Patterico's Pontifications

10/11/2010

Brad Friedman’s Partner and “Buddy”: A Convicted Bomber, Perjurer, and Drug Smuggler, Suspected Murderer . . . and Election Integrity HERO!!!

Filed under: Brad Friedman,Brett Kimberlin,General,Velvet Revolution — Patterico @ 1:00 pm



[Note: this post is a supplement to the amazing post by Liberty Chick at Big Journalism today. That post sets out the important facts about Brett Kimberlin and his relationship to Brad Friedman. This post sets forth many of the same facts in my own way, and highlights a few points not mentioned in Liberty Chick’s piece. But you should definitely read her piece for the definitive takedown. It is tremendous.]

Brett Kimberlin set off eight bombs in Speedway, Indiana in 1978 over the course of several days. One blew up a police car. Another blew the right leg off of a Vietnam veteran named Carl DeLong. DeLong’s left leg was also severely injured, and two of his fingers were blown off and then reattached. DeLong carried shrapnel in his body, causing him constant pain . . . which apparently became too much for him. DeLong committed suicide in 1983 by sitting in his van in his garage with the engine running.

Kimberlin was identified by store clerks who sold him bombmaking materials. A search of his car revealed timers similar to those used in the bombing, as well as traces of the explosive used. He was convicted of the bombings. He has never been exonerated by any court.

Authorities suspected Kimberlin did the bombings as a distraction from a murder investigation. Kimberlin was enamored of a pre-teen girl named Jessica [a pseudonym given her by Mark Singer] who went on several unsupervised out-of-state trips with him. Jessica’s grandmother expressed her disapproval of the relationship, and insisted that the granddaughters move into her house to get away from Kimberlin. Kimberlin became suicidal. Then the grandmother was shot in the head at her house. Nobody else in the world had a motive to kill her except Kimberlin. After police arrested Kimberlin and several confederates in Texas in a massive drug smuggling operation, the sole eyewitness to the murder identified one of Kimberlin’s confederates as the man who killed Jessica’s grandmother. But the witness soon died of cancer, and no charges were ever brought against Kimberlin for the murder.

While awaiting trial on the bombing, Kimberlin plotted with an inmate to murder a prosecutor on his case. He promised another inmate bail money to go set off another bomb with similar components while Kimberlin was incarcerated, creating an alibi for Kimberlin.

In addition to his convictions for the bombings, Kimberlin was convicted at trial of impersonating a military official. (He sometimes posed as a military official as part of his smuggling operations). He also pled to the drug smuggling charge in Texas. For all these crimes, Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for these and other crimes, but was somehow paroled in the early 1990s.

Now Kimberlin is partnered up with Brad Friedman of the BradBlog — the guy who has made such a big deal out of whether James O’Keefe was wearing a pimp outfit at ACORN. The guy who has repeatedly trumpeted the fact that O’Keefe was a federal criminal — for O’Keefe’s pissant misdemeanor violation of entering federal property under false pretenses.

With Friedman, Kimberlin runs VelvetRevolution.us. Together, they report wild-sounding conspiracy theories about voting irregularities, and solicit donations. Kimberlin and Friedman offer rewards of hundreds of thousands of dollars for news of voting fraud. Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story once told people at Democratic Underground:

I know Brett… and I know the story of his arrest and what really happened. he has been funding the voter fraud allegations, the afterdowningstreet people, etc.

With all this funding of investigations, offering of rewards, and such, Kimberlin to my knowledge has yet to pay DeLong’s widow any money on the $1.6 million civil judgment she received against him for blowing up her husband.

Speaking of crazy allegations against political figures, remember the guy who claimed that he had sold pot to Dan Quayle?

Yeah, that was Kimberlin.

Garry Trudeau made Kimberlin famous by writing a series of comic strips about Kimberlin’s unsubstantiated allegations about Quayle. Trudeau passed on the story to his friend Mark Singer, a writer for the New Yorker who wrote a sympathetic article about Kimberlin. Singer then wrote a book about him. But as he wrote the book, Singer started to realize that Kimberlin is a con artist. As Joe Gelarden, who wrote about Kimberlin during his trial, memorably stated, Kimberlin “was convicted of perjury – in federal court – before he got out of high school. Think about that for a moment.” In a passage in Singer’s book, Kimberlin is depicted as encouraging Singer to create fictional tales about him, saying: “Make it all up. Make the whole thing up.”

This fabulist, this convicted perjurer, is the guy behind many of the blockbuster stories about voter fraud published at BradBlog.com.

