane, let’s look at her prior Application for Statement of Charges against her husband:
Hey, wait a minute... that looks different, doesn’t it? Hey, do I have any other samples of her writing?
Well, here’s a portion from her first petition for a protective order, written before John and I had exchanged even a single word with her:
And by comparison, here’s a portion of his first charges against me:
In my constitutionally protected opinion, the handwriting on Brett’s Application for charges looks virtually the same as the charges nominally filed by Tetyana against John and I, except that the writing is more compact in the most recent Applications for charges. Now, if my opinion is correct—and you, dear reader, make up your own mind—why would he do that?
Well, one theory is that he was trying to recreate what happened when she filed charges against him—making people think she wrote part of it by hand, when it is pretty obvious she didn’t.
On the other hand, I have little doubt that the signature is hers, given that it closely resembles samples in my possession and my knowledge that the Commissioner would demand that she swear an oath, and sign it in her presence.
So based in part on my opinions in analyzing handwriting samples (and I am no expert) and based on how much seems just cut and pasted from Brett’s prior writings, it looks like Brett pretty much wrote the whole thing and only told her to sign it. If you don’t agree with my opinions, then you might not agree with my conclusion.
Anyway, so let’s dive into the meat of this thing. After their false claim that we have violated §3-805, and a little more set up, they write:
For the past several years, two adult men, William Hoge, from Westminster, MD and Aaron Walker, from Manassas, VA, have bullied her relentlessly through interactive computer services, directly and indirectly.
Of course, they don’t define bullying, or how one indirectly bullies someone. When I was growing up, bullying was beating kids up, taking their lunch money, and so on. It always involved violence or the threat of violence. Mind you, I was never myself a bully. I was strictly taught never to fight anyone or threaten anyone, except in self-defense. But there is hardly a man alive who hasn’t seen a bully in action.
But these days many people seem to think that merely making fun of a person counts. Never mind that this seems to be covered by freedom of speech, but I haven’t been doing that. I haven’t threatened her. Indeed, I barely talk about her and wouldn’t talk about her at all, except Brett keeps making her part of the story that I have been covering. This entire piece, for instance, is necessary in defense of my reputation and John's for instance. Or when she gets on the stand and testified against me, what was I supposed to do? Exclude her from my account of that trial? As it was I didn’t say much about her because what she said had literally almost no relevance.
She and we have repeatedly asked them to stop...
Well, actually, she hasn’t as best as I recall. But since we didn’t start, it isn’t relevant, and certainly I don’t think I have permission to engage in any truly harassing conduct. What Brett and Tetyana have asked us to stop doing—our acts of journalism and advocacy to a general audience—they have no right to demand of us. I mean they could ask, but I don’t have to obey, because it is protected free speech.
...but they continue to do so and to get others to join them in their bullying.
Of course, there is another vague term. In what sense are we supposedly getting anyone to do anything? Now if we assume that to them “writing bad things about the Kimberlins” is bullying in their lexicon (even though it is legal) to the extent that anyone does that because of anything I wrote, it is because what I wrote was convincing and compelling. This happens in journalism all the time. For instance, there was no deliberate plan in the media to write about George Zimmerman all at once. They just found it interesting on their own, all at once. And to the extent that there has been organized protests but guess what? That is legal, too.
This has caused her serious emotional distress, so serious in fact that she has had to change schools twice because students and their parents read the online bullying and this led to intense bullying and shunning at school.
Well, assuming it has any truth at all—a dubious proposition—it seems to be getting cause and effect mixed up. I mean first she says this causes emotional distress and then she says it is because of the acts of third parties. It helps if we rewrite the passage, so that the first mention of bullying is substituted for what they apparently mean:
This has caused her serious emotional distress, so serious in fact that she has had to change schools twice because students and their parents read the online [writings Brett didn’t like] and this led to intense [unnamed behavior or words Brett didn’t like] and shunning at school.
Seriously, what did the kids do that supposedly counted as bullying? The only thing they are ever specific about is children refusing to come to her house or to have sleepovers. And we were told in another context that once someone supposedly said to K. Kimberlin that her father was going to prison—with little indication on the tone of voice in such a statement. You have to assume that if it was worse than that, they would have said so, so their vagueness is a confession that none of it was objectively that bad. And in any case, they make no effort to explain why I (or John) are legally responsible for it. Bluntly, if this girl has been bullied at school they should take it up with the children (or parents?) bullying her. Not only am I not responsible for their conduct, I have done everything in my power to discourage it.
