Exclusive: Transcribing the Audio from Thursday’s Hearing in Kimberlin v. Walker

This is a follow up to this post; so I suggest you read there, if you have not been following along.  But let me give you the basics in the background.  Last Thursday, July 5, 2012, I had a peace order hearing against Brett Kimberlin.  This was what we call a de novo appeal—a whole new trial—of a district court decision granting Kimberlin a peace order that not only forbade me from going to his house or his employment (which I never tried to do, anyway), and from contacting him as the term is ordinarily understood (directed communications, such as phone calls, letter, email, text message, etc.), but Judge Vaughey then went even further into truly unconstitutional territory:

Respondent shall not contact the [petitioner] in person, by telephone, in writing, or any other means. And “any other means” is putting it on a blog, a Tweet, a megaphone, a smoke signals—what else is out there—sonar, radar, laser.  Nothing.

All of this was based on the theory that writing bad things about Brett Kimberlin on the internet was inciting others to violence.  The district court drew this conclusion explicitly rejecting Supreme Court precedent that requires, among other things, that the person accused of incitement actually has to advocate for violence or other lawlessness, something I have never done.

As I outlined in a series of posts called “The Story I Couldn’t Tell” (introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5) this was flagrantly unconstitutional, and I so argued in a motion for a stay I filed almost two weeks ago, which was promptly granted by Judge Rupp.  And it is worth noting that after that victory I was SWATted—that is, someone called in a false report to emergency services claiming to be me, claiming I had shot my wife, with the hope of prompting a dangerous police response.  There is much more in the prior posts on all of these subjects and about the day of, but that should be enough for you to follow along.

So Friday, I took a drive to Rockville, Maryland, and obtained copies of the audio from yesterday’s hearing.  Now, first, court rules prevent me from just uploading the audio and letting you listen.  This is unfortunate, because mere text will never convey just how angry Brett Kimberlin was at one key moment.  Indeed I really wish we had courtroom video so you could see his body language.  But perhaps the other journalists there, David Hogberg and John Hoge* can back me up on the key parts.

Second, I am not crazy enough to transcribe every word, but I will give you some important parts.  I transcribe a lot of it, but not all of it.

Third, I will note that I am not a professional transcriptionist.  I am just a guy listening and doing his best to capture what is heard.  There might be subtle conventions of how transcripts are made that I miss, and I simply might hear things differently.  For instance at a key moment there is so much cross talk, I didn’t know how to capture it.  When I get the transcript, I will upload it myself, and I will almost certainly defer to it as the definitive version of what was said, unless there is a particularly egregious and material mistake.  But I also promise you that I will make my transcriptions as accurate as possible and my mistakes will be honest ones.

And I will note that I generally left out the ums and ahs and just plain stuttering that occurs, in everyone’s speech involved, making this a relatively clean read.  Sometimes a person would say fully formed words in very incomplete ways, and I captured that as best I could so you could decide for yourself what you think they were trying to say, because it does create some ambiguity.  But other than that I cleaned up everyone’s speech, including Brett Kimberlin’s.  And on very rare occasions, I will add words in brackets to further clarify what I think is being said.  I will not delete or substitute words in that fashion, though.

But using that recording, I am going to give you the most complete version of Thursday’s events so far, and I am even going to correct a couple errors I had made.

For starters, the hearing actually took about an hour, not forty five minutes.  I had thought it had started at 11:00 a.m. and went to about 11:45.  It actually started at 10:50 ish, and went to 11:50ish, give or take a few minutes.  And my line in the last post about Kimberlin claiming that The Army of Davids was some kind of “extremist Christian militia” was wrong.  He called them a “Christian group” with the “extremist militia” part being implied, rather than being stated outright, as you will see.  I apologize for the error and particularly apologizing to anyone who relied on it.

But let’s dive into the hearing itself.  All of this is in chronological order.

I am going to abbreviate the names of the players as follows.  J = Judge Rupp; K = Brett Kimberlin, B = Reginald Bours, my attorney; and I only say one thing of value, so I just wrote my name out.  No one else spoke.

Early on the Court asked Kimberlin what he was seeking:

J: And what is it you’re asking me to do?

K: I’m asking you to keep him from harassing me and stalking me, both directly and online.

