A Quick Observation on Judge Grimm’s New Letter Order

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.

As regular followers of Hogewash learned yesterday, my emergency motion to reconsider the extension of time given to Brett was denied.  There’s isn’t a lot I can say about it that I didn’t say in John’s comments, so I will reprint it (with minor edits I am not going to mark):

I didn’t say this earlier for obvious reasons, but I knew it was a long shot when I filed it, and I told John the same. The deadline had already passed for John and was about to pass for me. It was possible for the judge to get really mad at Brett and say he loses the chance to oppose our motions to dismiss, but one can never count on that. And if the judge chose to shorten it, it would create its own problems.

My suspicion always was that the judge just didn’t want to hear one MTD after another, after another. That is why he gave Brett his “homework assignment.” Because he expects to get motions to dismiss from every single defendant, and doesn’t want to consider them one at a time and is worried that Brett is not doing what he has to in terms of service of process.

So I knew it was likely to be a “defeat in victory” for Brett. I got what I frankly expected to be the most likely outcome, which still has value. The judge is now hearing from us that Brett jacked around with service and my sense of it is the judge believed us. So Brett won the round, but he is bleeding in front of the judge and the judge has even more evidence that Brett is not acting in good faith. And this was after the judge gave him a homework assignment that suggested the judge doubted Brett was doing his job in terms of service.

And I honestly appreciate the fact that the judge did consider what we wrote at all. It’s one thing to lose, but it’s another thing, to lose and not even have a chance to be heard. Brett’s shenanigans put the judge in a terrible position, but I think given that situation the judge was trying to be fair to us.

Finally, let’s all point and laugh at how Schmalfeldt didn’t understand that a motion to reconsider was a real thing, thinking the judge would just say res judicata and be done with it. Heh. Baghdad Blob will point at this glorious victory. But Brett knows this exchange hurt him in front of the judge and rightly so. Brett never knows when it is time to act right.

But that’s not the titular observation: that is part of the setup.  Another part of the setup is this insight I shared with you the other day:

But let me tell you a quick story.  About a decade ago I worked for a Federal Public Defender’s office as an intern.  I was still a law student, so my role was limited, but in one case they asked me to decipher the federal sentencing guidelines, to argue for the lowest possible sentence for one of their clients.  And I wrote a memo summarizing what I found.

The attorney in charge said it was good and asked me to do him a favor and send him a Word copy of it.  I complied.  The next thing I saw, he was filing with the court his own memorandum with the language I had used directly cut and pasted word-for-word into it, without attribution.

And then some time later the sentencing hearing was held, and I went to see how well all of this was received.  The judge then took out a written opinion and proceeded to read it from the bench.  And for several paragraphs, he was using the exact same language that my supervising attorney had put into his memorandum, which was taken from my memo, without attribution to either one of us.

Here’s the thing: this happens all the time, and it is not considered plagiarism.  It would be in any academic writing context.  It would be if someone did that in a book.  But as I often say, in law there is no such thing as plagiarism.*  When a judge “rips off” an attorney’s writing, that’s a good thing: that means you said something so well, so logically, and so persuasively the judge can’t imagine a way to say the same thing differently.  And when an intern hands a memo to a lawyer, we are generally hoping to see a similar result.  I wasn’t insulted.  I didn’t feel ripped off.  I felt complimented.  It was a concrete sign that I might be good at this law business.  I thought it was really cool.

So with all that in mind, consider the following.  First, a passage from my Motion to Strike that was denied:

This failure to serve all Defendants amounts to more than a mere “technical” violation in this case...

Second, the passage John quoted from Judge Grimm’s Letter Order of January 7, 2014:

The failure to serve a party is no mere technicality.

Of course that is not borrowing my language word-for-word like in the story I told above (it was several paragraphs that the judge borrowed in that story), but that seems unlikely to be a coincidence.  It is further evidence that Judge Grimm heard us, and at least suspects we are right, if he is not convinced outright.

The reality we are dealing with is that Judge Grimm doesn’t know Brett like the Defendants do.  We know this case is crap.  We know it was filed in bad faith.  We know that this is just the latest attempt to use lawfare to silence his critics.  We know that Brett is the kind of person who, if he says the sky is blue, you should go to a window and check.  He is the kind of guy so dishonest he can pretend he had no idea he was called the Speedway Bomber, only months after referring to himself by the same title.

But the judge doesn’t know Brett from Adam.  And most people give strangers a base level of credibility that Brett doesn’t deserve.  Most people, when they hear a person say, “this person beat me up in a courthouse and sent me to the hospital” would say, “maybe they are exaggerating, but they aren’t completely making it up.”  And when I tell people, yes, Brett completely made it up, I know that I have to show the video proof or else I endanger my own credibility:

So Judge Grimm probably doesn’t know that Brett literally cannot be trusted, at all, on anything, yet.  He doesn’t realize the monstrously bad faith involved in this suit.  But it’s only a matter of time before the judge catches on, and realizes what a complete scumbag Brett is.  And my motion, and John’s, appears to have moved that timeline up by a few days.

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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 sounds 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 help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the donation link 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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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.