Kimberlin has taken to claiming that he was a political prisoner. For example, he had a band called Epoxy, and the band’s page of biographies for the band members says this about Kimberlin.

Brett Kimberlin

Epoxy arose out of the hellish depths of Brett’s time in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights to speech and political activity. Without any trial, Brett was hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician, writing a book and speaking out about politics.

From an interview:

5. Your views and political stance landed you time in prison – Did your views and/or ideas change because of the time you spent in prison?

My views about justice only got stronger in prison. I got to see and feel injustice first hand and spent a lot of time fighting for the rights of prisoners who were uneducated or from foreign countries. I have kept it up since being released, spending a great deal of resources on civil rights and liberties.

6. Many groups and organizations took up your cause and rallied for your release, did this surprise you and how did the media pick up your story?

My case is very convoluted but in essence, I was punished for exercising my First Amendment right to speech. Fortunately, many enlightened people came to my defense, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and that is why my band is donating a portion of each sale to those groups. It did not really surprise because the actions of the American Government were so blatant and therefore it was hard to ignore. What does surprise me is that so many people did and do not care what happened to me. My feeling is that if people don’t stand up to government sponsored injustice, it will only get worse.

The Indianapolis Star sets the record straight:

Kimberlin was paroled in 1994 after serving about 13 years of his 50-year sentence. But when he made no effort to pay the DeLong judgment his parole was revoked in 1997 and he went back to prison for about four more years, released again in 2001.

Many questions remain about the investigations Kimberlin has supposedly done with Brad Friedman. The guy appears to be a career criminal along the lines of Tookie Williams. The similarities are great: an intelligent violent criminal involved in multiple acts of deadly violence, who hatches a plot to escape from incarceration by means of murder. When that fails, he starts a massive publicity campaign, mobilizing the politically strident but fundamentally naive segment among the left who love to stand up for prisoners. As part of his campaign, he uses lame “art” to convince people he is a serious person.

The main difference is that Tookie got caught, convicted, and was never let go. Kimberlin? He walked in 1994, and is now a progressive hero walking the streets.

For more, read Liberty Chick’s post, and poke around the blog of a Socrates, who has been writing about the connection between Kimberlin and Friedman for months.

NEXT UP: Proof that Friedman is censoring mention of Kimberlin at Bradblog. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Kimberlin has now threatened to sue me for this post. To be clear: the post is based almost entirely on published reports from the Indianapolis Star, TIME Magazine, and other news publications. If there are any errors, I invite Mr. Kimberlin to specify them. I will happily correct and retract any mistakes. However, I will not remove anything that is true.

85 Responses to “Brad Friedman’s Partner and “Buddy”: A Convicted Bomber, Perjurer, and Drug Smuggler, Suspected Murderer . . . and Election Integrity HERO!!!”

  1. Obviously the O’Keefe exposes spoiled me. I thought that this would be something specifically about DeLong or MM.

    Still, I had no idea about the connection with Kimberlin (or why it was interesting/important.) So thanks to AB and the rest for bringing it to light.

    I kinda suspect DeLong’ll wriggle off the hook here, though.

    jdub (ba3489)

  2. Damn that criminal O’Keefe!

    Patterico (3230bc)

  3. derp. I meant Friedman, not DeLong. Grr.

    jdub (ba3489)

  4. DeLong? DeLong was the victim.

    Patterico (3230bc)

  5. Oh, and I meant the exposes O’Keefe did, not the “exposes” peformed about him. Why the thin skin?

    jdub (ba3489)

  6. Comments crossed.

    Patterico (3230bc)

  7. “Epoxy arose out of the hellish depths of Brett’s time in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights to speech and political activity. Without any trial, Brett was hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician, writing a book and speaking out about politics.”

    ROTFLMAO

    daleyrocks (940075)

  8. btw, semi-on-topic, freidman’s been on a multi-year jihad against Ann Coulter because she might have voted outside of her appropriate district several times. the hilarious thing is that the latest you could have stretched the statute of limitations was to last November. so he is still going on about it 11 months too late. hilarious.

    http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2010/10/brad-friedman-misstates-law-what-else.html

    And as you will see the whole theory didn’t make any sense anyway. its sort of like palin trutherism, or trutherism in general.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  9. Why are you dragging David Frum’s Brad Friedman’s name into this?