Kimberlin early on tried to go on and on about the assault that didn’t occur, but the judge showed little interest in this.  This is how the court summed up our background, early on:

J: I get the picture.  You and Mr. Walker don’t get along.

And early in the proceedings, Kimberlin tells the judge what he thinks I did to harass him:

K: Once the State’s Attorney decided not to prosecute his case against me for perjury, he decided, he chose to start an online campaign against me, he said to pressure the State’s Attorney to prosecute me and send me to prison.

After Kimberlin complained for the first time that I wrote that he attempted to frame me for a crime I think Judge Rupp was trying to tell him that this was not inherently harassment—that you needed more, such as a threat or genuine incitement to violence or lawlessness.

J: Mr. Kimberlin, I am really not interested in all of that.  What I am interested in is what evidence is there... as I understand it you’re claiming stalking and/or harassment, and I’m interested in that and that’s it, I’m not interested in what you two are saying about each other.

K: Under Galloway, harassment has to do with unwant—

J: I’ll decide what constitutes harassment.

K: Okay.  I’m just saying, unwanted conduct.  I’ve asked him to leave me alone.  I just want to go on my way and all that. He has chosen to say that I’ve framed him for a crime and he has gone online and incited hundreds of other conservative bloggers to attack me over the last 45 days.  There’s been over 31,000 tweets that have been sent out about—

Bours: Object.

K: —me...

J: You need to [unintelligible] this is all hearsay Mr. Kimberlin, I’m going to sustain the objection.

K: And this incitement by Mr. Walker has resulted in dozens, scores of death threats against me... death threats.

J: Well, do you have any evidence—

K: Yes, I do.

J: —of any of that?

K: I have lots of evidence.

He presented the supposed threats—all from third parties, if they are even genuine—to my attorney and ultimately to the judge.  I didn’t get a good look at it myself, but from afar it appeared to be almost identical—if not completely identical—to the exhibits he presented in his response to my motion for a partial stay of the peace order.  This led to an objection by my lawyer:

B: I am going to object because...

J: Petitioner’s 1…

B: All of it is hearsay, none of it is specifically connected to my client, Mr. Walker.  It appears under various names and there is just no connection shown by the documents themselves.  They are not self-authenticating by any stretch of the imagination.

K: Your honor—

J: What is there about these documents leads you believe—

K: There’s some—

J: —Mr. Walker is the source of these documents?

K: Some of those documents say, “don’t show up in court, or you’re going to die,” that was [referring to] the previous peace [order] hearing.  One or two of them say, “I am writing on behalf of Aaron Walker, you’re gonna die.”  Things like that.  Another says that “the Army of Davids,” which is some kind of Christian group, “is poised to attack you, and we’re just waiting for the order,” and things like that.  So, there’s very specific information there.  Also I’ve got, I’ve had a lot of threats by phone.  I actually had to file criminal charges against a man named Martin Maher in Florida.  He said, in his, in one of his calls—

B: Object.

Breaking in, the objection is based on it being hearsay.

J: Sustained.

K: I’ve had to call 911 three times, me and my wife.  The police have been out.  I’ve had to file another peace order against another man, who came out taking pictures in front of my house.  This was all—

J: I don’t see any reference in here to Mr. Walker—

K: Well, I can point it out if you’d like me to.

J: —whose name isn’t mentioned in any of these.

K: In some of the emails it is.

J: I just read all of them.

K: Mr. Walker started a campaign started the campaign against me.  It’s cyber stalking.  He incited others to target me.  And even after Judge Vaughey ruled on the peace order, people started posting Judge Vaughey’s address and phone number on the internet, and, to intimidate him.  This is a sustained campaign to intimidate me and threaten me and to destroy my non-profits.  I run a non-profit called Justice Through Music, and Mr. Walker has made it very apparent that he wants people to quit funding my non-profits, because I framed him for a crime.  He says I forged records from Suburban Hospital.  I have those records here and they are certainly not forged.  He says I Photoshopped photos of me with a black eye and I certainly did not Photoshop any pictures.  And he’s saying this to people to incite them against me.  And this is a classic case of cyberstalking, where he puts out false information to other people to incite them to target me.  He’s directly responsible for this.  He’s worked— He works through proxies.  He got a group called the National Blogger’s Club to join on Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day.

