Bill Schmalfeldt Tries and Hilariously Fails to Explain Away His Threats

This is the latest post in what I half-jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga^®.  If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not everyone reads my blog.  The short version is that Kimberlin has been harassing me for over a year, his worst conduct being when he attempted to frame me for a crime.  I recognize that this might sound like an incredible claim, but I provide video and documentary evidence of that fact; in other words, you don’t have to believe my word.  You only have to believe your eyes.  So, if you are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has been happening.

So just to review, Bill Schmalfeldt, the BS man himself, made a threat on his radio show and then later doubled down on it.  And then on Friday, he tried to explain way his threats.

Big picture, what the BS man is trying to do is have it both ways.  On one hand he revels in engaging in threatening talk and behavior.  On the other hand when you call him on it, he then wants you to believe that he didn’t intend any threat.  He won’t say what is coming.  He won’t say who will be delivering it.  But we should just trust that he is a really good person (who defends a criminal and makes pedophilia jokes) and he would never do anything vile to his enemies, even though he is associated with a convicted terrorist.

And then for bonus points, when alleged other parties threaten him he gets outraged.  This is not to say that if these threats are genuine (and not sent by Bill Schmalfeldt or one of his allies with his knowledge), he would have no right to be outraged.  But the hypocrisy is a sign of his dishonesty, although in this case it might be the case that he is not being honest with himself and what he is actually doing.

So he starts off his defense by playing pretty much this clip where he made his "Ides of March" threat...

...and then he offers his first defense, that he was only talking about Frey.  Of course the only problem with that is this.  Here’s the words, written out for you:

Because somebody, in my opinion, is paying Lee Stranahan to file these charges against me, in the hopes that I will either break or die.  I got some fucking news for you, Stranny... Walker, Hoggy, Frey... and Frey... beware the Ides of March.

Okay, so he wants to say that “and Frey... beware the Ides of March” is meant as a separate thought.  Well, okay, then that means the prior part “I got some fucking news for you, Stranny... Walker, Hoggy, Frey...” is supposed to be a separate and complete thought?  Except, what news did he have for us?  He never completes the thought.  Indeed, that part only makes sense if you believe that the “Ides of March” threat was directed at us, too, and he just repeated Frey’s name because he lost his train of thought.

But after saying that at worst he was only threatening a Deputy District Attorney in California (oh, much better!), he then protests it is only warning!  After all, that’s all it was in the original Shakespeare!  Let’s listen to him making this argument.

As if calling it a warning makes it suddenly not a threat.  Consider for instance this alleged threat allegedly not written by Schmalfeldt or one of his allies:

So could the author of that tweet claim that he was just giving him a warning?  “Hey, just a head’s up, I’m going to kill you.”  And then it couldn’t be a threat, right?  Right?

Well, of course not.

And yes, even now we don’t know if it is a threat under the law, because we don’t know who said it and under what circumstances.  It is only a threat when the circumstances suggest to the recipient that he should take it as a threat.  Let me illustrate this with a simple example.  Take this scene from Scrubs:

Now in this scene “The Janitor” played by actor Neil Flynn, mouths and hand-signals that he is going to kill J.D., played by Zach Braff.  So after the scene was over, and the director shouted “cut!” do you think the police came in there and arrested Mr. Flynn, the actor?  Of course not.  Why?  Because Flynn was just playing a role.  And Braff and everyone on the set knew that, or they reasonably should have known that.  Therefore it was not a threat as a matter of law.

So if Bill Schmalfeldt sent it to himself, the law doesn’t call that a threat.  Or if Neal Rauahuser said to Schmalfeldt, “hey, I am going to write a death threat using one of my sock puppets.  Act as though you take it seriously,” it also isn’t a threat.  In the eyes of the law, if you know for an absolute fact that the person is not serious, it is not a threat no matter what words are used.  But it would make Schmalfeldt guilty of filing a false police report.

So that argument is shot down.  Now I also said on my blog that the other day he doubled down on the threat with this video:

Now first, do you see how this undermines his first argument?  Remember what he said about that line in Julius Caesar, when the Soothsayer said, “beware the Ides of March.”  He said this:

when the assassins gathered in the Senate on March 15 of that year was the soothsayer one of the people holding knives, or did the Soothsayer warn Julius Ceasar that something bad was going to happen?

So Schmalfeldt argued that because the Soothsayer wasn’t warning about his own conduct, according to Schmalfeldt, it was just a warning and not a threat.  But in the last clip, he admits he is one of the metaphorical assassins!  He says he is a wheel in the cog in the machine that is going to “crush” Frey and his unnamed minions who of course couldn’t be myself, Stranahan, and Hoge in his mind, could they?  So the hilarious thing about the first defense--it's a warning--is that he accidentally explains why his conduct is different than the Soothsayer in Shakespeare's play.

But Schmalfeldt has a brilliant defense to this clip:

That’s right it’s a metaphor!

Just who does he think he is fooling?  First, of course no one believed that he or one of his allies will drop a giant boulder on one or more of us and crush us or anything like that.  Likewise, when a Mafioso says in a clichéd scene that “you better pay your protection, or you will be sleeping with the fishes” no one thinks they will be actually dozing around fishes (except maybe Jessica Simpson).  Of course it’s a metaphor, but a metaphor for what?  He won’t say, but given his association with a convicted terrorist, one is quite reasonable in believing that this is a threat to do violence.