    Is he guilty of something?

    kaf (2dc950)

  10. Your views and political stance plus some dope smuggling, bombings, impersonating federal officials and other stuff landed you time in prison, but mostly the dope smuggling, bombings, impersonating federal officials and other stuff.

    Comedy Gold.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  11. also i left a comment asking him to say something about the story.

    http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8118

    he said he will be back soon with a response. that was at about 1:09 PT

    once again, if necessary, i have saved screenshots of blog posts where the guy called the guy his “buddy” and talked about co-founding that hippie drum circle or whatever it is. joking aside, i have him dead to rights on his associations. so if for any reasons it is necessary to prove them, let me know, cause i have them.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  12. No thin skin. My comment 2 was not in reaction to comment 1. I thought it would be the first comment on the thread.

    Patterico (3230bc)

  13. You’re not the only one with screenshots, Aaron. Liberty Chick has them. I have them.

    Patterico (3230bc)

  14. Why do I get the feeling that Bill Ayers is somehow involved in all this?

    Dmac (84da91)

  15. kaf – Who or what real killed Michael Connell? Ask Brad Friedman or Brett Kimberlin.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  16. Asron@11 – Braddy let my comment survive.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  17. Patterico

    i figured. but redundancy is the best protection against disaster.

    i just keep wondering… why the hell is it that the left feels the need to deal with these types. best explanation is that they get a special frissin from hanging with a terrorist. maybe a little celebrity worship in there, too.

    But seriously, there is no one in the world better to run this kind of crap than terrorists?

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  18. Daleyrocks admitted that his political stance played a role in his incarceration.

    These are the people crissyhooten turns to for guidance.

    JD (cb96c4)

  19. Who is Friedman and why should anyone care enough about him to click on any links? For dumbasses like me, a brief introductory sentence would be nice. 🙂

    Andrew (3433cf)

  20. btw, it is no small irony that this jacka– terrorist says that he was locked up just for speaking his mind.

    but on the other hand, he was going after rove for, as best as i can tell, disagreeing with him.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  21. “Daleyrocks admitted that his political stance played a role in his incarceration.”

    JD – I think it was mostly the other stuff, though. As far as I know, political stance is not a crime in this country, but it could become one soon under Obama the way he is vilifying the right.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  22. Thanks for the props, Patterico.

    Great job by yourself and the lady from Breitbart.

    One thing you might want to change is saying Scyphers’ granddaughter is named Jessica. That’s the name Singer used to protect her true identity.

    In one of the pdf’s from the Breitbart article, her real name and that of her sister are revealed.

    I’ve definitely got to get off the internet, because I’m starting to lose my eyesight. I’ve just one more thing to say for now.

    Brad responded to Dustin, “His profane message, not yours, was removed.”

    This is what I wrote he is describing as profane.

    “Time magazine’s Wizard of Odd article clearly reported that B K started V R and Brad was hired as the frontman.”

    He should have stuck to saying I was a banned poster, because there was nothing profane in that post. That’s just more knowing disinformation from Brad Friedman.

    Prepostericity (d6554a)

  23. These posts clearly illustrate that Kimberlin is a nasty SOB, and that Friedman is a good buddy of his.

    What I would like to see more of is context so I can explain why this matters to anybody. I’m sure it does, but to those who don’t follow blogs a great deal, the first question would be, who is Brad Friedman and why the hell should I care that some random blogger is buddies with a criminal like Kimberlin?

    I’ve not followed very much the previous battles between our host and BradBlog. To the extent I have, it’s clear that Patterico has been on the accurate side, but I’ve never frankly understood why Friedman was anybody who mattered in the slightest. Looking at his blog, I see that he self-promotes with some quote from CNN about his site being the go-to blog for e-voting issues, or something like that, so I suppose that’s one reason. If the MSM gives him a voice, then clearly he needs to be exposed for his connections to a vicious career criminal. But, as Andrew said at #19 much more succinctly, it would be nice if the article explained why any of this matters to anybody, beyond “random blogger has nefarious association with nasty criminal.”

    PatHMV (140f2a)

  24. Ok, just one more comment for now. Brett Kimberlin is a former terrorist. I’m not discounting his ugly past, but it’s not fair to suggest he is still committing violence.

    To why many on the left have supported Brad over the years, here’s what I think. It’s human nature to believe things said by those who appear to be our natural allies. If it’s any consolation, the number of people at BradBlog has seemed to drop substantially the last year or two.

    I’ve been “working” on this story for a couple years, not just recently. No one other than myself has really been pressing the topic. Even in the DU thread Patterico linked to with Larisa vouching for Brett, I don’t think Brad was even mentioned.