Breaking in again, when is Lee Stranahan finally going to get the credit he deserves from Kimberlin for starting Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day?

B: Object, again lack of foundation.

J: sustained.  I’ve now looked again at the documents you’ve handed up—

K: May I, may I—

J: —Petitioner’s exhibit #1, I don’t see anything that would reflect that this was sent by Mr. Walker, so I will sustain the objection to Petitioner’s Exhibit 1, this stack of documents.  Alright, what else do you want to tell me?

K: Well, like I said, Mr. Walker has written himself “How Brett Kimberlin Tried to Frame Me For a Crime” he wrote this entire, you know, thirty page post, about how I forged from Suburban Hosp—

J: And that constitutes harassment, because...?

K: Because it’s defamatory, it’s a lie, first of all.

J: That doesn’t constitute harassment.

K: Because it’s a lie, he’s putting out a false frame against me, it’s like saying I’m the head of the KKK or something, and trying to get people to come after me.  This is what he is doing, he’s creating a false narrative, in order to get people to attack me.  I’ve been threatened—

J: So you have the writings there that you want me to consider that supports your petition?

So then they go through some steps to enter into evidence my monster post, where I describe how Kimberlin attempted to frame me for a crime.  And he also puts into evidence a more recent post that told people how to attend Thursday’s hearing, except it cut off a crucial part: the disclaimer that I have placed on every post.  I won’t quote it in full, because you will see it at the end of this one, but the first paragraph gives you some of the flavor of it:

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.

So he deliberately altered the evidence to eliminate something that made it abundantly clear that I was not advocating any kind of unlawful conduct.  As the judge was considering all of this, Kimberlin went on:

K: Also Mr. Walker tends to, every time he posts about me, which is scores of times, he includes a reference that I’m a terrorist.  And you can see some of those, just even yesterday, “Brett Kimberlin Terrorist” he calls me over and over, a terrorist.  He does this in order to get it on Google, so that when people Google my name, they will see “Brett Kimberlin Terrorist.”

This is a part of his harassment campaign where he wants to destroy my funding base, foundations and donors who donate to my non-profits and they will see this type of cyber stalking to harm my ability to make a living.  And this causes me a great deal of anxiety and mental assault.  I’m obviously annoyed by it, I’ve ask him and his attorney numerous times to leave me alone, that is all I ever asked.  I don’t blog about him, I don’t comment about him, I don’t tweet about him at all.  I don’t respond to him online about these things.  And I have asked him to leave me alone.

I have a right to be a husband.  I have a right to be a father.  I have two wonderful daughters.  I have a right to run a non-profit without being attacked constantly.  We’re talking about 30,000 tweets in the last 45 days.  We’re talking about 350 blog posts attacking me in the last 30-40 days.

Let me break in here: I won’t be correcting every inaccuracy stated here.  If you read my series, “The Story I Couldn’t Tell” (introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5), you will see me demolish most of them.  But to give an example, I have not written 30,000 tweets period, let alone about him.  And I have not written 350 blog posts, either.  I have written only 52 posts concerning him in any manner, and many of them are only glancingly about him, or short posts announcing the coming of another post.  And he will claim I am saying the same thing over and over, but you can read back on all my posts about Kimberlin and decide for yourself whether or not that is true.  Anyway, back to his argument:

K (continued): And I’ve asked him to leave me alone.  That’s all.  That’s what the harassment statute is all about.  You know, ask somebody to leave you alone, if they don’t, then you go get a peace order against him.  I’m not asking him for anything, you know, big.  You know, I mean if he wants to blog, that’s fine.  Why do you have to blog about 2,000 times about me, or 10,000 times, or call me a terrorist 50 or a hundred times?  You know?  If you want to write a story about me, fine write a story, but don’t write 200 stories repeating the same thing.  That’s why it’s harassment, judge.  And—

At this point the judge interrupted him to discuss an objection based on authentication.

K: And the other thing is, the State’s Attorney’s Office has told him, “I’m not going to prosecute Mr. Kimberlin for perjury on the assault.”  So it... and he has made this campaign to harass me until the State’s Attorney prosecutes me for perjury or whatever, for the assault.  In other words, his harassment is never going to stop, because the State’s Attorney is not going to prosecute me.  I’ve talked to that office numerous times—

B: Object.

