If you are just coming in to this story, you are probably more than a little confused by what I posted yesterday. I apologize for that. I promise I will take the time to walk you through it soon, hopefully starting today. But with this post I am going to fill you in on two important pieces of the back story.
For almost a month now—until yesterday—I have been subject to a flagrantly unconstitutional prior restraint on my freedom of speech.
How flagrantly unconstitutional was this restraint? Well, at the hearing discussing it the judge disregarded controlling Supreme Court precedent by name—something I will talk about later. I promise, dear reader, I will tell you bit by bit about my experiences on May 29, being arrested on false charges again, in retaliation for having engaged in protected speech (not to mention the SWATting incident last night).
But if you are thinking that a District Court judge in Maryland—essentially a small-claims judge—has no authority to ignore controlling Supreme Court precedent, you would be right. So I urged my counsel in that case, Reginald Bours III, to file an emergency motion to stay part of the peace order in the Circuit Court where the case is being appealed. I know it has been around, but here’s a copy of it embedded here for your convenience:
(By the way, I try to redact all personal information from these documents, such as home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. I didn’t redact Mr. Bours’ professional contacts, because I figured he would enjoy the free advertisement. But in the case of personal information, if I missed anything in my redaction, let me know and I will fix it ASAP.)
And here’s Kimberlin’s response, offering poorly sourced new factual claims by this convicted document forger and pretty much nothing on the law.
And notice of course he is trying to set me up as the mastermind of the internet or something—indeed of the world. Somehow I control what Michelle Malkin, Robert Stacy McCain, etc. write and control the alleged actions of third parties. And just to be clear, I don’t know if this Norton or Maher are guilty of any wrong-doing, but I never heard of either man until Kimberlin filed against them—criminal charges against Maher, and a new peace order against Norton. If they did anything wrong—and every claim Kimberlin makes is presumptively false in my mind until proven true—they not only didn’t do it at my wish or command, but it was against my desires. I have only asked for justice through the courts, and not through private violence, or threats of the same, or any other lawlessness as my new regular disclaimer makes clear.
So that is what was on the docket yesterday. As required by due process, Mr. Bours informed Kimberlin Wednesday that he was going to meet with the duty judge the following Monday. In this case, that was Judge Rupp.
And the moment I heard that, I smiled. Judge Rupp, you might remember, was the same judge who presided over the contempt hearing way back on January 9, the same hearing that was followed by the January 9 incident. Now it is true that I felt that Rupp was irritated by my presence, but I think reasonably so. My motion wasn’t on the docket. And at the same time, this also meant that Rupp had been exposed to Kimberlin’s prior attempt to abuse the courts to oppress me, and to suppress Seth Allen’s protected speech . As I wrote over a month ago:
And listening to [the hearing], my fear that [Judge Rupp] didn’t get it—that he didn’t know about Kimberlin’s horrible criminal background—was unfounded. And to be self-critical, I should have figured that out from listening to the other hearings that day. What struck me as I listened to the other cases (Kimberlin’s was the last to be called), was that this judge had clearly done his homework. He knew most of the files back and forth and remembered a great number of details from every case off the top of his head. So I should have known that even though Judge Rupp had not sat in on the whole case, that he would have read the majority of the relevant documents, which would have brought out Kimberlin’s deplorable past. Now in one moment I will share with you an embedded copy of the whole transcript and you can read through it at your leisure, but here’s the moment where it became the most clear that Rupp got it, that he understood exactly who Kimberlin was:
So my gut instinct told me that it was a very good thing that Rupp was there.
I met briefly with Mr. Bours yesterday morning and stayed behind at his office as I waited for word to come in. Ultimately it sounds like it was very simple. Kimberlin didn’t even show up. Bours did present Judge Rupp with Kimberlin’s response and Rupp apparently noticed that it was almost entirely bereft of, you know, law.
This means of course that the order below should not have been granted. Rupp has determined that only speech that violates the Brandenburg standard can be prohibited. And just to review, this is what the Supreme Court said in that case:
the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
You can search this blog or my twitter account in vain to find where I did anything of the sort. Indeed as I stated I court, I actually took steps to prevent vigilantism against Mr. Kimberlin:
[Walker] I have told the world about what this man did to me, but it’s all I’ve done. Now I know, Your Honor... that when you... say to the world, “Someone has done something evil,” that you do obviously have a risk of things like violence and things like that. It’s inescapable. But I have never incited violence. I have always told people every time they have said anything violent in my presence, I said, “I don’t endorse violence even as a joke.”...
On top of that, I put numerous, numerous, numerous primary documents on my website. Many of those documents originally had [Kimberlin’s] home address, had his phone number, had his email address, etcetera, etcetera. I carefully redacted every single instance of that. I didn’t put any current photos of Mr. Kimberlin on the website[.]
What the court held below and Brett Kimberlin believes is that we are not allowed to say anything bad about him on the internet, or else we are automatically responsible for any unlawful conduct by any third parties. Folks, if that is the rule, that is the death of journalism. By that logic, Woodward and Bernstein could have been enjoined from covering Watergate if Richard Nixon started getting death threats. Under that rule, the New York Times and the Houston Chronicle could be enjoined from reporting on Enron if Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were getting death threats—and it seems safe to assume they were. Likewise Attorney General Eric Holder can get a peace order against Brian Terry’s parents, Kent and Josephine, from speaking out about the death of their son if he gets death threats, if the Vaughey/Kimberlin rule is upheld.
Or for that matter, consider the conduct of Velvet Revolution. No, not the Original Velvet Revolution, which made a Downfall parody that made me cackle with laughter:
(Hitler was probably be very mad about yesterday’s news--I wonder if he did the SWATting.)
No, we are talking about Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution, which includes on its site this denunciation of Bush-era interrogation techniques:
[U]nder the Bush administration, torture was authorized by George Bush and kept secret using classified designations. The White House requested legal memoranda to support its use of torture and it received those authored by a host of attorneys, including John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury. Attorneys who advised, counseled, consulted and supported those memoranda included Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Michael Mukasey, Timothy Flanigan, and David Addington.
So by Kimberlin’s logic, his site is inciting violence against all of those people. If a single one of those people get a death threat, according to Kimberlin’s logic, it is his charity’s fault and it can be enjoined from making the claim that the Bush Administration tortured prisoners. Indeed his band Op-Critical has made a music video protesting our treatment suspected terrorists, starring Brett Kimberlin as the suspected terrorist. He’s a method actor, I suppose. So I guess he has incited violence against those “torture lawyers” too.
Which is, of course, ridiculous and more importantly not the law. Brett Kimberlin and Velvet Revolution are entitled to believe that what the Bush Administration did to suspected terrorists is torture and morally wrong and they are entitled to peacefully protest it. Whether you agree with them or not, they are allowed to believe that and to speak their minds. But I am allowed equally to criticize the public figure Brett Kimberlin, to accuse him of reprehensible conduct and not be found to incite against him unless I also advocate the use of force or of law violation, where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action—in other words, the Brandenburg standard. And anyone can see I have done no such thing.
Oh and I told Patrick about how I uploaded Kimberlin’s response last night and he discovered something very interesting... As they say, read the whole thing.
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Disclaimer:
I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed communication. I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on his property. Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him. Frankly try not to even been within his field of vision. Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report. And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request. As you will see by the time I am done telling my story that this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
And let me say something else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you haven’t don’t start.
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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sound fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence. If you would like to donate and help my wife and I in this time of need, please go to this donation page or use the PayPal buttons on the right. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
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