    I’ve also been surprised that no one from the right blogosphere has covered this until now with yourselves and Breitbart. This means Brad and Brett have been very effective in burying this story.

    As for anyone attempting to post at BradBlog, you’d best make sure to take screenshots. He may let some of your posts in but delete others. What I’m happy about is that Brad can no longer spin anyone mentioning Brett and his past full of violence and prevaricating as being some psychotic stalker named socrates. Your best bet is to stay as objective as possible. I was very impressed with how well-balanced the Breitbart piece was. Though when she asked if even one lefty had spoken up about this, I guess she missed my crusade.

    Anyway, we all know about Brad’s moderating scam in which anything he doesn’t want to remain published can be deleted and explained away as being knowing disinformation. What I think is still crucial to figure out is how much VR has raked in over the years. Brad is always whining that the coffers are empty and he might have to quit blogging, but the Breitbart piece mentioned two sources of revenue totally over 1.35 million dollars. I’d ask Brad about that. But since he knows I’m out of Boston and am usually consistent with my questions, I wouldn’t be surprised if anything asked in that direction might be deleted and explained off as being another post from your friendly, neighbourhood, stalker troll.

    Prepostericity (d6554a)

  25. Maybe all of the explosive manufacturers were union shops.

    Huey (efe02b)

  26. Daleyrocks:
    My comment was a reference to Javert’s stupidity in the Knepper post. I was hoping the strikeout of Frum’s name would make that clear.

    kaf (2dc950)

  27. kaf – My bad, but somebody should still ask Braddy the question. He may still think it was a Rove hit.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  28. Prepostericity – Boston. Heh. Wicked awesome in your weekend post was a wicked awesome clue.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  29. As usual, Brad thrives on people’s ignorance about how election systems work, there is a long and belabored process to establish the proper precinct
    of the voter, that I doubt she could have circumvented

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  30. hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician

    We can do that? Anyone know Yoko Ono’s current whereabouts?

    malclave (1db6c5)

  31. PatHMV,

    I think this story matters for several reasons. As detailed in the Big Journalism article, Friedman and Kimberlin are influential in progressive left-wing causes and their groups have received substantial funding, including “a total of over $1.3 million in public gifts and grants since 2005” for voter and related efforts. (In 2009, $51K came from the Tides Foundation.) Further, it bothers me that someone with Kimberlin’s very suspect background is so heavily involved in voter issues. It should bother fair-minded liberals, too.

    DRJ (d43dcd)

  32. Much like Ayers, they found ways to undermine the system, that didn’t explicitly use violence, ie;
    undermining confidence in the voting systems, yet
    another false flag like the Journolist, like Axelrod’s astroturfs

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  33. Convicted street thug turned dipshit revolutionary? A familiar tale, these past fifty years…

    The Sanity Inspector (ef5d4d)

  34. malclave – The GOP has been disappearing people for years, but we have tried to keep it quiet.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  35. “We can do that? Anyone know Yoko Ono’s current whereabouts?”

    Now now now……Kimberlin and Friedman may get the Junior Che Mousketeers to believe that BK was imprisoned for his music but even BradBlog wouldn’t claim Yoko was a musician.

    harkin (d354f8)

  36. Sounds like a good time to update Bedwetter Brad’s Wikipedia.

    breitbartfan77 (0ebc78)

  37. Brad Friedman give new
    meaning to the descriptive
    human excrement

    ColonelHaiku (bcf6d4)

  38. Human Excrement
    Objects to being likened
    To Bradley Friedman

    Aaron "Haiku" Worthing (f97997)

  39. It will be interesting to see where this leads. In the meantime, I’ll work on trying to wrap my my mind around Kimberlin’s definition of First Amendment right to speech.

    Brett Kimberlin set off eight bombs in Speedway, Indiana in 1978 over the course of several days. One blew up a police car. Another blew the right leg off of a Vietnam veteran named Carl DeLong. DeLong’s left leg was also severely injured, and two of his fingers were blown off and then reattached.

    In an interview with Brett Kimberlin: My case is very convoluted but in essence, I was punished for exercising my First Amendment right to speech.

    At the least, his perception and understanding of Free Speech is deeply disturbing.

    Dana (8ba2fb)

  40. markos moulitsass
    will soon taste what it means to
    be a rented mule

    ColonelHaiku (bcf6d4)

  41. #35…My thoughts exactly!