K: —Mr. Walker a letter to that effect.

Is he saying that he has talked to them over and over about whether they will charge him with perjury, and they have said no?  This may be Kimberlin exaggerating as usual—if you say something once, he will claim you said it over and over—but I would be curious if any journalist besides myself would like to get a comment from the State’s Attorney’s Office on this claim.

K: Like I said, once the State’s Attorney’s Office says he’s not going to prosecute me, that’s the end of it.  Mr. Walker doesn’t want to accept the determination of the State’s Attorney Office.  Judge Johnson found that he assaulted me.

B: I object.

K: I have the transcript.  Do you want to see the transcript?  I’ll show it to you.

But he [Walker] doesn’t want to accept this, he wants to harass me online, and destroy my funding base and gin up crazies to come to my house and take pictures of me and my kids and chase me down the street and threaten me and call me, and my mother.  My elderly mother has received scores of death threats because of Mr. Walker’s false frame.  It’s a false narrative.  He did assault me.  He assaulted me right outside the courtroom.  All I did is what I should have done and that is get a peace order against him and get a... file charges against him.  That’s it.  I did what I am supposed to do as a citizen of this country.  And what have I gotten in return?  I’ve gotten attacked and brutalized and death threats, I mean every day. I’ve had to put security systems in my house, I’ve had the police out to my house numerous times.  You know, if that’s not harassment, then nothing qualifies for harassment.

Breaking in, again, he is about to hit on a theme he brings up several times—the idea that somehow I can stop this.  In my opinion, the story has taken on a life of its own, so I couldn’t stop this attention he is getting if I wanted to.

And of course, I don’t want to.  I am not going to stop until I get justice.  And you read over this blog and see what all he has done to me, all because I dared to give a little bit of legal advice to a man he hated, and because when he came after me I exposed how he very likely committed perjury back in November, and tell me if my attitude is unreasonable.

K (continued): He’s saying, oh, I should turn off my Google alert, I should turn off my computer, if I don’t want to get that information.  That’s like saying if you get threatening calls you should turn off your phone, or if you get threatening letters in the mail, that you shut down your mail service.  That’s not, you can’t do that in your day and age.  I run non-profits, I use the internet every day, I cannot turn these things off.  He can turn them off.  I can’t.  And that’s the point.  I want him to turn it off.

Not long after that, Kimberlin ended his testimony and Mr. Bours began to cross examine him.

B: Mr. Kimberlin other than courtrooms have you ever seen Mr. Walker near your home or anywhere near you?

K: Not Mr. Walker.

B: Okay.  Has he ever followed you around in any public place?

K: He’s followed me on the internet a lot.

B: No, as in walking behind you or near you, or anywhere in a public place.

K: Not that I know of, except right here—

B: You agree, he lives in Virginia, correct?

K: —He did right here in the court, outside the courthouse when he assaulted me.

B: Alright, that was January 9^th.  Since May, since April 19, have you seen him personally, has he been anywhere near you at any time other than in a courtroom defending one of more of your proceedings?

K: Not him directly.

B: Okay.  And you agree that he puts information about you on the internet, is that correct?

K: I don’t agree with that.  I mean, Lies are not, lies are not, [cross talk]

B: He puts information out [cross talk]

K: Lies are not information! [cross talk]

B: Okay.  Have you filed a defamation action against him or any other civil action to—

K: I want—

B: —protect your legal rights.

K: I want to be left alone.  I don’t want to start more litigation.

B: So you go to district court commissioner at midnight on a Saturday night to protect your rights by filing a peace order, correct?  That’s you’re method of protecting your rights?

K: Exactly.  That’s allowed by statute right here in Maryland.

B: And similarly you filed criminal charges late at night, in front of a commissioner, is that correct?

K: Because Mr. Walker was violating the initial peace order against him.

B: And those have also been nolle prosequi’ed [i.e. dismissed] by the State’s Attorney’s Office, is that correct?

K: Yes.

Later in the cross examination we get the fireworks I didn’t get to see on the Fourth:

B: In the blog that you have offered to the court today, can you cite any specific portion of that blog where Mr. Walker said he was going to assault you or harm you in any way personally?  Personally?  Is there any particular page—

K: Over and over he has said he is going to make me pay.  Make me pay.

