I Transcribe Much of the Peace Order Hearing Between John Norton and Brett Kimberlin
I have been a little under the weather, with a summer cold, so it has been light blogging, but this was too good not to blog about. Today in the mail I got a copy of the audio from the peace order hearing between John Norton and Brett Kimberlin, which I talked about here, and here. I got a copy of this because Kimberlin accused me of somehow controlling Norton’s conduct in a document I shared with you here, so I wanted to see what else Kimberlin would say about me in this hearing and plus I was just curious in general.
Now, I am basing this report entirely on the audio itself. So, for instance, I am unsure of the name of Norton’s attorney. It sounded something like “Shiller” but I am not certain enough to go on record on that. And I don’t know who the judge was. All of this could be easily verified by trying to get in contact with Mr. Norton, but for legal reasons it is a really bad idea for me to get in contact with Mr. Norton, even in my capacity as a reporter, so I won’t. But I will leave it to other journalists to do that kind of work. I will reiterate that I didn’t even know the man existed until Kimberlin filed a peace order against him.
And, of course, all the caveats that applied to the last post transcribing from the peace order hearing apply here. And indeed I suspect that having witnessed the July 5 hearing live, my transcription is more likely to be accurate than one I didn’t see live. I will add that the judge had a tendency to make a lot of small comments like, “yeah,” and “I see” barely under his breath as a way verbally encouraging people to talk. I decided to skip the tedium of transcribing all of that. (And don’t take this as a knock on the judge. I do it, too, as does something like 90% of the population in my opinion.)
But there is a real bombshell here. Brett Kimberlin perjured himself, again, and it is fairly egregious. It comes when Norton’s attorney (who I just designate as L for lawyer), is cross examining Kimberlin:
L: The only questions I have, the only... you are [a] convicted perjurer, correct? Correct?
K: Yes, when—
L: Alright.
K: —I was nineteen years old. Thirty and forty years ago.
L: Alright, and you’ve been in prison for bombings, correct?
K: Sir, we are talking about the last thirty days.
L: Correct?
K: That’s what this issue is about, you know you can try to attack my credibility. Your client took the picture, your client—
L: Sir.
K: —was at my house.
L: Sir, answer the question.
K: I want to be left alone.
L: Correct?
K: I want to be—
L: Correct?
K: —left alone.
L: You’ve been in prison for bombings, correct?
K: No, I haven’t.
L: Where you served prison time, correct?
K: No.
L: [louder, more stern.] Correct?
K: Yes.
L: Okay. And it was related to bombings out of state, correct? Multiple bombings.
K: No. You know, I’m not going to get into that. You know, if you want to talk about—
L: No further, no further questions.
K: Okay, no further questions.
So you see him remarkably deny going to prison for the Speedway Bombings. Yes, he changed his mind a moment later and told the truth, but that is not a defense under the perjury statute.
Then Kimberlin is given a chance to speak again and once again, he accuses a lawyer who is asking proper questions of harassment:
J: Is there something you want to tell me as a result of that question?
K: No, I want to tell you that this is what these guys have been doing, Mr. Norton and his whole clan [Klan?] of extremists, you know, have been talking about stuff that happened forty years ago, thirty four years ago, and coming after me with it, and acting like I don’t have a right to be a father and to be a good citizen in this community and to be the director of a non-profit and all kinds of other things. This is a kind of harassment, and he’s doing it again, right now. I want to be left alone. That’s part of the harassment statute, I’ve asked these people over and over.
This is familiar. Indeed, in his November 14, 2011 hearing with Seth Allen, he claimed Seth Allen was harassing him by asking him about the same events in court. From page 56 in the transcript:
THE WITNESS: It was, it was, you know, over and over and over and over and over, and this is what, this is what it comes down to, you know. This is what stalking is, and this is what this man has done to me and he continues to do it right now. He’s harassing me right now, bringing up 32 year old things, cases, you know.
THE COURT: That’s not harassment. It’s directly related to --
THE WITNESS: Well, okay.
THE COURT: -- reputation.
Now the danger of front-loading the lede like this, is that you are jumping in, in the middle. For instance, you might reasonable wonder what Kimberlin was talking about Norton doing—coming to his house, taking pictures? So let’s back up, a little bit.
As you might remember, Kimberlin claimed that Norton was lurking in the bushes and taking pictures of him. Norton as you will see disputes that. They both agree that Kimberlin chased him down the street—with his eight-year-old daughter in the back. And there is no dispute that Norton took a picture of him when he was behind him, for it was in one of the exhibits to Kimberlin’s response to my motion for a partial stay. Just so you can see what we are talking about, here is the picture:
Now I have said that I wasn’t going to publish a current picture of him and I don’t consider this to have broken this rule. I have zoomed in as close as possible on my own copy, and I can’t make out either person in that car. If you didn’t tell me that was Brett Kimberlin, I would have had no idea. His obscene gesture is clear enough, but his actual face? Not at all. And of course I can’t see his daughter except as a silhouette either. Later the judge claims you can make him out; I will assume that the version the judge was looking at was clearer than mine, because I cannot and I don’t believe any of you can from the picture. If I thought you could, I would have edited their faces out of the picture.