    As to why those of the Left are drawn to thugs who parade around disguised with a veneer of revolution…
    It is the Radical Chic thing to do.

    Since they are too cowardly to actually do more than write a check, they find the association with violent radicals oh so, so!
    Just as long as they don’t move into the neighborhood, or disturb them at the club.

    AD-RtR/OS! (3ac795)

  42. Once again, the whole Kimberlin period of incarceration demonstrates the sheer folly of concurrent sentences. What a horribly short prison term for such carnage.

    Gazzer (dd4205)

  43. It should bother fair-minded liberals

    Whats the difference between – a fair minded liberal – and – big foot?

    big foot’s been spotted….

    EricPWJohnson` (cae720)

  44. …more Radical Chic:

    With Brett Kimberlin, the Progressives have their newest boy-toy!
    You just have to wonder that with all of the advances made in investigating criminal events, if a full-court press wouldn’t turn up something really incriminating on BK other than his pedestrian crimes of drug-smuggling, bombing resulting in death, perjury, conspiracy to escape custody, possible conspiracy to commit murder, interstate transport of a minor…
    A poster child for the RC loving Progressives.

    BTW, if BK is “financing” these “erstwhile” investigations of voter fraud, where is the money coming from?

    AD-RtR/OS! (3ac795)

  45. You know one is reminded of James Hatfield, another violent criminal of a less successful nature, who was released and put out that screed about W, including allegations of drug use, the book was not properly mulched, for the ludicrousness of it’s claims, in fact one can find in most public libraries, and there was even an expanded foreign
    addition, calling him the Nero of the 21st Century. subsequent to his suicide

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  46. Geez, ian cormac, at first I thought you were referring to lead vocalist for Metallica.

    Het – Hat….got it.

    Dana (8ba2fb)

  47. #9, One convicted of a crime, the other of being a creep. Too bad folks can’t tell the difference anymore.

    But yes, Mr Frum is cavorting with a creepy gay 20 year old college boys and should stop but the headline still implies lots more unfortunately.

    *now the normal insults come*

    Javert_is_alive! (AKA ...) (4f78d0)

  48. Most people I know that have been in prison for setting off a series of bombs are dull and angry and very hard to trust.

    Birdbath (8501d4)

  49. Cravert,

    I think Pat has devoted equal time to those who do bad things, associate with bad things, and cheer on those who do bad things

    I you had paid any attention he doesn’t have a litmus test on political ideology before he posts people who do the above

    unlike most others

    EricPWJohnson` (cae720)

  50. second sentence should be – If you instead of I you

    EricPWJohnson` (cae720)

  51. #49, “J” not “C” — like the Po-Po in Les Miz………

    Javert_is_alive! (AKA ...) (4f78d0)

  52. No, Dave Mustaine, also has crazy political opinions, but no one has associated him with violence, similarly Baerwald, whose band Sheryl
    Crow has some ‘interesting’ points of view

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  53. DRJ, thanks, and I don’t disagree with any of that, now that you’ve informed me of it. But there’s no section in the BigJournalism article called “why you should care about Brad Friedman and his connections to violent terrorists.” The specific facts may be sprinkled throughout the Big Journalism piece, but it’s such a long piece, filled with so much basic, undisputed background about Kimberlin, that I really couldn’t tell why I should care.

    PatHMV (c34b06)

  54. “but was somehow paroled in the early 1990s”

    Terrorism, mutilation, murder, and he gets 13 years. Prison doesn’t work: it doesn’t keep hardened criminals from continuing their lifelong devotion to crime. Only the death penalty can. If setting eight bombs isn’t enough, what is?

    tehag (4d7904)

  55. I’ve a few more observations.

    It might not mean much, but on the Malloy Friday thread, Brad changed his post #14 way after the fact. He has a sarcastic line about what he thought the big, bad secret about him was going to be. It originally was something corny about him fudging census numbers. He has changed it to that he’d be found out being in charge of a child prostitution ring. Changing posts after the fact is cheating. He can do it with not only his own posts but with guests and most people would miss such tampering.

    The other thread Kimberlin has been mentioned is the recent one concerning the internet vote hacking.

    He has reacted just like I thought he would, by totally ignoring the substance. One of the main questions I have persistently tried to get posted on BradBlog is how much money has VR taken in. Today’s article shows a minimum of 1.35 million dollars. That’s only what we now know about and the grand total could dwarf that amount.

