[This post is part of a larger series of posts. See here for a fuller explanation.]
The most horrifying part about this is how effective this man has been in convincing people to act on his lies. You have seen it suggested here and there in the last section as I focused on unearthing every example of his lies about the incident but yes, using these lies Brett Kimberlin has done the best to make my life hell for the last few months and succeeded to a disturbing degree.
It began on January 9, 2012 after the incident. One thing to understand is that my wife actually worked at the same company as I did. I called her to let her know the hearing was done and to give her an overview of what happened and she told me that a detective from the Fairfax County Police had come by. I won’t name him publicly, but she told me that he knew of Kimberlin and was interested in discussing the case with me. When I got there, I discovered that he was a specially trained detective in counter-terrorism and he came there out of concern for that letter Kimberlin wrote to law enforcement authorities. So I sat down in the office of the head of the Human Resources Department and discussed the situation with him in her presence.
Anyway, I also learned by the end of the day that both my wife and I were being suspended from our jobs. It turned out that the President of the company and some of her receptionists were in such complete apprehension that Brett Kimberlin might commit an act of domestic terrorism on their building that they no longer wanted me or my wife to be there as a target. They told us we were suspended without pay until the situation was “resolved”—whatever the hell that meant.
You will notice that I am leaving the name of the company, or indeed the names of any of their personnel, out of this. The reason why I am doing this is because the story I am about to tell makes them look awful. There are no two ways about it. But at the same time, I don’t have any malice toward them. I don’t blame them; I blame Brett Kimberlin. As I wrote to Patrick just the other day, “don’t think too harshly of [the President.] She’s just scared.” The company is in fact an excellent health care agency, that is successful in treating patients in every way you can objectively measure. And the President of the company herself has a “Horatio Alger” story that would make any patriot’s heart proud. I didn’t like how they treated me (and you won’t like it, either), but I bear no malice toward them.
On the same evening, I got that email from Beth Kingsley forwarding where Brett Kimberlin had informed her that he filed his false charges against me. This was second degree assault, for which a person could be sentenced up to ten years in prison. Now one of the things I had done as a corporate counsel for my company was internal investigations of allegations of wrongdoing. I am very good at investigations. And so I immediately started going over events in my mind and thinking of how an investigator would approach it. I knew that Kimberlin had a very old woman as a companion that day—you can see her in the video. There was also an old man there. I didn’t know the old man’s name, but I thought it was very likely that he was an ally of Kimberlin. So I believed it very likely that Kimberlin would have two people there to lie for him and just my word to back me up.
(By the way, it turned out that I was wholly wrong about the old man. He was a stranger to Kimberlin who was only there because he enjoyed watching trials. But I didn’t know about this until much, much later.)
But I also knew enough to believe that there was very likely to be a video camera pointed in that direction. But I honestly wasn’t sure. So on the tenth or eleventh, I came back to the circuit court building and looked in the 9th Floor’s waiting area. I could see, for lack of a better word, a large “pole” dangling from the ceiling, with the familiar security camera dome underneath it. But unlike most security camera domes, this one was transparent, allowing us to see the machinery inside. What I saw looked like there were three cameras, one of which pointed toward where the incident occurred. But I couldn’t be certain from where I stood that it was a camera.
So after a little asking around I figured out where the sheriff’s office was. I met with a nice man and asked him if anyone had taken footage. (I am not going to name him because I don’t want to bring public opprobrium down on him.) I knew enough about these security systems to be concerned that the footage might be deleted if it was not preserved. So he went back into their offices while I waited outside, ostensibly to examine the footage. When he came back he said he looked at the footage and told me remarkably that in fact there was only one camera in that dome, and it was not pointed in the correct direction; that they typically left it pointed toward the elevators because apparently that is where most incidents occurred. To this day, I have no explanation for the discrepancy; I have no idea why he didn’t think there was any footage of the event.
So I was faced with the prospect of Kimberlin possibly getting two other people to lie for him—after all, as the parole examiner noted, he had a history of getting friends and family to help him in his schemes—and just my word to back me up.
But at the same time, I believed prosecutors would probably take one look at my clean criminal record and Brett Kimberlin’s horrifying criminal record and at the very least it would raise a major red flag. As near as I could tell at that point, these were just his charges filed, and the State’s Attorney had to decide whether to go forward with it and I felt confident that the charges would be dropped in a week.