One thing that is also interesting is that Norton’s lawyer agreed with me—he argued that neither petition should have been granted. He also said that his client was willing to promise not to go near Kimberlin anymore, but not under a court order. Kimberlin didn’t accept that compromise.
So let’s get into the rest of the testimony and the rest of this will be in chronological order. First up, Kimberlin tells the judge what he wants:
J: Tell me why you want this [peace order]?
K: I have a peace order against another man named Aaron Walker and we had a hearing a few weeks ago in front of Judge Vaughey. Judge Vaughey found that Aaron Walker was using proxies—
L: Objection your honor.
J: Well, as a result of that hearing before...?
K: As a result of that hearing I got a peace order against Mr. Walker, and following that peace order, I got many, many death threats that came through email, I have bunches of those if you want to see them. People telling me not to come to court...
Breaking in here, it is his testimony that he received a threat not to come to court... after he won the peace order?
Continuing where we left off:
...not to be snitching on these people, they... saying they had pump gauge shotguns—
L: Objection, Your Honor, relevancy.
K: I mean you can see “Dear Brett Kimberlin with a pump gauge shotgun”...
J: Well—
K: I’ve had to call 911 three times. My wife has called 911. I’ve had to get criminal charges against other people.
He goes on to claim he installed security cameras everywhere, and made the police aware of his situation. Then he gets to the events of June 15, 2012:
K: I walk out of my house, whatever day this was... Jun 15. My daughter was playing a couple doors down the street in front of a neighbor’s house with another young lady, and I was supposed to pick her up at four o’clock. So at 3:55 I walked out—
J: It’s in the daytime.
K: Yeah, in the daytime.
J: Okay.
K: And so I walked out of my door, to go pick her up, and I see a man lurking behind the bushes in the corner of my property and I was kind of taken aback by it. But I kept walking toward my car because I had to pick my daughter up.
J: Now was that in the general direction of where the man was in the bushes or in the opposite?
K: The man was facing the road, the— to the left of the— on the left side of my house there’s some bushes towards the road and my car was right in front of my house. And so I walked out and I was a little spooked by this, but, you know, it’s a nice neighborhood and people are always walking around, and I didn’t really… And then I see him with the camera, or a cell phone, or something, starting taking pictures and he jumps into a red, convertible, Mitsubishi Eclipse. And by this time, I’m getting in my car, and he pulls up beside me and he’s taking a picture of me.
At that point, he is asked to identify the person allegedly who did all of this and Kimberlin identifies Norton.
K: And so I turn around, obviously I was concerned about my daughter. You know, I didn’t know if anything had happened to her, I was scared, so I turned around and I went to the neighbor’s house. She was right there in front of the house. I put her in the car and Mr. Norton is driving away, and so I—
J: Have you ever seen this man before?
K: Never seen him before in my life.
J: Every seen the car before?
K: Never seen the car before.
J: Alright.
K: So I followed the car, and went around the corner, and there was a stop light. I pull up behind him and he’s... again it’s a convertible, and he reaches around with a camera, again, and takes more pictures of me. I gave him the finger, I admit it, you know, I don’t like a guy coming out in front of my house taking pictures of me and my kid.
And so then he calls the cops, they give him the name of the owner of the car: John Norton. He doesn’t, by the way, note any steps he took to prove Norton was actually driving the car that day. He just assumes the owner was the driver, you know because no one ever loans out their car to anyone else... (Note: sarcasm.)
One thing I noticed is that everyone was playing coy about the motives of everyone else. Here Kimberlin acts like he has no idea why anyone would be interested in him, even though his conduct as been the subject of international news stories; later Norton says he has no idea why Kimberlin pursued him down the street.
J: Now let me ask you this, you don’t know why he was taking pictures of you, no?
K: I don’t—
J: You can speculate.
K: —why he was taking pictures, but then what happened was, I found... I got a tip from somebody that—
L: Objection.
J: Well, you can’t tell me what somebody said, but...
K: The picture of my car, that was posted on the internet by the client of the man that I had the peace order against. So I get kind of freaked out that, you know, this guy is somehow related to the guy who I had a peace order against, Mr. Walker.
Now as we will find out in a minute, Norton tells us that he posted this on the internet for all the world to see. So to put the sequence of events in correct order, Norton posts about this on the internet somewhere. Kimberlin’s long-time nemesis Seth Allen finds out about it somehow, thinks it is funny or amusing and posts the picture himself as well, and Kimberlin thinks that somehow this is proof that 1) Allen is in communication with Norton and 2) as Allen’s former attorney, I am somehow the puppet master behind all of this. I suppose if I post a picture taken by TMZ of Julia Roberts in a thong, Kimberlin they will say I am personally stalking her (as opposed to the photographer himself).