    Brad’s playing this off as having been a simple display of google skills. He will not mention how such information and much more has never been covered by himself and how many people like his colleague Larisa Alexandrovna have run interference through outright lying and enforcement of censorship at the progressive blogs they have control of.

    So the message is nothing to see here move along.

    Brad says let’s move on to important things like that hack. One of his colleagues from Raw Story showed up to help him do that. The thing is, even this new story shows how Brad operates yellow journalism in an effort to bolster his image as the leading election integrity activist, and then asks for money. He’s trying to shock people by saying China and Iran also tried to hack into the machines. The following is what Brad doesn’t share with his readers.

    http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/hacking_trial_b.html
    (original link The Washington Post)

    “Last week, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics opened a new Internet-based voting system for a weeklong test period, inviting computer experts from all corners to prod its vulnerabilities in the spirit of “give it your best shot.”

    Maybe Patterico as a prosecutor can get the ball rolling in real life to see that Velvet Revolution is investigated for fraud.

    It’s easy to prove they’ve been running hoaxes for years. The Michael Connell story stinks big time. Another thing that could be looked into is whether there is a police report for the claim that Clint Curtis’ dog was shot dead as a message to Curtis to keep the lid on his allegedly being asked to create a vote flipping program.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/16/107270/-BradBlog-needs-to-get-his-facts-straight-or-dump-this-Dog-of-a-Curtis-story

    “I asked Brad to post some proof that the dog was dead.

    I asked for Brad to post a copy of a police report considering Clint’s entire story is based on us believing him.

    Brad told me it was my job to search out the report on my own and would not even provide me with the police station he claims the report was filed at because it might jeopardize Clint’s safety. Even though the shooters must already know where Clint lives if they shot his dog.”

    Prepostericity (d6554a)

  56. crissyhooten approves of bradblog’s buddies.

    JD (3399c0)

  57. Btw, at his blog Brad tried to blow it off. This is what he wrote:

    Aaron – Went and read it. *That’s* Breitbart’s big story? That he figured out how Google works? That’s “the deep dark secret Brad Friedman doesn’t want you to know?” The one that’s been reported on publicly for years?! Thought I was going to learn that I was behind defrauding the U.S. Census. Oh, well.

    Back to paying attention to what matters. [and goes on changing the subject]

    This is what i wrote to him in response:

    So, Brad, you don’t think we should find anything at all troubling about associating yourself with an unrepentant domestic terrorist?

    And yeah, he is unrepentant. You cannot repent without confession and he pretends this was just about his first amendment rights, and not the drugs he dealt, the perjury he committed, or the bombs he set.

    I mean, seriously. “Hey guys, this is my buddy Eric Rudolph. And this is my home-slice Osama bin Laden. Hey remember the time we all partied with Tim McVeigh? Man I miss that guy…” /sarcasm

    Seriously, there was no one else able to found these organizations and hang out with you?

    Aaron "Haiku" Worthing (f97997)

  58. You know when you think about there’s something almost obscene in Friedman and Kimberlin’s use of the name;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  59. Aaron,

    It’s beyond doubt that Brad Friedman is extremely worried about anyone discussing this matter.

    One good way to deal with a solid blow is to pretend it was ‘but a fleshwound’. It’s amusing that a lot of Brad’s buds will be pretending this is no big deal. This is beyond the wildest paranoid hysteria about Tea Partiers and I can only imagine Brad’s reaction if Patterico or Breitbart had a partner half as disturbing.

    But it’s no big surprise. I could go on at length about the way Brad debates. Mainly, ‘look over there’. Even preemptively, he will focus on one target and use it to distract.

    I think the most obvious example was O’Keefe’s not wearing a halloween pimp costume while conducting a sting, but this Coulter barrage is another good example.

    The whole Brad shtick reeks of an unserious activist who wants to build fame and fortune rather than credibility. And that’s before realizing we’re dealing with Kimberlin.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  60. Kimberlin’s background is very disturbing and certainly bolsters the case for taking a skeptical approach to any enterprise in which he’s a major player. All the same, voter fraud allegations from the organization that provides the vehicle for his collaboration with Friedman will rise or fall on their own merits.

    A side note: Liberty Chick appears to summarize the work of others, particularly such MSM sources as TIME and the Indianapolis newspaper. There does not appear to be much original work or fresh news. That’s OK, but the build-up appeared to suggest something different.

    Angeleno (bcac39)

  61. Prepostericity, you really lay out your claims carefully and I appreciate how easy you make it to work through some of this topic.

