The Brett Kimberlin story

There's a big story circulating in the right half of the blogosphere over the past few days, centered on a convicted bomber named Brett Kimberlin and his attempts to use the legal system to attack conservative bloggers.

The other McCain has a good overview of what is a fairly complicated story, with a lot of moving pieces.

Domestic Terrorist Now Using ‘Lawfare’?

Convicted of multiple federal felonies in connection with a string of 1978 bombings in Indiana, Kimberlin’s activities recently have come under renewed scrutiny due to his attempt to press criminal charges against attorney Aaron Walker, a blogger who says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him as part of a campaign of harassment and intimidation against conservative New Media activists. 

...

Walker’s complaint against Kimberlin — the subject of a 28,000-word account posted Thursday morning at the blog Allergic to Bull — sparked new interest in the convicted felon’s online activities. Kimberlin’s connections to influential non-profit charities, leading progressive bloggers and Democrat Party operatives expose what many observers believe is a coordinated effort to silence conservative activists online through intimidation and harassment. Less than six months before his death, New Media enterpreneur Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin’s activities.

Here are the Instapundit links to the various stories of Kimberlin's current and recent activities. And blogger Aaron Worthing has published his account of his interactions with Kimberlin.

My reaction when I first heard it, though, was, "I've heard that name before." And I have. Brett Kimberlin, convicted domestic terrorist, claimed in 1991 that he was essentially a political prisoner, because he had sold cocaine to then-Senator Dan Quayle, and that Quayle, currently the Vice President of the United States, was using the Federal Bureau of prisons to keep him from getting the story out. And I know this not because it was a big story in the mainstream press, but because one of those, like Joe Biden and John Kerry, who has been wrong on every issue that the country has dealt with over the last forty years, is Garry Trudeau. And Trudeau ran with Kimberlin's story. For three weeks, that was the sole focus of the Doonesbury strip.

(You can see the whole series here.)

Was there any evidence? No. But the story, according to Trudeau, and the vast majority of the newspapers that carried the strip (usually on the editorial page) was that the allegation of a coverup was fair game. Despite the fact that there was no evidence of that, either.

Anyway, it's always good to remind people how wrong Trudeau has been, and the scope and scale of matters about which he's been wrong.

And it's important for people to recognize that making false and unsubstantiated accusations in lawsuits in nothing new for Brett Kimberlin¹...





¹ - I haven't talked with Mr. Kimberlin, so I suppose there's always the possibility that there are two different Brett Kimberlins, both of which who have been convicted of domestic terrorism in Indiana, and both of whom have used the legal system to file bogus lawsuits against people of whom they disapprove. If so, I'll apologize in advance. I think that the odds are slim...