Kimberlin then admits he hadn’t seen Norton since then and we continue with the testimony:
J: I don’t want to embarrass you, but I’m trying to figure out why of all the people in the world why people have something to do with somebody else?
K: It boggles my mind.
J: I mean is this an interpersonal relationship, situation, or anything like that?
K: I’ve never met this man in my life, never knew who he was, I have no clue why he’s coming to my house, I have no clue why he has posted stuff, but I have a feeling it has to do with this guy who was stalking me. I believe it is kind of a course of conduct, it is meant to intimidate me and threaten, and instill fear in me and my family.
Orrrr... it was just a man curious about another man who is a local celebrity, being a convicted terrorist and whatnot.
Then we get Kimberlin being cross examined, which I already showed you, but I wanted to repeat one part you might have glossed over, where he says,“I want to be left alone. That’s part of the harassment statute, I’ve asked these people over and over.” That is crucial. He repeatedly talks about asking “these people” to leave him alone. But there isn’t a single word in the testimony where he asked John Norton to leave him alone. And as I stated before, that is absolutely necessary under the harassment statute—you cannot, as a matter of law, find harassment unless the target asks you to stop. So that is the slight-of-hand Kimberlin pulled—he gives the judge the impression that he has told John Norton to leave him alone, but he hasn’t.
Then Norton gets on the stand (designated as N):
N: I do not live in Maryland.
L: Do you drive on the road where Mr. Kimberlin lives?
N: On occasion I do.
After a few minutes:
L: Did there come a time when you ended up coming into contact with Mr. Kimberlin?
N: Not any physical contact, but he did chase me down in his car, the picture he showed, shows him behind me, flipping me off. I don’t know why he chose to chase me down. I was not on his property, I have stopped my car on [Kimberlin’s street name omitted].
L: What brings you on [Kimberlin’s street]?
N: It is a bail out route on my commute.
L: And where is your commute?
N: I commute between Bethesda, Maryland, and Fairfax, Virginia.
At this point, the judge tells someone, probably Kimberlin, he can sit down [Update: Please note, originally I accidentally claimed that the next part was Kimberlin's testimony, not Norton's as it actually was. Thanks to Matthew in the comments who pointed this out].
L: And on June... what’s the date here? June 15, is it? June 15, you said, what brought your attention— what caused you to take out your phone and take a picture of the car behind you?
N: When I was on River Road, I saw what turned out to be Mr. Kimberlin’s car driving erratically, cutting in and out of lanes, trying to catch up to me, tailgating me. We reached the stoplight at River and Burdette, he pulled up... you can see how close in the picture, how close it was. He... he pulled out a pen and [unintelligible] furiously scribbingly as if he wanted me to know he was writing something down, he was revving the engine in his car, and for me, I thought, “some crazy person is chasing me down, I need some evidence, I need some protection.” So I picked up my phone and shot about seven seconds of video, from which the picture of him flipping me off was taken as a framegrab.
His lawyer gets into how he learned about the peace order, from an email of the proprietor of a low-rent blog:
L: Prior to receiving that [an email discussing the peace order] had you known where Mr. Kimberlin lives?
N: I knew that he lived on that street.
L: Prior to the peace order.
N: Prior to the peace order.
L: How did you know that?
N: I had knew that because I have read articles about Mr. Kimberlin describing his activities, and they said he lived in Bethesda, they described the organizations that he was with and those organizations were on [Kimberlin’s home address omitted].
After asking him about Kimberlin’s organizations:
L: Now, are you associated with Aaron Walker, any [sic]?
N: I am not.
L: Okay. And, did you go to his house on June 15, to take pictures, get out of your car and take pictures?
N: I did not go to Mr. Kimberlin’s house. I did not get out of my car. I did not take pictures at his house.
L: Alright. And what caused you to post the picture of Mr. Kimberlin flipping you off on the internet?
N: Well, first of all, for protection to make sure that it was publicized, that someone had chased me down and was flipping me off. And also, honestly, I thought it was kind of funny.
L: Okay. Do you have… [some stuttering] What did you post it on, what site?
N: I posted the picture on a hosting site called tinypic.com [sp?].
Norton goes on to say he had no intent on going back there, even if it is more convenient, traffic-wise. Now the next part describes a Google maps picture he brought to court that day:
L: Now this picture that you took of Google Maps, is to show—
N: I thought it important to show the layout of his house, how it was on the street, given the fact that... that the first paragraph of his complaint was logically inconsistent, and I wanted to show why that was logically inconsistent.