And it seems that this unexplained bullying is the reason why she had to change schools, not supposed distress she felt because of anything we wrote. In other words, she wasn’t so upset about what we wrote that she had to change schools. Rather, she was so upset because of the reaction of third parties, she wanted to change schools. But if the author wrote it to reflect that chain of events, it would be even harder to believe we intended this result.
This has caused her academics to suffer and taken a toll on her emotional health.
Which is why it is being alleged for the first time, in this case. Color me skeptical. You will also note again the lack of specifics.
She has had severe emotional distress, nightmares, depression, and lives in fear of injury or death from them and what they will unleash against her online or otherwise.
Actually, I don’t see any proper allegation of severe emotional distress. They are missing a specific element of the legal definition, and I am not going to educate the midget as to what is missing. And you will notice that he doesn’t say this is as a result of anything we did. As you will see going forward, what he doesn’t say is as important as what he does.
And what exactly is she afraid of that we will unleash online (or otherwise)? Reporting? Commentary? Advocacy? Maybe her father has told her some tall tales about what we might do, but there is nothing to suggest she had any reasonable fear of us. If she is afraid of us, it is not because of anything we have done or said.
Many parents will not let their daughters be around [K.] because of the false attacks made online by Mr. Hoge and Mr. Walker.
That is probably a reference to the fact that he is now an adjudicated pedophile, which Brett is collaterally estopped from saying is false. Brett’s sense of entitlement here is amazing, thinking somehow it is criminal to warn a community about a potential threat.
Mr. Hoge is a 67 year old man and Mr. Walker is a 42 year old man who have been harassing and stalking our family obsessively and incessantly for the past four years.
By “stalking” he means that we have been 1) writing about him and 2) attending court hearings. Which is not stalking within the statutory definition found in Md. Code Crim. L. §3-802:
(a) “Stalking” defined. -- In this section, “stalking” means a malicious course of conduct that includes approaching or pursuing another where the person intends to place or knows or reasonably should have known the conduct would place another in reasonable fear:
(1) (i) of serious bodily injury;
(ii) of an assault in any degree;
(iii) of rape or sexual offense as defined by §§ 3-303 through 3-308 of this title or attempted rape or sexual offense in any degree;
(iv) of false imprisonment; or
(v) of death; or
(2) that a third person likely will suffer any of the acts listed in item (1) of this subsection.
That does not include peaceable writing on the internet, or peaceably attending a public court hearing. And Brett knows this. For instance, he tried to claim that peaceably coming to court was stalking in his second peace order against me and it was flatly rejected.
They have written literally thousands of posts and tweets about us just to harass us.
Courts have now found three times that we have not. Our purpose is 1) reporting, 2) commentary on newsworthy events, and 3) advocacy of government action. Harassment is not even on the list.
They investigate every aspect of our family and business, and they have compiled and stored gigabytes of data in scores of digital and paper folders about our family.
First, investigating a person’s family or business is not illegal. In fact there are people who do that for a living. They are called private investigators (as well as detectives on the police’s salary). And journalists do the same. So do opponents in lawsuits, in fact they often hire said private investigators and also to do their own investigation. But as a point of fact, we are not investigating every aspect of his family. For instance, where does the younger daughter go to school? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Is K. Kimberlin going to the same school he named in his peace order? Again, don’t know and don’t care.
And, by the way, how can they possibly pretend to know that? We certainly haven’t published on every aspect of his family’s life, leading one to infer we have done so.
As for the statement we have stored gigabytes of data, I think that is true, but even if it is, it is deceptive. As you saw I have linked to Scribd documents. And if you go to my Scribd account you will find many, many other documents. I don’t know if it adds up to two gigabytes or more, but the key thing here is that the vast majority of that data is court papers, and in fact most of it are court papers filed by either 1) Brett against myself or one of my co-defendants, or 2) filed by myself or one of my co-defendants. So in essence he thinks it is criminal to report on court cases he has filed and to share pleadings in said cases. To the extent that we have kept other information, it relates to 1) crimes he has committed against us, and 2) information needed to prove our defenses. And indeed, when we go to court we have to print that stuff out and carry them to court in (gasp!) folders.
Here, dear reader, the fainting couch is over here. I know it is very shocking to learn that lawyers keep information in folders.