No, there is no question it is a threat, but the only question is what is it a threat of?  On Friday he wanted us to believe it was a threat to do something that the law allows.  But prior to that, in each case, he has used metaphors involving violence.  The Ides of March is a reference to an assassination.  And crushing is a reference to death or serious bodily injury.  And we only have his profession of good will and decency to assure us that this is not a message that his bomber buddy Brett Kimberlin might leave a ticking package waiting for us on the Ides of March or something like that.

I said this a long time ago, but it still hasn’t sunk in for him, apparently:

Threats don’t have to be “I plan to do X to you” or “do this or I will do X.”  For instance, in Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court held that merely burning a cross on another person’s yard can be interpreted as a threat, given the historical meaning of the act.  Twelve people of common sense can recognize that even if the magic words are not said, some words are intended as a threat.  In other words, the law is not an idiot.

To give a few other examples where Defendants were found to have made threats.  In People v. Aispuro (2007):

Defendant accosted these two young girls, laid his hands on them, caused them to cry, did not respond to their requests that he not hurt them, ordered them to sit in the middle of the street and when they initially resisted, told them "If you don't, then I will do something."

Hey!  He didn’t say what he would do!  Maybe if they didn’t, he would give them candy!  Or maybe he would simply make a frowny face at them.  Why are they getting so worked up?

I am being facetious of course.  The courts correctly found that to be a threat.  Next up we have People v. Mendoza (1997) involving members of the “Happy Town” street gang (a ridiculous name for a dangerous gang):

Appellant's brother was arrested and charged with the murder of a Pomona police officer. On August 19, 1996, [Elva] Arambula testified as a prosecution witness at his preliminary hearing. Appellant attended his brother's preliminary hearing accompanied by two other gang members, Raul Arvisu and Jorge Olmos, also known as "Tank" and "Jaspar."

Two days after Arambula testified at the preliminary hearing Arambula heard a knock on the side door of her home in Pomona. Arambula saw appellant outside the door. She noticed his mother stood at the gate approximately 15 feet away. After Arambula opened the door, appellant asked if she had read the newspaper. Arambula replied, "No, why?" Appellant told her she had "fucked up his brother's testimony," and that "[h]e was going to talk to some guys from Happy Town." Appellant then left. Arambula said appellant did not appear angry or upset.

At trial Arambula testified she did not initially take appellant's words as a threat because appellant was always joking around. At trial she denied appellant's words alone frightened her.

Arambula recounted a different version at appellant's preliminary hearing. There she stated she became frightened by appellant's words and believed they meant "they were going to kill me for sure," "they were going to kill me," and "they were going to come back and shoot me."

Approximately 20 to 30 minutes after appellant left Arambula heard a car honking its horn outside. She looked out her front door and saw appellant's friend, Arvisu or "Tank," sitting in a car parked across the street from her home. He honked the car horn again and looked in her direction. Arambula did not go outside because she was afraid for her life.

A few minutes later Arambula's sister returned home and told Arambula "Tank" was looking for her. Arambula "put all the pieces together" and became convinced they would come back and do something to her "because she was a witness" against appellant's brother. She called the police.

Hey!  All he did was register a complaint about the effect of her testimony, and then honked and pointed at her with his gang member buddies.  What is she so worried about?

Joking aside, the Defendant was found guilty of numerous kinds of threats, including threatening a witness and terroristic threats.

Or take this next case, Summerlin v. Commonwealth (2002):

Here, viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the evidence established that, three days after leaving a message expressing his dissatisfaction with the way he was being treated by SRHA and announcing that "something was going to happen," Summerlin called SRHA, wanting to speak with Williams. When told by Riddick that Williams was unavailable to take his call, he became angry. Yelling, Summerlin accused Riddick and all of the people at SRHA of being racists and said "he would hate to have to blow the building up to get [SRHA's] attention." Summerlin's comment scared Riddick. Summerlin then told Fortner in a "loud and angry" tone of voice that he would not be attending a particular meeting at SRHA, but, if he did, "things [would] be popping and a-rocking." Following Summerlin's call, SRHA called the fire department and evacuated the building.

Hey, he was saying he didn’t want to blow up the building.  How is that a threat?

Well, except the court said that was sufficient to make out a threat to bomb a building under the law and upheld his conviction.

And there is something else worth noting here, too.  The concept of threat is not important merely to when threats are criminalized, or to harassment statutes.  This is also key to the concept of coercion which is key to a number of crimes.  It is rape, for instance, if you obtain a woman’s “consent” by threat.  It is witness intimidation if you use threats to silence him or her.  And threat is key to the crime of extortion or theft by extortion.

But Bill Schmalfeldt is advocating an interpretation of the law that would leave, for instance, many rape victim without the ability to obtain justice.  He seems to think that it is only a threat if you say, “do this or I will kill you” or something equally explicit.  And the upshot of his approach, if adopted in the law, is to say that a Mafioso can tell a woman, “sleep with me or else something will happen to you” and if she submits, she can’t later hope to see him imprisoned for raping her.  All for the higher, nobler goal of allowing Bill Schmalfeldt will be free to threaten people, but so long as he is using figurative language.  Or something.

Well, thankfully for the people of Maryland, this is not the law.  And Schmalfeldt is going to discover this is the case this coming Thursday.  Tick tock as Mr. Hoge is wont to say.

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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.  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.