Breaking in, here’s what Kimberlin said there:
On Friday, June 15,2012 at 3:55 pm, I opened the door of my home at [address omitted]. Bethesda, Maryland, in Montgomery County, and saw a man lurking on the left side of my home. I walked toward my car to pick up my a-year old daughter when I noticed that the man jumped into a red Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible and raised a camera to take pictures of me getting into my car. He then took other pictures of me as I drove away to pick up my daughter. I turned around and followed the car in order to get his license plate number, which I did while stopped at a red light at Burdette and River Road. The man then took another picture of me and my daughter at the red light.
Resuming the testimony:
L: Alright, and what you’re referring to is the fact that he says that he, that he was going out to pick up his daughter, right?
N: That is correct.
L: And that... and you were driving past, or got into your car and drove away, and then he turned around and you took pictures of him and his daughter.
N: That’s correct.
L: So it would have taken him too long to drive down the street, pick up his daughter, turn around, come back...
N: That would be correct. Because he caught up with me in less than a mile.
Next the judge asks Norton why he wanted a peace order against Kimberlin.
J: What’s the basis of your complaint against Mr. Kimberlin? You’re asking for a cross-petition.
N: The basis for my complaint, is Mr. Kimberlin does have a history of being in prison for violent crimes, regardless of his denial, he was imprisoned for the Speedway Bombings in Indiana. People that get tangled up with him in court tend to have bad things happen to them. I’m not saying he does them, I’m just saying that you know police gets called on those people, and he also has a history of using peace orders to engineer violations of those peace orders, and I felt that it was very important that if he had a peace order that required me to stay away from him, that I have one that required him to stay away from me, so he could not come in proximity, get a violation and call 911.
Which is a pretty eloquent explanation why, practically speaking, Mr. Norton would want this protection, but it is not sufficient as a matter of law. And once again, Norton’s attorney argues that neither peace order should be granted. But as I mentioned above, Kimberlin pulled that slight-of-hand that made it sound like he met an element of the statute that he hadn’t.
Anyway, Norton offers to delete the photo from Tinypic, or whatever the site is called and the court renders its verdict—one month peace orders for both men, lasting until August 1. But what is interesting is the judge doesn’t find Kimberlin credible:
J: As to Mr. Kimberlin, the court isn’t sure of whether Mr. Norton was there or not. Mr. Norton says he wasn’t and Mr. Kimberlin says he was, so the court’s not sure about that. And if that the end, if that was all, that would be the end of the case. But unfortunately, while I know there’s protected speech, Mr. Norton put something on the internet which in the court’s view significantly escalated what was an isolated incident, he put on the internet Mr. Kimberlin’s house and his address, some other indications about the like [sic], that the court finds very, very unusual, and I find this to be... the court considers it a form of harassment, frankly.
As for the claim that Norton was putting his address, etc. out there, there was no evidence that Norton had done anything more than post the picture above, a point his attorney tried to raise at that point, but it was brushed aside.
L: Does it make any difference in the court’s mind whether or not the address and the house was displayed, because there was no evidence to that [crosstalk—unintelligible]
J: The court thinks that when he put that on there and someone is interested, that they would be able to ascertain who it was.
Again, the judge’s copy of the picture must be much better than mine, because nothing in the copy I have makes that clear.
And that was the end. I could hear in the background someone talking about an appeal, but there is a real question what the point of it would be. The peace order only lasts until August 1 and there is no way the appeal would be heard in that short a period of time.
Still you are getting to see a familiar tune. Once again, Kimberlin committed blatant perjury, and once again a district court judge granted peace orders on insufficient petitions. But Kimberlin’s perjury underlines why the State’s Attorney must do something about this situation. Kimberlin has once again brazenly lied to the court about facts in the public record—the fact that he was imprisoned for the Speedway Bombings. A current perjury conviction would tell the courts that this is not a man to be trusted, that it is not merely forty year old conduct, but it is current and ongoing.
So once again I will give you the information you need to write to the State’s Attorney and urge his prosecution for this latest act of perjury:
[Y]ou can write to the State’s Attorney of Montgomery County. I did not name the subordinate responsible for the inaction, but ultimately it is the responsibility of John McCarthy, the State’s Attorney himself. You might also consider writing to the Governor, or the Attorney General of Maryland. Be polite. You will not help me by being foul or insulting. Simply state that you believe a grave injustice has been done to me—if you happen to agree—and ask them politely to see to it that justice be done.
This is his office’s contact information:
State’s Attorney for Montgomery County
50 Maryland Avenue, 5th Floor
Rockville, Maryland 20850
240-777-7300
Let us keep this push alive with fresh allegations of perjury. Keep up the pressure to act. It is all we can do to get this guy off the streets.
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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. 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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Disclaimer:
I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed communication. I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on his property. Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him. Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision. Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report. And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request. 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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