Not only is this not criminal, but Team Kimberlin has done the same thing. They have made it clear, for instance, that they know about pretty much every traffic infraction I have committed. And when he turned over discovery in the defamation case he lost last august, it made it clear that he was examining virtually everything about our lives. And that is besides the fact that it was clear that he or an ally had apparently hired a reputation management firm to, more or less, run internet searches for every mention of the word “Kimberlin” including ones that are utterly unrelated to the present case. So if there is a “Ebenezer Kimberlin” doing missionary work in China, even if that person is a complete stranger to Brett Kimberlin, if that person gets mentioned on the internet, Brett knows it. And when he comes to court he has literally piles of documents. I don't remember if they are in folders or not, but there you go.
They conduct forensic analysis of photos and videos associated with us through meta data markings to find patterns and connections.
The only photo or video that was examined for metadata that I know of were the photographs he took of my wife without her consent and subsequently published on the internet. Funny, he doesn’t mention that context.
As for finding patterns and connections, again this is what people do when they are being sued over and over again. For instance, in this filing, I showed how Brett had engaged in a patternof failing to serve people, and connectedhis recent behavior in this respect with other instances. It isn’t criminal to have filed that document. This is just Brett getting angry because we are trying to hold him accountable for his misconduct.
They have sent people to our home to take photographs.
No, we have not, and a court ruling backs us up on this point.
But let’s break this down. First, what this is referring to, obviously, is the John Norton incident. Brett claimed that in June of 2012, John Norton snuck onto his property in order to take pictures of Brett and his younger daughter. Norton, for his part, denies this happened. They both agree that for whatever reason Brett decided to chase him down the road—which you notice would fit the definition of stalking above—and flipping him the bird. And they both agree that Norton photographed Brett while he was acting so erratically.
In any case, Brett has already had his day in court over this. He filed for a peace order against Norton, and a judge found that the story about Norton entering his property (or, technically, his mother’s property) and hiding in the bushes was not plausible.
And that is the only time he has ever alleged anyonecame to his house to take photographs. So even in his allegations there weren’t people sent there, just a person.
Further, saying the word “they,” stating that both John and I did this, is a flat out lie. John didn’t even know me at that time. The first time I met John Hoge was in waiting for my July 5, 2012 peace order hearing and, yes, we became fast friends after this.
And as for the allegation that I sent him, it is equally hogwash. I never even heard of the man until after Brett made his accusations against him. Brett’s entire theory, stated previously, on why he thinks I had anything to do with this this is because we are both from Virginia and supposedly live very close to each other, and because Norton had no other reason to be in the area. Well, he lives in Fairfax, and I live in Prince William County, as do literally millions of other people. And I won’t reveal Brett’s or Mr. Norton’s address, but if you happened to have that data and entered it into Google maps as well as my own address, you would discover that Mr. Norton actually lives about three miles closer to Brett than to my house on the date of the incident. As for why Mr. Norton was in the area, he stated in testimony that he works in Maryland and frequently drives down his street on the way to work.
So in short, much of it is knowingly false, and the rest is false in the sense that it states his unfounded suspicions as certain fact.
And, incidentally, that is not even relevant to a charge of electronic harassment, because it is missing the “electronic” part.
We have had to call 911 several times because of unwanted contacts and we have had to install security cameras and 24/7 alarms.
As per usual, notice what they are not saying. They are not saying that we contacted anyone. In fact, there isn’t even the allegation that they were being contacted. Just that someone was facing unwanted contact. And that is important, because there were reports of people calling his neighbors simply saying (paraphrase), “hey, I just wanted to give you a head’s up about the guy living in your neighborhood.” I don’t encourage that sort of thing, but it is not illegal, and it is not a reason to call the police. As for installing security, Tetyana previously attributed that to his paranoia more than any reasonable fear. Certainly we have not said or done anything that would make a reasonable man think someone might try to harm him or his family.
Mr. Hoge and Mr. Walker have exhibited a disturbing level of interest in [K.] since she was 14 with a multi-year course of harassing and stalking behavior.
Besides the fact that we have neither stalked nor harassed the girl, we also haven’t been very interested in her. John’s mentions of her amounts to noting that she was at this hearing or that and he doesn’t give out her actual name, either. And one time he corrected someone’s mistaken statement about her age. And as I have pointed out on the witness stand, I only talk about her to the extent necessary to cover the story. So did Dave Weigel when writing for the Daily Beast (as I mention in my motion to dismiss), and unlike me, he actually uses her real name.
And how hypocritical is this? He has increasingly put her at the center of his attempt to silence protected speech, but we are not allowed to notice her at all. Basically, as typical with Brett, he can do whatever he wants to you, but if you take any steps to defend yourself it is a crime, somehow, even if you’re only defending yourself in a court of law, or the court of public opinion.