B: For filing charges against you [Walker?] and other things that turned out not to be true, right?

K: He said he was going to make me pay, and he said he went out and bought two guns, or had two guns.

B: And the context on that was that he was afraid of you and he was going to protect himself if you came to his home, correct?

K: I have never been to his home, I would never go to his home.

B: Are you familiar with the term “SWATting?”

K: [long pause] yes.

B: And have you caused Mr. Walker to be SWATted by the Fairfax County or the Prince William County Police?

K: That is a despicable claim, and—

B: Yes or no.

K: —I resent it.  I resent it!  He knows I didn’t.  And you know I didn’t.  And you’re trying to again harass me, you are harassing me, just like—

B: I’m asking [begin crosstalk] if you are responsible for someone calling the police,[end crosstalk]

K: No!  You’re harassing me.  This man, this man, this man.

B: Excuse me sir, I am asking you, yes or no, are you responsible—

K: No!  Absolutely not.

B: —directly or indirectly?

K: And it’s despicable!

B: So you didn’t call, or ask somebody else to call and tell the police that there have been shots fired at Mr. Walker’s home so the SWAT team would show up there.  You didn’t do that, you’re not responsible?

K: Did you do that?  I did it as much as you did it.  I mean that’s ridiculous—

B: Sir, did you have anything to do with that or do you know who did?

K: No, I don’t.

B: That’s all the questions I have.

K: Thank you.

J: Mr. Kimberlin anything else you want me to consider?

K: Yes.  Since Mr. Bours brought up SWATting, Mr. Walker and a few of his confederates have falsely, again, accused me of somehow being involved with SWATting... him or them or whatever.  My name has been blasted out across the internet for the last three weeks saying that I’m somehow responsible for SWATting people, without a shred of evidence.

I have nothing to do with any kind of SWATting.  They went out there and said, “you know, this person wrote about Mr. Kimberlin and he was all of the sudden SWATted, oh my Lord!”  Well, you know, three hundred and forty six people have written about Brett Kimberlin as a result of Mr. Walker in the last month, you know, and one of these SWATtings occurred on June 23 of 2011, one of them occurred on January... July 1^st, 2011, I mean, and for Mr. Walker to suddenly accuse me of SWATting him is another form of harassment.  And I mean it’s really outrageous.

I go home, I take care of my kids, I take care of my wife, I do my job.  I don’t engage in criminal activity.  That I do not do that.  [sic]  I come to court when someone harasses me or threatens me, I come to court, that’s what I am supposed to do.  I don’t engage in criminal activity.  It’s not fair to be accused, falsely accused, again, right here in open court, of SWATting, of framing people.  I don’t do those things.

Breaking in, I let it go on a bit up there, just because I figured you wouldn’t want me breaking in, but let me add to this from my memory.  Very quickly in the exchange over SWATting, Kimberlin got very angry. By the time he said “I resent it.  I resent it!  He knows I didn’t.  And you know I didn’t.  And you’re trying to again harass me, you are harassing me, just like—” he was shaking with anger, and wagging his finger at my lawyer, so it was clear that he was accusing my lawyer of harassing him by asking if he did it.

And I will add that I have never publicly accused him of involvement in it.  You can read what I wrote about it, here.  And when I have talked about it in public forums, I have been careful to be very clear in saying I have no evidence of his involvement.  I do believe it is safe to believe that someone who is allied with or admires Brett Kimberlin is involved, but that’s just logic and Occam’s razor talking there.

This next part—which picks up right after the last part—is also interesting because he argues that the police are no longer coming out to his house when he calls, unless he has a peace order.  So gosh, he needs a peace order against someone or else the police will blow him off.

K: And I ask that I be protected by the courts.  I shouldn’t have…  the only way I can get the 911 people out there is to say I’ve got a peace order against someone.  And I’ve had them out there three times in the last 30 days.  I need a peace order against somebody.  I need a peace order against Mr. Walker.  He’s the one who started this and he’s the one who can stop it.  I don’t write about him.  I don’t want him writing about me.  And I don’t want him harassing me.  I want him to leave me alone.  That’s what the statute says, leave me alone, I’ve asked him over and over and over and over, he doesn’t want to.  He wants me in jail or dead.