That Friday, meanwhile, I got a call from an attorney who had served as my company’s outside counsel when that was needed. He informed me that they had decided to terminate my employment. They had not immediately decided on my wife’s employment, but they eventually terminated her early the next week. They were literally so scared that they wouldn’t even let me come back to my office and retrieve my stuff. They ended up using a courier to send me my materials a few days later including something like nine boxes of law books. I think the poor courier got a hernia. I have no idea whether the criminal charges against me factored into the decision.
Also shortly after I got a copy of Kimberlin’s Application for Statement of Charges, I visited the State’s Attorney’s office. I asked them politely if I could speak to one of them about the charges pending. I knew from reading the Application that he had told verifiable lies. I mean you didn’t need video to show that his claim that after the deputies arrived, “Mr. Walker tried to come at me several more times but was restrained” was fantasy. You simply find out which deputies were present and ask them if that was true—and soon, before memories faded. I also wanted to make sure they knew about Kimberlin’s deplorable past, including his conviction for perjury. But apparently as a policy they will not talk to people they have charged. And that has indeed been one of my greatest frustrations in this whole process: the State’s Attorney was making decisions about my life without once allowing me to give them my side of the story.
Meanwhile, on January 17, Kimberlin filed a motion to unseal the documents. It was entitled “Motion to Unseal Pleadings Related to Aaron Justin Walker aka Aaron Worthing.” By placing my real name in the title, he ensured that all a person would have to do is search the Maryland Judiciary Case Search website and they would see my name; they wouldn’t even have to go to the trouble of going to the courts and getting a copy of the documents! This is a copy of that document (exhibits omitted):
I do not believe it is a coincidence that he filed this that day, and indeed made sure I had a copy of it right away by email. You see the following day (January 18) was the original date for the hearing to determine whether a Peace Order would be placed permanently on me. But I filed a pair of motions a few days before. The first was a motion to continue until February 8, which was granted. The second was a motion to clarify the Peace Order. You see it stated that I shall not contact Kimberlin, but I knew I was getting ready to sue him (and Brynaert and Rauhauser) in the State of Virginia for their conduct and as a matter of law I am required to serve copies of the documents upon them. We lawyers call this service of process. So I asked the court to either clarify that legally required communications by mail did not constitute a violation of the Peace Order, or modify the Peace Order accordingly. The judge said that it was implied that I was allowed to make legally required communications, such as service of process, but she also granted the motion to clarify. This will be important later.
On the same day I went to a nearby restaurant with a wi-fi connection and while my wife ate lunch, I tapped out an “Emergency Motion to Place Plaintiff’s ‘Motion to Unseal’ Under Seal” and then printed it out and filed it. I have had some data loss in my computer, but I believe that this is the final version of what was written. If it is not identical, it is only trivially different:
The motion was granted immediately sub silentio, with the court actually going as far as to change the name in the internet database so that my real name was replaced by John Doe as I requested. This was as clear an indication as Kimberlin should have needed that the court didn’t want him to put my name in a public document.
But then he did it again. On January 27, 2012, Kimberlin filed a “Plaintiff’s Response to John Doe Aaron Worthing’s Emergency Request To Seal Plaintiff’s Motion” and this time he included an un-redacted, unsealed version of the letter to the law enforcement I shared with you earlier, thus putting my real name, real address, and the name and address of my former employer into this public document. But at least he didn’t put it in the title of the document, this time. This is a copy of that document (with the exhibits, including the offending exhibit, excluded):
So I was forced to file another emergency motion to seal one of his motions. I also had to take the time to rebut his blatant lies to the court. For instance by this point in time I had published a novel I wrote on my spare time. You can buy it here, and read a little more about it, here. All you need to understand in this context is that it contains a gritty, realistic depiction of what a real-life superhero would look like in our post-9-11 world, with my character spending most of the novel fighting against islamofascists of various stripes and Chinese intelligence agents. And this is what Kimberlin wrote about it:
Mr. Worthing published a book this month called “Archangel,” which amounts to a direct assault on Muslims worldwide. It is an alternative history of September 11, 2001 in which a superhero appears and kills all the Muslims, including the female Muslim “bitches” and jihadist “whores.”