They have attacked her repeatedly, directly and indirectly, through their online presence by falsely accusing Brett Kimberlin of sex offenses and insinuating and imputing that [K.] is in danger.
Bluntly, this was covered by my motion to dismiss, so I won’t repeat myself here. But the short version is that Tetyana Kimberlin, the nominal author of this Application, has herself said that Brett committed sexual offenses against her when she was an underage girl and has stated that she feared for her daughter’s safety. Apparently they think it is a crime to agree with her.
They have stated that she needs to be protected and that they can save her.
Now, this gets into the real dishonesty of the lie about my rejection of the corruption of blood doctrine. On one hand he later says that we have declared her fair game, literally saying that I said the opposite of what I did say. But here he is paraphrasing somewhat accurately the actual point of that passage: that I will shield her from collateral damage from her father’s conduct (by not publishing personal information) because I don’t hold her responsible for her father’s conduct or even all of her own.
And no, we have never said we can save her. I might have said Tetyana would keep her safe or something to that effect in the context of saying I would like Tetyana to gain custody. I am saying I might have said it because I absolutely believed it, and if I believe something sooner or later I will probably say it. But is Tetyana now saying that it is criminal to believe she is best choice for custody of her daughters?
They have trolled her social media accounts and copied pages, photos, videos and posts that she has placed online.
“Troll” is a nebulous term that often translates into “saying things I disagree with.” But it almost always involving talking to the target of the trolling, which neither of us has done. As for his claim that “pages, photos, videos and posts” were copied, that is again probably true and deceptive, basically trying to criminalize basic litigation defense. For instance, when she claimed it was scary that John knew her birthday, Patrick Ostronic produced a copy of her own website that states her birthday on it. When I was trying to show that Brett was a public figure, I included with several filings music videos that he placed online, including this one that won K. Kimberlin a video contest as a little girl:
The video shows Brett Kimberlin (for instance at the 0:52 second mark), in a video later reported on in the Washington Post, and I (gasp!) made a copy of it in order to present it to courts in order to make the argument that he was a public figure as part of my litigation defense strategy. So if K. is literally the person who put the video up then the claim about videos is literally true, but deceptive. And it represents another attempt to criminalize litigation defense.
This frightened her so much that she was forced to take these social media forums private or shut them down altogether.
“This,” meaning the non-trolling and litigation defense I mentioned above. I can’t say if she was genuinely frightened, but I can say she was not reasonablyfrightened, because we did nothing that could be interpreted as frightening.
They have tried to friend and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
John flat out denies he ever tried to “friend” her on Facebook, and while I have an account I literally haven’t done anything with it in years. As for Twitter, he didn’t and I have already recounted how someone pointed me at her Twitter account and I picked up my iPhone the wrong way and accidentally hit the follow button. Everyone who has an iPhone or numerous other touch screen devices know how easy it is to do that sort of thing. And there can be no liability under the statute for unintentional conduct.
And so what? Even if it was all true, friending a person on facebook or following them on twitter is just a way of asking those platforms to give you access to information. If she doesn’t want us to have access, she can prevent that and as indicated in the last passage that is what she did. This isn’t like Schmalfeldt, whom every time you block an account he pops up with a new one, forcing you to play what I jokingly call “whack-a-troll” by blocking each account.
In April 2015, Twitter permanently suspended Mr. Hoge’s Twitter account because it found that he engaged in “targeted abuse” of our family.
Which is true, but it was based on a false accusation, and that action is not even admissible in a court of law. The fact is John’s Twitter account was one of the mildest on the internet. But let me guess, did Brett possibly threaten to sue them if they didn’t shut him down? This is only speculation, but if he did, a corporation caving to Brett Kimberlin is not evidence of anything except their spinelessness.
Mr. Hoge and Mr. Walker have orchestrated campaigns to post vile and insulting comments of a sexual nature on articles about her and on music videos she has uploaded to YouTube.
No, we have not. We have not told anyone to post anything on anything. Now when K. got a glowing article in the Bethesda Gazette, and Brett used that as an opportunity to 1) elbow into her spotlight and 2) lash out at Brett’s enemies, a few people posted there to talk about the serious allegations Tetyana Kimberlin had leveled against her father. Which would be the “vile and insulting comments of a sexual nature” the Application is probably referring to. But if Brett didn’t want anyone correcting the record, perhaps he shouldn’t have lied in an article that was supposed to be about his daughter’s success. And again, those commenters did that on their own.