    Obviously you’re quite frustrated with someone we both seem to think is more of a con artist than an activist.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  62. Restore Justice at Justice: VR Calls for DoJ Action on Bush-era Political Prosecutions
    It’s time for AG Eric Holder to investigate and vacate eight years of miscarried justice
    Join more than 700 who’ve already signed on to our letter…

    What follows below is a letter I sent to AG Eric Holder last week, on behalf of VelvetRevolution.us (of which The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder), calling for his immediate investigation of all political prosecutions at the DoJ during the Bush era,

    JD (3399c0)

  63. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

    I suspect it will be nothing, except in the right blogosphere.

    What I find interesting, though, is how this recent saw (as opposed to the old saw) seems to play out every time:

    If you want to know what kind of dirty tricks the left is playing, all you have to do is look at what it is accusing the right of doing.

    Everybody is saying that the President resembles Carter, but the more I see, he’s more akin to Tammany with a little bit of Nixon thrown in for amusement purposes.

    Ag80 (743fd1)

  64. I think any reference to Braddy’s name should now start out something along the lines of the following:

    “Brad Friedman, self-promoting election integrity expert and partner of convicted bomber, perjurer, drug smuggler and serial fabulist Brett Kimberlin”

    It could then segue into a normal story about Brad, e.g., Brad Friedman, self-promoting election……, made another in a long series of sensational unsupported assertions about election integrity today………..

    I think people get the picture.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  65. Speaking of crazy allegations against political figures, remember the guy who claimed that he had sold pot to Dan Quayle?

    Yeah, that was Kimberlin.

    Garry Trudeau made Kimberlin famous by writing a series of comic strips about Kimberlin’s unsubstantiated allegations about Quayle. Trudeau passed on the story to his friend Mark Singer, a writer for the New Yorker who wrote a sympathetic article about Kimberlin. Singer then wrote a book about him. But as he wrote the book, Singer started to realize that Kimberlin is a con artist. As Joe Gelarden, who wrote about Kimberlin during his trial, memorably stated, Kimberlin “was convicted of perjury – in federal court – before he got out of high school. Think about that for a moment.”

    I used to like Doonesbury a LOT before I walked away from the liberal plantation, and when I saw the name “Brett Kimberlin” in Patterico’s tweet, it triggered a memory of him being mentioned in Doonesbury.

    But I thought, “Why would Brad Friedman be hanging with a guy that Garry Trudeau would mention in his left-leaning, GOP-hating comic strip?” When I read the above post, the memories came flooding back. I remembered Kimberlin being mentioned as having sold drugs to Quayle, but I DON’T remember anyone exposing him as a domestic terrorist with serious credibility problems on par with those of Larry Sinclair or Scott Ritter. Then again, this was in the pre-Internet, pre-Fox News, pre-EIB era, when the MSM controlled and filtered the news.

    L.N. Smithee (62efdc)

  66. This is powerful stuff.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  67. I’m finding it astonishing that a person who has done nearly a dozen and a half years of hard time for violent felonies is now being allowed control of huge sums of money in a non-profit organization.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  68. 68.I’m finding it astonishing

    Clinton?

    🙂

    EricPWJohnson (cae720)

  69. Who would give vast sums of money to Roger?

    AD-RtR/OS! (3ac795)

  70. “Kimberlin has now threatened to sue me for this post… However, I will not remove anything that is true.”

    Um, don’t you understand liberal logic; telling the truth about a liberal IS Slanderous, or Libel whichever.

    I thought we knew this by now. And not lying for the government will get you punished as well I think.

    ertdfg (25ea0f)

  71. #

    I’m finding it astonishing that a person who has done nearly a dozen and a half years of hard time for violent felonies is now being allowed control of huge sums of money in a non-profit organization.

    Comment by SPQR — 10/11/2010 @ 10:23 pm

    I’m not. I work in non-profit world; I’m more astonished that fraud isn’t more rampant than it currently is.

    And when Tides is involved, any modicum of sense seems to fly merrily out the window, cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.

    Dianna (5f6ad4)

  72. Innuendo and guilt by association? Obviously, Freidman is no more guilty for what’s his face’s crimes than you are of Breitbart’s inability to properly vet videos,

    still, I’m more troubled by your links to the Star. You hint these links are to news stories when most of them are to blogs. Blogs from a newspaper once owned by Dan Qualye’s family and still featuring many of the people who owe their gigs to the Pulliams AND, in Indianapolis tradition, think hippies and terrorists are pretty similar (Mr. Gelarden, for instance).