That is right, according to him, my main character supposedly “kills all the Muslims.” I admit I am not even sure what he means by that. Is he claiming that my character killed every Muslim alive? Or just any Muslim the character sees? (And how would he know a person was Muslim just looking at them?) Here’s what I wrote in response to that little bit of dishonesty (SPOILER ALERT):
This is demonstrably false. The character does not kill all Muslims on Earth or even all that he sees. Indeed, he saves the lives of many Muslims. A large sequence of the novel involves the hero saving a Muslim-American CIA agent and the Iraqi family he is embedded in from Saddam Hussein’s evil regime and he does so with the aid and under the command of several Muslims who are part of an American Special Forces Unit.
Indeed, the term “Muslim bitch” only appears once in the novel and is depicted as being said by an intolerant character which the superhero stops by his superpowers (telekinesis). Here is full context:
[Michael Sanchez, the superhero in the story] landed to find a couple drunken, angry youths chasing a woman in a Muslim veil. The woman stumbled because her ability to flee was hampered by clothing that covered her entire body except for her eyes. The youths fell in toward her, a dangerous mix of fear and hate filling their hearts.
“Stop!” he shouted, and threw up his hand, his palm flat out. The charging men knocked back as if they had hit a brick wall.
“Why are you taking their side?” one shouted.
“This isn’t up for discussion,” he said, “if you run away now, I won’t turn you over to the police.”
“Don’t walk alone at night, Muslim bitch,” one said, as they both turned and jogged away.
So rather than “kill[ing] all the Muslims, including the female Muslim ‘bitches’” the superhero is actually depicted as saving a Muslim woman from men filled with “hate and fear” who call her a “Muslim bitch.” Meanwhile, there is not a single reference to a Muslim (“Jihadist” or not) as a whore. It is a complete fabrication.
(SPOILER ALERT ENDS)
Indeed as one reviewer at Amazon wrote:
My favorite parts of this book deal with the reality of Muslim and Arab heroics. The bravest character in the book isn’t the superhero, but rather is a Muslim woman evolving from respect to fear of Saddam Hussein. Many of the heroic soldiers presented have Middle Eastern heritage. One of the heroes cites Islam when making highly moral judgments. The truth is, this book also takes a highly critical look at Islamofascism and a barbaric dictatorship, but it doesn’t generalize Islam. There’s no PC pretense. There’s no Rah Rah they are evil pretense. The world is more complex, and this story is more complex. The closest it gets to simplistic is a flashback scene discussing civil rights in America, but even then the effort to be realistic is evident.
This was one of many examples of this convicted perjurer lying about me to try to portray me as a Muslim hater, particularly for having participated in the Everyone Draw Mohammed movement. In doing so he ignores inconvenient facts, such as the fact that self-identified Muslims participated in the protest at my site, or the simple reality that he cannot quote a single word I have said negative about Muslims generally. I have always made it clear that I drew a sharp distinction between the ordinary Muslim (who is no better or worse than most people), and Islamofascist terrorists and tyrants.
The other thing that is interesting is that in his “Plaintiff’s Response,” Kimberlin writes in paragraph 15 that “Plaintiff [Kimberlin] has known of Mr. Worthing’s true identity for a month[.]” He wrote that on January 27. Here’s what I wrote in response:
Conservatively, that means the Plaintiff has known of Mr. Worthing’s identity since December 27, 2011. This means that the Plaintiff allowed Mr. Worthing to take the time and effort to file before this court on December 29, 2011, without informing him or the court that his subpoenas were mooted. This means that the Plaintiff allowed Google.com to file its response on January 5, without informing them or the court that his subpoenas were mooted. Indeed, the Plaintiff didn’t even serve his Motion to Withdraw on Comcast so that they needlessly sent the Plaintiff their response without knowing he had moved to withdraw the motion, on or about January 10, 2011.
Further, since the Plaintiff is now confessing that he knew the real name of “Aaron Worthing” when he sent this settlement offer [on January 3, see above], then this is also a confession that he made that offer in bad faith. In that settlement offer, the Plaintiff stated that “I will not make any future attempt to identify Mr. Worthing in any manner.” This implies that he had not yet identified Mr. Worthing’s true identity, but according to his filing today, he had already done so by that date.