As for YouTube, I literally have no idea what he is talking about, but this is a good time to note Team Kimberlin’s history of faking comments from others.
They have incited other twisted individuals to pile on against her in perverted and unwanted ways.
And of course you know we have incited nothing. At the bottom of this post and every other post for around three years I have specifically said to leave him and his family alone.
And what does this bit about piling on and the supposed “in perverted and unwanted ways” even mean? I have literally no idea what he is talking about.
They have posted comments on blog posts talking about her “titties” and falsely insinuated “sexual abuse.”
The utterly deceitful nature of that allegation is mentioned in the motion to dismiss, so I will fall back on that. But notice he isn’t saying we said these things, only that we commented in a post where others have done so.
On March 3, 2015, Mr. Hoge 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.
I will note that is exactly how he wrote it, typos and all. I already responded to this allegation in a previous post, so let’s me just re-post my response:
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.
I think the only thing worth adding to that is that Judge Williams evaluated John’s comment and said that the intent was obviously not to harass. So, here they are trying to claim harassment, again, after a judge found against them.
They have contacted the police and falsely told them that there is child porn at our home and that she is being watched while undressing.
That is simply a complete fabrication. I have never made any call to the police similar to that, and John has told me he hasn’t either.
They have said that she is a proper target for online harassment because of “corruption of blood.”
Again, I took that apart in my motion to dismiss. I have said literally the opposite of that, and the only time John used that phrase was to point out that Brett was lying about what I said.
They have communicated with Tetyana Kimberlin and offered her money to make false statements to get [K.] taken away from us.
Again, utterly false. We didn’t offer her money, period. We offered to raise money for a lawyer. We never asked her to make false statements and to this day I don’t believe she made any false statements against Brett. And our goal in providing the help we did provide wasn’t to make both parents lose the kids, but to help Tetyana Kimberlin gain custody. Which, by the way, is a legal goal.
They have undermined [K.’s] budding music career by forcing us to take measures to protect her from their creepy, scary behavior.
As noted above, the fear is not justified and so far they haven’t alleged anything that is creepy or scary. And I point out how wrong it is to use criminal law to help her music career in my motion to dismiss.
They have attacked people who support [K.], including reporters.
By “attack” they mean criticize. And actually, I am not sure I or John Hoge have even criticized the reporters who have covered her family. I have criticism of some of that coverage, but I don’t remember if I voiced it, honestly. And guess what? That is legal. Criticism of the media is protected under the First Amendment. Sheesh.
They have threatened to take depositions of her and her friends to ask about sexual topics.
This isn’t entirely false but there is a context. As regular readers know, Brett threatened to sue us for calling him a pedophile and ultimately lost that suit on the issue of truth. That is why I call him an adjudicated pedophile. But when he was first threatening to sue us, I pointed out that if he did we would have the right to depose K. Kimberlin and her friends. I mean if you sue someone for calling you a pedophile, you can’t act all mad when they suggest they might try to investigate whether you have touched other young girls, and even attempt to prove it. So once again, he is trying to say that basic legal defense is criminal.
Oh, and when Brett did sue us, he did make his daughter testify about sexual topics, in the sense that she was asked if Brett had made any passes on her. And who asked her this horrible question? Brett Kimberlin. We had no questions because the testimony was so irrelevant. And this was done after Judge Johnson repeatedly asked him not to do it. It is one of the few times I heard John really get angry in dealing with this, when he listened to all the bench conferences from the trial when the judge was telling him not to put his daughter on the stand. Funny, that didn’t make it into the Application.
Anyway, it goes on a bit on some stuff setting up a discussion of the last peace order hearing against John. Then the Application says this:
After the hearing, the Judge stated that Mr. Hoge (and Walker) were engaged in “child abuse” through their online bullying. She said that they may very well “end up behind bars.” She said that hearing the testimony “broke her heart” and said that no child should ever have to go through this relentless bullying.
Of course what they leave out is how the judge walked back the comments after a long recess, presumably after realizing how far she left the actual law (and the First Amendment) behind. They also leave out that at that time, Judge Creighton wasn’t supposed to be opining on criminal matters at all, and has subsequently announced her resignation, effective this week.
It goes on a bit about Grace’s law, saying little that bears on the case. But then it says:
Two grown men who have been told repeatedly to leave our family alone have bullied [K.] for years. These men know the suffering and distress they are causing and that is why they do it. They want to cause maximum harm through their online bullying.
No, the only true sadist in this story is Brett Kimberlin.