J: What is your evidence that Mr. Walker wants you in jail or dead?

K: Because he says it, over and over, on his blogs.  “I’m not going to stop until Mr. Kimberlin pays, until Mr. Kimberlin is taken off the street.”

J: Until what?

K: “Mr. Kimberlin is taken off the street.”  That could mean... maybe that doesn’t mean dead, maybe that means in jail, and he says it over and over to you and I can point that out to you if you want.

Then Judge Rupp read most of the monster post.  I don’t think he was able to read every word of it.  I say that with imperfect confidence because I am estimating how long it would take him to read my post, and my estimation of how long it takes others to read is probably colored by how long it takes me to read, given that I have a reading disability.  So take that with a huge grain of salt.  But you will see he was getting the gist of it.  And at one point he reads aloud this part from my massive post about how Kimberlin attempted to frame me for a crime:

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.

Then he asks him where I said that I wanted him dead or in jail.  All Kimberlin can show is that I wanted him in prison—which I am allowed to want.

K: At the end of that post he says, “How you can help,” and he asks people to contact the State’s Attorney and pressure the State’s Attorney to prosecute me, for perjury and... I think I could ask Mr. Walker to authenticate those tweets and in there he repeatedly says that he wants me to go to jail.

J: This says “How you can help.”  “Spread the word far and wide about this story.”  And the story reads, “How Brett Kimberlin Tried to Frame Me for a Crime And How You Can Help” “Second you can write to the State’s Attorney,” “Third, and importantly I will be setting up a defense fund very soon,” “fourth if you are hiring I need a job,” “fifth, if you donate to his organizations please stop.”  Alright.  Anything further, Mr. Kimberlin.

I think that last paragraph is significant.  It means that the judge has taken in the gist of what I had been saying, in its entirety.  So Kimberlin can’t argue that the judge didn’t consider all of it—he did.  It means that when he ruled that this was not harassment, it meant that asking people to write about Brett Kimberlin, asking people to urge the State’s Attorney to prosecute Mr. Kimberlin, and asking people to stop donating to his charities, is not harassment.

Then Kimberlin struggled to try to get in the tweets I had written and after many procedural stumbles, did get me sworn in and asked me to authenticate the tweets.  It is worth noting that one of those exhibits appears to be the very same tweets he was waving around in district court.  That is significant, because as I note in my limited testimony:

Walker: I will note that many of these tweets literally have nothing to do with Brett Kimberlin, unless he wants to admit today that he is Breitbart Unmask.

So if I am right, if this is the same print-out he waved in district court, he pretended that all of those tweets were about him, when in fact they were not.

This was the entirety of the interesting testimony I had, which is why I don’t bother to even abbreviate my own name.  Then as I am going through the tweets, Bours says:

B: Your honor in the interest of time it appears that Exhibit 3, and I don’t mean to testify for the client, but it appears that exhibit 3, are tweets from his twitter account, but to save the court’s time, there is nothing relevant to the violation of the peace order in any of them.  And they are not directed to the petitioner, here, they’re directed to other bloggers, including something called, someone called Bretibart Unmasked, and Patterico, and so on.  There’s no connection and nothing in them constitutes a threat to Mr. Kimberlin, I think when you...

J: Alright.

K: Twitter is used to spread information, and so, what Mr. Walker would do is go on twitter and ask other people to spread this campaign against me and that’s what ginned people up.  It would go on and on and on, and just like a mushroom cloud it would just expand and expand, and there ended up being like 31,000 tweets about me in a couple weeks.

Later on, Kimberlin adds this.

K: In exhibit 4, you’ll see many times he talks about taking me off the street, imprisoning me, that I framed him, and I think those are yellow highlighted.

At that point Judge Rupp then read through the tweets.  After a few minutes, he says this about them:

J: The underlying theme in these blogs and tweets, in Plaintiff’s 3 and 4, essentially relate to Mr. Walker or Mr. Worthing protesting his belief that you framed him for a crime that he didn’t commit and that he’s upset about it, and he believes that you are... his belief that that’s what you did constitutes perjury.  I haven’t seen anything in here that would allow me to conclude that he’s threatening your... threatening you personally as far as threatening to harm you, or threatening to cause you personal harm.