Later in the April 11 hearing, he claimed that he knew of my identity since December 31st. Anyway, you can read my entire response, here. It was also a victim of the data loss I mentioned (basically a thumb drive I owned went kaput) but if it is not identical to what I filed, it is only trivially different:
Indeed, a sharp eyed reader will notice that I accidentally failed to censor out one mention of my real name in the document. I then had to go through the somewhat ridiculous step of having to move to put my own motion under seal. But while the court happily put all of Kimberlin’s motions under seal, oddly the court refused to put mine under seal. I was going to move that the court reconsider that, but I also knew at the time the decision was made that I was very close to writing a post like this. So I decided to hold off, in case I was wasting the court’s time.
After all that, I also filed my actual Opposition to his Motion to Unseal. You can read that, here (again, exhibits omitted):
And shortly after this he filed a motion for a hearing. I never filed a formal response to it, but it was denied anyway. You have to really love the part where he likens the pro-freedom-of-expression Everyone Draw Mohammed movement with being in the KKK, when he writes: “He has no more right to remain anonymous than do Ku Klux Klan members who wear their robes and hoods wile screaming invectives against African Americans.” In fact, to the extent that the KKK doesn’t have a right to anonymous speech, it is because it is a terrorist organization engaged in “activities, involving acts of unlawful intimidation and violence” NAACP v. Alabama Ex. Rel Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 465 (1958). But it is interesting that he thinks that a person peaceably expressing a point of view is stripped of their rights if the court doesn’t like his or her viewpoint. Of course, that is not what the law says.
And as usual it was dishonest. For instance, it mentioned that the Virginia suit included my real name, etc. What he didn’t mention was that there was a motion to seal filed in that case too.
Anyway, here’s that motion for a hearing:
Through all of this, I was also getting ready for the final peace order hearing on February 8, but it was like beating my head against a wall. The sheriff’s department had written reports that day, but they refused to give me access to them. I did happen to run into Deputy James Johnson, who was one of the deputies there that day. He answered a few questions that prepared me for his testimony on the eighth. And he was willing to give me his name but not the names of any of the other deputies; he was concerned his supervisors would frown on that. Worse yet, there was no process for discovering facts like this before the trial. I couldn’t depose Deputy Johnson, nor could I serve their custodian of records, Lt. Col. Sherman, with a subpoena duces tecum to obtain anything like an incident report ahead of time, and I was not getting all of the information I needed voluntarily. I will say as a gentle criticism to authorities in Maryland, that if you are going to take away a man’s freedom to any degree, you need to have more due process than this.
So I had to go to the February 8, 2012 Peace Order hearing with almost no objective evidence to prove my side of the story—certainly with no video evidence because I didn’t even know that the video existed. I did have Deputy Johnson there to testify that he saw no sign of injury on Brett Kimberlin after this supposed assault that supposedly temporarily robbed him of his eyesight. And I had Brett Kimberlin’s willingness to lie about everything in my corner. That helps.
For instance, one of the biggest whoppers Kimberlin made was when he tried to minimize his criminal background:
I was, I was charged with a crime 33 years ago. I was released from prison. I’ve done my time.
Got that? He was only charged with only “a crime.” Singular. He does the same thing later in the transcript:
He throws this criminal case that I was convicted of 33 years ago in my face constantly.
Again, it was just one case. That’s all. Or so he wants you to think.
So I let him have it in response:
He, for example, said that he was convicted of a crime. He has 35 counts conservatively against him. He has been convicted of setting eight bombs in six days in Speedway, Indiana. He has been convicted of conspiracy to distribute 10,000 pounds of marijuana. He’s been convicted of perjury and he comes here to this court and says [“]I was convicted of a crime?[”] This is the character of him. He lies about everything.
(Emphasis added to reflect how I said it.) By the end of the hearing, even without the video evidence I showed you today, the judge couldn’t conclude I had done anything more than what I always admitted to: taking the iPad from him. But unfortunately the judge misread the harassment statute and found that I had harassed him.