And no, we don’t know it is causing any genuine distress. Their claiming that it has is literally no evidence in my mind. And further, even if K. is distressed, in my opinion is more likely because Brett has made us into boogeymen that doesn’t match any sense of reality.
And I have already explained why I cover this story.
They celebrate every day by telling their readers to “get out the popcorn” while the [sic] mock, harass, bully and abuse the Kimberlin family.
By “mock, harass, bully and abuse” he means “report on, comment and advocate for justice.” And of course the focus is and always has been on Brett. As for getting out the popcorn, I was asked about this in our August trial, and this is the relevant exchange.
Kimberlin: I have another question. On a lot of your blog posts you put this graphic, popcorn graphic, you tell people to get out the popcorn, can you explain that?
Walker: Let’s see, I believe very strongly in the idea of being a happy warrior to show cheer, and you know, even in the face of adversity. You have been suing me, filing peace orders, filing criminal charges, et cetera for almost three years now, Mr. Kimberlin. And so it is my way of showing people that I am cheerful as I do this. Get out the popcorn, we’ll have some fun.
Kimberlin: This is entertainment, right?
Walker It’s what, am I supposed to cry every time you sue me, Brett, it’s getting to be tedious.
Kimberlin Every time I sue you. How many suits do I have against you right now, Mr. Walker?
Walker: Oh, let’s see here. You’re presently suing me in two courts including this one. You’ve also filed two peace orders.
And that is pretty much the end of the typed pages. Now let’s go to that that hand written page that is not apparently written by Tetyana Kimberlin. I won’t go line-by-line because much of it is redundant but I’ll hit some highlights.
He has assaulted Brett Kimberlin sending him to the hospital.
No, Brett Kimberlin tried to frame me for that crime, as the Circuit Court has found.
And really in the written part on my application, that is the only new thing. Everything else is redundant rehash of the bull in the typed pages.
As for John’s, well, it is the same typed complaint, but it has slightly different written parts. After accusing John of harassment and abuse, it says:
It has also occurred on Mr. Hoge’s alter ego blog, “The Thinking Man’s Zombie.” [ed: we will call it TMZ, not to be confused with the gossip site.]
To those who are keeping track, Brett’s friend Bill Schmalfeldt first said in one suit that he doesn’t know who TMZ is (he calls him “Paul Krendler”), then in another suit says for certain he knows it is a man named Patrick Grady, at the same time the other suit is going on and he’s pleading ignorance.
And now the author of this Application is claiming Johnis TMZ.
Of course, we all know what is really happening. This is my opinion, mind you, but it fits the facts. I believe they really aren’t sure who TMZ is, but they figure if they, say, file criminal charges against John, maybe one of two things will happen: either the real TMZ will come forward in order to protect John, or John will name names in order to save his own hide. And a similar strategy is being pursued with Patrick Grady, only with the threat of civil damages instead of criminal conviction. And of course that depends on that person feeling real fear of those consequences, which is weird because John and I knew from the beginning that the charges against us were going nowhere, and Schmalfeldt’s lawsuit against Grady is dumber than usual for him. And even if the criminal and civil complaints based on TMZ’s writings were valid (and they are not), how do I say this? It is hard to prove what a person actually says on the internet. It is almost impossible to prove what they didn’tsay. So I doubt that Grady or John are in any fear of a jury falsely deciding they are TMZ.
He has sent emails to Tetyana Kimberlin saying he wants to save [K.]
Actually I don’t believe he’s ever put it that way, but I wouldn’t be shocked if John said to her that he wanted to help Tetyana Kimberlin get custody over K. because Tetyana told him her husband was a danger to his daughters. And certainly John has sought to help Tetyana gain custody of her daughters, by loaning several thousand dollars to a legal defense fund to hire her a lawyer.
We know Mr. Hoge only from him attacking us online.
Which is utterly false. Tetyana also knows him from meeting him in person and accepting his aid. And there are many, many witnesses to that fact.
And the rest of that hand-written part is redundancy.
So once again, three years later, I find myself coming up on the July 4 holiday with freedom of speech vindicated. Back then I was wrapping up a story I couldn’t tell because of a court order, and this time it is vindicated by the end of frivolous criminal charges. The cynic might think that this is just another case of Brett wasting our time and the state’s resources and getting away with it. But each time it happens, the officials in question get closer to deciding that he is a problem they can’t ignore, and that the solution is sending him back to prison, again. The surface might look placid, but there can be powerful currents hidden underneath that. Every day, with every mistake, we come closer to justice.
So have a good Fourth of July... and let freedom ri