K: Judge, it has to do with incitement. He understands the internet very well.  He understands the kind of people that he’s dealing with on the internet.  And he knows that if he makes a false narrative that I framed him and that I’m somehow some kind of monster, and he dehumanizes me...  that’s what he’s done, he’s dehumanized me, Judge.  That’s what stalkers do, they dehumanize the person so that other people will come out and attack, and that’s what he’s done.  And then people can feel good about attacking me, and threatening me, and threatening my kids.  Some of these wackos have called my children, on the phone.

B: Object.  Hearsay.

J: Alright.

K: And this is what I am dealing with, Judge.  This man could stop this with this...  by stopping this false narrative.  The state’s attorney has said they won’t... he will not prosecute me based on his false narrative.  So...

Breaking in: again, a journalist (besides myself) should follow up on his claims about what the State’s Attorney has said to him.

To continue:

J: So the State’s Attorney has told you that—

K: I have the let—

J: —they won’t prosecute him for harassment or anything else is that right?

K: No, he filed charges against me for perjury saying the assault never occurred.  The State’s Attorney wrote him and said that “Judge Everngam has found Mr. Kimberlin credible”—

B: Object.  He’s reading from the document—

K: Well, you can read the letter yourself, Judge.  And told Mr. Walker that the State’s Attorney’s Office is not going to prosecute me for perjury.  Mr. Walker does not want to accept that.  He wants to gin up people to come after me, and accuse me of falsely saying he assaulted me.  I mean, Judge, your own staff came right outside that door—

Jumping ahead we get this bizarre explanation for why they dropped his latest false criminal charges against me.  The charge was for supposedly violating a peace order.

K: Judge like I said, I asked them to prosecute him for violating the peace order, the interim peace order that was issued.  They said because I had a peace order against him, they were going to nolle pros that case.  That’s what they said.  They said they have 30,000 cases a year and as long as I have a peace order against this guy, that they don’t want to be involved, that’s what they said.

Does that make any sense, dear reader?  They refused to prosecute me for violating a peace order because there was a peace order on me?  Folks, you can’t prosecute a person for violating a peace order unless they have a peace order against them.  If this is true, then the State’s Attorney of Montgomery County is saying they don’t prosecute people for violating peace orders, at all.  And if that is true that would be kind of shocking.  I mean go back and look at my post on the law of peace orders.  The statute really isn’t meant for people whining that other people are writing bad things about them on the internet.  It is about a woman who was raped by a boyfriend who is scared he is going to hurt her again.  It is about someone who is actually threatening another and that person wanting to be left alone.  It is about things like that, stuff that the state of Maryland has an obvious interest in protecting its citizens against.  And so it would be shocking of the State’s Attorney’s Office really had that policy of refusing to prosecute for violation of a peace order.

But let’s remember who we are talking about here: Brett Kimberlin, a convicted perjurer who is such a compulsive liar he denied knowing he was called the Speedway Bomber.  So it would be wrong to assume he is telling the truth, about anything.

But the State’s Attorney’s Office should still be asked to comment about these claims.

Anyway, so we get to Mr. Bours making more or less a closing statement.

Bours: Well, I just want to make the observation that nothing he has put in his written petition or application for a peace order and nothing he has presented here, violates the peace order statute, or is sufficient ground for issuing an order.  The peace order statute allows you to do that if my client directly threatens him.  Well, that didn’t happen.  The stalking part of the statute, the criminal stalking statute requires personal contact, following in a public place.  He is saying cyber stalking is what he is complaining about but that’s not part of the Maryland criminal statute, and if it’s not part of the Maryland criminal statute for stalking, it’s not the basis for issuing a peace order.

And as far as harassment is concerned, I think the court has already seen that there is no harassment within the meaning of Section 3-803 of the criminal law article, which says “a person may not follow another in or about a public place, or maliciously engage in a course of conduct that alarms or seriously annoys the other, with the intent to harass, alarm, annoy the other, two after receiving reasonable warning or request by or on behalf of the other, and without legal purpose.”  And the exception written right into the statute is “this section does not apply to peaceable activity intended to express a political view or provide information to others.”