In the background of all of this, Neal Rauhauser started talking about an event called Kookpocalypse that was supposed to take place on February 6, 2012, placing things on his websites such as videos of beheadings and the promise that “something wicked this way comes.” If you know the reference, you know it is talking about blood. He also posted how to get to Manassas, Virginia, and Boston, Massachusetts—where both I and Seth live. I try my best to keep some of this ugliness from my wife, but she insisted on knowing and at times it reduced her to a crying wreck she was so afraid. I am more stoic as a rule, but I recognized I had a rational reason to be concerned. So we took a few days to prepare for whatever he was up to. I filed for a Temporary Peace Order against him and got it. Given that Rauhauser was being intentionally vague I was pleasantly surprised they granted that much and not actually very shocked when they didn’t grant a permanent one about two weeks later.
I also purchased a handgun. I had owned a shotgun since law school for home defense, but I wanted something I could more easily carry in public. As they say, better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. And I made sure Kimberlin’s crew knew I was armed, to make them realize that I was not defenseless.
In the end, the only thing that happened on “Kookpocalypse” was Rauhauser releasing a long and unhinged screed sketching out his conspiracy theories. I can only speculate about whether this was what he was planning all along, or if he was scared off of his original plans by the Peace Order. It’s also worth noting that I had two additional Peace Order hearings related to that. The first had to be continued because Rauhauser had not been served. That was also on February 8. And Kimberlin decided to try to intervene in that. He filed a motion to intervene and claimed falsely that I was being dishonest, playing dumb on the difference between where a person currently lives and where their last known address is. I knew that Rauhauser on that date lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, but I did not know his actual current address. So for the Virginia litigation I listed his last known address, which was in Illinois.
His attempt to intervene was very quickly shot down because he had no standing in this case; he had no right to intervene. And as a point in fact, I didn’t tell the Sheriff’s Department that Neal lived in Kimberlin’s house. I told them that they were associates (as Kimberlin admitted) and therefore Brett Kimberlin almost certainly knew where he lived. Then approximately a week later I was back in court again for the Rauhauser Peace Order. And Kimberlin came again, and tried to intervene again on the same motion to intervene. He didn’t even bother to write a new one; he just tried to assert, a second time, the motion that had already been denied. Again, remember that Kimberlin was claiming I was stalking him. Kimberlin was dismissed quickly. But since “Kookpocalypse” had passed and Neal had been so vague in the first place, it didn’t quite surprise me when the judge decided not to issue a Final Peace Order.
At the same time, to my growing horror, the criminal case remained in place. So I did a few things to try to shake things up. First, I filed my own criminal charges against Kimberlin, for perjury at the November 14 hearing (for denying his parole had been revoked), for extortion in threatening to file a false criminal charge against me (in his “Settlement Offer”) and for filing a false police report. I had two goals in filing that. First, I believed that he did commit these crimes and hoped he would be taken off the streets. It’s not fun having to check your car for bombs every time you go to drive it. Second, I figured that filing this complaint just might force the State’s Attorney to talk to me—something that thus far they refused to do. Here’s a copy of what I filed:
(Please note, that I made an irrelevant transcription error when quoting from Kimberlin’s Application for Statement of Charges.)
Please note that the first page of my copy is as unreadable as yours; it was a carbon copy and it didn’t press through too well. Sorry about that, but it was all basically a condensed and very conclusory summary of what I wrote in the typed pages. As you can see I also filled out a criminal complaint against Rauhauser, too and combined it into one document. But for some reason, the commissioner only filed the charges on the perjury against Kimberlin. The following week, on February 7, I met with people in the State’s Attorney’s office. I had hoped for a chance to discuss the whole case but because the Commissioner only certified the perjury charge, that was all they would hear from me. Which was frustrating.
I also filed at about that time that civil suit in Virginia based on their misconduct, you have heard mentioned a few times.
And shortly after the final peace order hearing, I began shopping around for local counsel in the criminal case. By then I had concluded that there was a prejudice in the system towards anyone representing themselves—which didn’t disappear when the person in question is actually himself an attorney. And frankly I wanted the division of labor you could enjoy when the advocate is not also the victim. It is hard to be dispassionate when dealing with a man who was literally trying to get you and your wife killed, frame you for a crime, and in general ruin your life. We ended up hiring Reginald Bours III, justifiably considered one of the best lawyers in the area. But it ended up costing about $7,000 in total. This was indeed why I went very silent about all things Kimberlin—out of respect for Mr. Bours’ wishes.
And already things started to change. Some of it might have been my doing. The supervising prosecutor (I won’t name her) said there was a “cross-complaint situation” that was complicating matters, meaning that they noticed my criminal complaint against Kimberlin. But at the same time, Bours spoke to Lt. Col. Bruce Sherman and Sherman told Mr. Bours that there was video footage of the event. We didn’t have a copy of it at that time, and I can’t disclose the full conversation between myself and my attorney, but the description of the video was similar in content to the video you have seen, but understated the detail conveyed. But I knew from the moment I heard of the video that if it was as good as promised it would exonerate me—as I believe it does.
Eventually, remarkably, my criminal complaint against Kimberlin was dropped on February 23, 2012. I won’t name the official who dropped it, but I will quote the email that he wrote: “I have reviewed the case and determined that an insufficient factual basis exists for the case to go forward. Consequently, it will be nol prossed as soon as possible.” (“Nol prossed” is criminal law slang for filing a nolle prosequi which is just a fancy way of dismissing the case.) You can scroll up, read what Kimberlin said about his parole not being revoked on November 14, 2011, and see if the prosecutor’s analysis seems logical to you.
Meanwhile my attorney had put in his request for our constitutionally-mandated discovery, including a copy of the video. Time marched on and we kept getting closer and closer to the trial date. We were getting signs that the case would be dropped, but how can I say this? I didn’t think it would’ve gone this far in the first place, so I didn’t feel like it was finally over until it was actually, officially dropped. I was told by my attorney on or about March 16, to expect it to be dismissed any day. But then Kimberlin filed an opposition to the decision to drop the case, which I have discussed before, above. That would be the third time he had attempted to intervene when he had no right to intervene.
So finally a few days later, they dropped the case. I asked soon thereafter if I could have the record expunged and they explained to me that in order to that I had to release everyone from liability—including Brett Kimberlin. Which was galling. I said to them (paraphrase):
I understand why you might want me to let the State of Maryland off, but why should I have to let Brett Kimberlin, a private citizen, off the hook? The man attempted to frame me for a crime I didn’t commit. If there is any case where expungement is justified, it’s this one. And yet then I have to let this guy off the hook for what he did to me.
So as of right now, I can’t get it expunged.
At the same time, they still hadn’t given me a copy of the video. I learned later that they had given a copy of it to Kimberlin by then—indeed I believe they gave it to him before he filed that opposition. But they didn’t give me a copy, even though they had been required to by the Constitution. But showing a willingness to work with me, the prosecutor assigned to my case agreed to give us a copy. Then some bureaucrat tried to claim I had no right to it because the case was over. Finally around April 5 or 6, they gave it to my attorney, but he told me on April 9 that it was a strange format that wouldn’t work on any of his computers. I began to think perhaps I had died and gone to Tantalus’ version of Hell. The next day I brought two of my laptops to his office and tried it out on them. It ended up working on a very old Toshiba that literally had a crack running up the plastic on the back side of the monitor and with very little battery power.
And then finally, I got to see the video. And it was better than I hoped for. It made it clear that almost all of his story was a fabrication.
I immediately emailed Mandy Nagy, Patrick and Dustin, who had been following this story very closely as my friends (yes, by then all three of them were good friends). You can read the email here, but the subject line said “I got the video and it proves everything!” The rest of the email said simply, “But transferring will be challenging... Still, very happy.” It was an iPhone email, so there was only so much I could write. And then to make sure they saw it, I tweeted shortly afterward “@Liberty_Chick @Dust92 @Patterico very good news. Check your email.”
I also started calling pretty much all of my friends and family to tell them about it, between meetings with my attorney, including eventually Mandy, Patrick and Dustin. My joke to all of them was: “I have the video. It’s real and it’s spectacular.” Picking up on my reference, this led Dustin to tweet to me a link to this video as a winking reference to my news:
This was a big deal because the next day was the appeal for the Peace Order. You see if you lost in the District Court you could appeal that decision automatically to the Circuit Court for an entirely new trial (a trial de novo, as we lawyers call it). Testimony, evidence, etc. from the first trial could be introduced into evidence in the new trial, but Kimberlin would start the case at square one.
By the way, Brett Kimberlin, hiding on the internet under (ironically) a pseudonym that we were able to crack, has insinuated that the “very good news” was that supposedly my lawyer bribed the assignment clerk to arrange for a supposedly friendly judge. He has no evidence for this, but that didn’t stop him from his libelous insinuations. Under another mask, he has also claimed that prosecutors were bribed to drop the case. So he didn’t start losing because people started to see the video that proved him to be a liar. Of course not! Everyone was bribed, or so he says; who knows what he really thinks.