I’m not here to argue very much about the Trayvon Marton case, but there were a lot of people who went on the internet and were protesting the failure to prosecute the Trayvon Martin criminal case, against the person who apparently killed Trayvon Martin.  And as a result of that peaceable internet activity, it appears further investigation was done and charges were brought.  My client has done nothing more than advocate people notifying the State’s Attorney that they should prosecute Mr. Kimberlin for perjury.  Now the perjury he was talking was in connection primarily with the criminal charge of assault against him which was dropped by the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Now at this point, my attorney got into an exchange about whether the prior denial of a peace order was on appeal.  This doesn’t go anywhere, but then Mr. Bours gets back on track.

B: Nothing that he has presented here today, nothing that he put in his petition, and nothing he has supported by competent evidence provides you with clear and convincing proof that my— that he’s entitled to a peace order and I’d ask you to so find.

Kimberlin then attempts to respond:

K: When I get people calling and saying they calling on behalf of Mr. Walker, I don’t know if it is true.  But they’re using his name.  I get emails, death threats by email, saying, I’m writing on behalf of Mr. Walker.

B: Object to the extent he is trying to testify again instead of arguing his case.

K: What I’m saying is Mr. Walker can stop this.  That’s what I’ve asked for.  Turn it off.  Leave me alone.  That’s what I want.  That’s what the peace order says.  Stop it.

And he says he is not contacting me.  He is contacting me.  He knows for a fact that when he writes something, it comes into my email box.  He said many times, “Oh Mr. Kimberlin, just turn off your Google Alerts, and then it won’t come into your email box and you won’t see this.”  Well, again, that’s like saying turn your phone off if you’re getting harassing phone calls, or shut your mail service down.  It’s not appropriate.  He’s responsible for the conduct of these... this information that’s coming to me.  And it’s not just coming to me, and it’s not just coming to me, but people who support me and funders, and that’s not right, either.  You know, my organization, is doing wonderful work with kids, getting them out to vote, and working to help tolerance between different religious factions and we do really good work, and for him to go out there and ask people not to fund my organizations because I framed him for a crime, that I didn’t.

He goes on protesting that I really assaulted him.  And then finally Rupp cuts him off as he is now arguing in circles and rules:

J: Alright I have reviewed the testimony that’s been submitted, considered the documents that have been submitted on behalf of Mr. Kimberlin.

Mr. Kimberlin is requesting the issuance of a peace order against Mr. Walker on the basis of harassment and/or stalking.  There certainly no evidence to support stalking.

As far as harassment is concerned the requirement is that there be clear and convincing evidence to satisfy that Mr. Walker has “followed another in or about a public place...”—there’s no evidence that Mr. Walker has done that—“…or maliciously engage in a course of conduct that alarms or seriously annoys the other, with the intent to harass, alarm or annoy the other, after receiving a reasonable warning or request to stop by or on behalf of the other, and without a legal purpose.”  The harassment statute goes on to say “this section does not apply to a peaceable activity intended to express a political view or provide information to others.”

Mr. Kimberlin is arguing that the exhibits that have been introduced into evidence constitute harassment in that this is a course of conduct that alarms or seriously annoys him.  He has asked that I consider the Galloway case which finds that the statute is not overly broad.  Galloway specifically relates to an inmate who sent 122 letters to another person.  Based on everything that I reviewed, these are blogs or tweets that Mr. Walker has issued, that I’m not satisfied directed directly to Mr. Kimberlin.  They are about Mr. Kimberlin and they are about his opinion about what he believes Mr. Kimberlin has done to him that impacts him.  But I do not find that there is sufficient evidence to support harassment that would permit the issuance of a peace order.  Accordingly I am going to deny the request for a peace order.

And that was the end.

And what it shows is that Kimberlin can’t complain that he didn’t have a chance to press his full case.  He showed the judge everything I was writing and the judge found it wasn’t harassment.  It was indeed protected speech under the First Amendment.

And I have striven to be dignified and graceful in victory.

Okay, maybe not:

Get the party started!

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* As I have said before, being a journalist is not a matter of what you are, but what you do.  Mr. Hogberg more classically fits the model of a journalist, but Mr. Hoge—not to mention people like Patterico, Liberty Chick, Ed Morrissey, and truly more than I could ever hope to count—is as much of a journalist as he is, because that is what he does: journalism.

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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.