Anyway my criminal lawyer, Mr. Bours, had agreed to help me out in the Peace Order hearing. I think it is fair to say that Mr. Bours had been looking forward to cross-examining Kimberlin. He had read Mark Singer’s book about him, knew all about his deplorable criminal past, and now he had the video. So I think he felt a little “cheated” when the case was dismissed without going to trial. As my advocate he was surely glad that the case was dismissed, but surely part of him was looking forward to the cross examination and was glad to have a crack at it in the Peace Order appeal.
And I believe something else about him. Defense attorneys have it rough. Obviously every person, however scummy, deserves zealous representation, and lawyers like Bours are vital to making sure that no one is convicted unless there is proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Still, Alan Dershowitz has supposedly said that over 90% of all criminal defendants are guilty, and I think that is about right. Bours says that to him a lot of the time it’s about getting people the help they need, a somewhat liberal view of his clients I don’t personally share. But I have to also think that it was a nice change for him to be able to represent an innocent man.
By the way, as Kimberlin was wont to do, he had already filed a motion claiming I was in contempt of the Peace Order. It was denied summarily because the case was on appeal. Here’s a copy of it:
So basically his entire argument that I was in contempt was that I served process on him in my Virginia suit. As you would recall (I told you this would be important later!), I had filed a Motion to Clarify before the District Court the first time I came to court in Peace Order, back in January. Using it, I sought to clarify that the prohibition on contact did not include legally required notices, in the mail, such as service of process. The judge said that it was implied that I could do that, but granted the motion to clarify anyway. But in doing what due process of law required me to do, and the District Court specifically said I could do, Kimberlin claimed I was now in contempt. The mind boggles.
Of course I don’t think there was any sincerity in this. I don’t believe he really thought a peace order in Maryland could command the courts of Virginia. I believe he just filed this motion to annoy me.
So the day after we got the video—April 11—we went to court and it went very well. I will mostly let the transcript speak for itself. But what it came down to was that Kimberlin couldn’t even make his case; that is we didn’t even have to present a defense, his case was so feeble. After Kimberlin rested his case, my attorney stood up and said this to the court: “I’m going to ask that you make a finding now that the petitioner has not met, even initially, the burden of proof required under the statute.” And the court agreed. And it gave Mr. Kimberlin a ten minute long “bench opinion.”
Now Kimberlin has claimed that the judge found that I committed assault. But in fact the judge was considering only Kimberlin’s presentation without considering anything the defense had to say. And technically taking an iPad from a person’s hands would ordinarily be an assault—if no defense applied. Just as intentionally shooting a man is ordinarily murder—unless you can validly offer a defense, such as self-defense. So the judge said:
What occurred? An item was snatched from your hands. If this was an assault trial, perhaps the evidence would be sufficient beyond a reasonable doubt, without addressing possible defenses, that an assault did occur. Obviously wrestling something from somebody, he assaulted you. That occurred. He did. He assaulted you.
(emphasis added.) So all the judge was saying was that as a matter of law, taking the iPad from him would be considered an assault—unless that act was justified or excused. And I had a justification: self-defense. The judge never had the chance to consider the defense, because the defense was never required to put on a case—because Kimberlin’s presentation was so weak. So the judge did not, contrary to what Kimberlin insists, find that an assault occurred. It would indeed be improper for a court to find an assault occurred unless it first considered any defenses.
And then the judge gave him a lecture on the First Amendment. I will embed the entire transcript in just a second and I suggest you read the whole thing. But here are some juicy excerpts:
We’ve reached a point in this society where people think they have a right not to be offended. Where did that come from? You read about it every day in the paper. Somebody is offended by something and wants somebody to apologize. Where did that come from? Where is the right not to be offended?
So there’s a lot of annoying conduct that perhaps might be rude and would cause Emily Post to turn over in her grave. I don’t know if she’s still alive or not, but manners -- and just for the record, I am not suggesting that the respondent doesn’t have proper manners or anything like that. But what I am saying are examples of annoying conduct, things that people can do that are just annoying.
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.
You say that things have been written about you that are not right. It is a dangerous, dangerous argument to make that a sanction should be entered against people when they choose to exercise their First Amendment constitutional rights just because it’s annoying.
Now let me say, parenthetically, there are civil remedies available if someone defames someone, however, truth is a defense.
So if a person says somebody has a record and, in fact, they do have a record, you’ll have a hard time getting a judgment in a libel or slander case. If someone said someone had a record for something that, in fact, they didn’t do that was, in fact, false and it caused the individual harm, then they perhaps would have a cause of action.
And this went on for a good ten minutes, dear reader. Really, part of me wishes that we had full motion video of this, with sound, if only so I could show Seth Allen how pitiful Brett Kimberlin looked at the end of this. He looked like a whipped dog.
And there is something else to note in that Peace Order hearing: Kimberlin implicitly admitted that I was an honest person. You see several times, Kimberlin stumbled on the issue of authentication. He wanted to introduce statements I had made on the internet but the judge kept insisting that he prove that I was the one who wrote it.
THE WITNESS: On or about December 20th, I wrote to Mr. Walker, who I believed at the time was named Aaron Worthing, an e-mail asking if he would cooperate in providing some information about a stalker that I had sued in Judge Jordan’s court named Seth Allen. Mr. Walker responded –
MR. BOURS: Object.
THE COURT: Sustained. That’s hearsay.
THE WITNESS: I went online and saw Mr. Walker’s response where he posted on his blog, Allergic to Bull, that “Brett Kimberlin, convicted terrorist and perjurer” –
MR. BOURS: Object. Your Honor, I object
THE WITNESS: This is something I read.
MR. BOURS: This is not self-authenticating.
THE WITNESS: This is something I read and it shows his harassment of me.
THE COURT: Okay. Understand something. In this book, Subtitle 5, these are the rules of evidence that this Court is governed by. People in the public think that if you get something off the Web, all of a sudden it’s admissible in court. It couldn’t be further from the truth. It still has to be authenticated, like any other document.
THE WITNESS: All right.
THE COURT: Spiderman could be putting stuff on the Web. You have to be able to authenticate it and you can’t authenticate that.
THE WITNESS: Well, I can tell you what I read and I can --
THE COURT: I can’t consider what you read. These rules of evidence have been tested over time and they are there to protect you as well as people who are accused of doing things.
THE WITNESS: All right. Well, when Mr. Walker testifies, then I’ll ask him if he wrote these.
THE COURT: That’s up to you. I can’t tell you how to try the case.
THE WITNESS: That’s the only way I can get it in.
So basically there was a situation where all I would have to do is lie, and say I didn’t write what I in fact did write, and he would be completely stymied. And yet he still expected that I would tell the truth, authenticating what I wrote. He makes the fact he expected me to own up to everything I actually did write even more explicit, later:
THE WITNESS: I’m trying to explain that. He called me terrible names and --
THE COURT: Where was he when he called you terrible --
THE WITNESS: On his blog.
THE COURT: How can you prove he did that?
THE WITNESS: Well, I prove it when he gets on the stand.
Again, if I denied it, he wouldn’t be able to admit the evidence; and yet, he knew I wouldn’t deny authorship (if it was genuinely my writing). He knew that I, unlike him, would tell the truth if asked, especially under oath and therefore if I only took the stand, he would be able to authenticate all of it.
On the other hand, Kimberlin once again didn’t tell the truth on the stand about his deplorable background, particularly the revocation of his parole:
Q You were subsequently involved in this case where bombs were set off and people were hurt, correct, known as the Speedway Bomb[er]?
A Yeah.
Q You were convicted of a number of counts on that, correct?
A Yeah.
Q And a man who was injured in those bombings actually killed himself because of his severe injuries, correct?
A I have no evidence of that. I have no information about that.
Q You were sued for it and there was $1,000,000 judgment in favor of his widow against you, right?
A Yes.
Q It was a condition of federal parole that you pay that judgment, correct?
A You’re getting into nuances.
Q Well, it’s not a nuance that your parole was revoked because you didn’t, is that correct?
A Not exactly[.]
Anyway without further ado, here is the transcript itself of that hearing. And of course you have figured out by now that if Brett Kimberlin tells you that the sky is blue on a sunny day, you should get independent verification of it, so don’t make the mistake of trusting that any of his assertions are true.
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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.
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