    I guess, when I say a guy committed a murder, I like to have more than “he was investigated for it.”

    I get that politics are nasty and so is Brett Kimberlin (he’s sort of famous around these parts), but the defense that you based these on published reports is sort of “lawyer speak,” ain’t it? It implies you and the Breitbart lady based these allegations on news stories (which she did more than you), but truth is, you basically just called a terrorist a murderer based on the off the record conversation of the prosecutor’s office with reporters in the 1980’s (after all, seems setting off the bombs and being a drug running douchebag is enough to indict Mr. Kimberlin’s character?)

    ‘Course, I won’t even touch the idea that the sort of people who defend Scooter Libby, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, and assorted other perjurers (Clarence Thomas, I’m looking at you) finds other perjurers reprehensible because they associate with someone who doesn’t like your friend Andy enough. In other words, let’s judge Brad and Brett on the idiocy they currently peddle (like that business of the plane crash or the bs about the 2004 being stolen), since Brad Friedman, Andy’s doppleganger, wasn’t exactly planting bombs in Speedway.

    [timb, you have completely mischaracterized several things in this post, leading me to wonder whether you are mistaken or making things up with a nefarious purpose. Suffice it to say that anyone who relied on your comment as a characterization of any of my posts would be foolish indeed. — P]

    timb (449046)

  73. timb decrying innuendo and guilt by association? Next we’ll have Bill Clinton condemning adultery.

    And sure enough, look at the innuendo and guilt by association in the very next paragraph.

    timb, I guess you are lucky that overdosing on irony won’t kill you. At least, not like a bomb will …

    SPQR (26be8b)

  74. Timb, no innuendo. Brad is a partner of a charity that took in hundreds of thousands in donations, at least if Time Magazine is correct. The other partner is a “top flight con artist”.

    No one has any idea where that money is being spent, and Brad has gone to some length to cover up discussion of this issue… to the point where you cannot even say the name Brett Kimberlin on his blog.

    He’s covering for a violent and terrible man.

    Does that mean Brad Friedman is a killer? Well, of course not. No one is asserting that he is, Timb.

    You can say more than ‘the guy was investigated’, Timb, because he was convicted by a jury and then found liable by a jury, of bombing people.

    I see that you spend most of your comment making wild accusations that have nothing to do with this issue. You’re the one relying on innuendo, painting some kind of conspiracy by Dan Quayle’s family.

    What a crock. Brad Friedman is untrustworthy and you can tell by his partner and how he’s handled this issue. Your defense is to simply ignore those issues and rant about Clarence Thomas.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  75. One thing you can say, was that timb found a way to comment on this thread and [i]lower[/i] his own credibility more.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  76. I’m pretty sure Brett and his cronies were just carrying all those weapons around when they were busted in Texas to keep coyotes at bay.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  77. Links to indystar blogs? I did not know they had them back in the 1980s.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  78. Timb — homicide is a crime, murder is a fact.

    You can say someone committed murder even if they were only investigated — and not ultimately prosected — for homicide.

    shipwreckedcrew (dd1bdb)

  79. shipwreckedcrew – Kimberlin would probably be a bigger lefty hero if his body count were higher – see Che, Mao, Stalin, Castro.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  80. Some of these psychopaths are really very charming and charismatic, and they can be quite convincing. I can’t blame someone for being fooled by one, short-term. I have been fooled by such people.

    But the left seems to somehow confuse charisma for character. Learning the truth about the charismatic one doesn’t seem to change their perception… The foibles of Clinton, Ted Kennedy, etc. don’t seem to matter to them. The word ‘glamor’ once meant a magical attraction, irresistible to its target.

    We seem to have a bit more resistance to glamor, I guess, or it wears off sooner.

    jodetoad (7720fb)

  81. timb, wasn’t Bill Clinton a perjurer? And you’ve defended him. I guess your sanctimony is directed only at Republicans.

    Some Chump (e84e27)

  82. I’ve long noticed that the leftie fringe make sit to the mainstream leftie world, and gets accolades and rewards sometimes, Ward Churchill for one and there are hundreds more, a lot become college professors and administrators.

    You don’t see this on the right…well, Milton Friedman did make a nice living, Ayn Rand as well, Barry Goldwater…

    I had a teacher friend of mine try to defend Bill Ayers. See, he knows Ayers from his days at school, the curricula of lots of education colleges includes much work done by Ayers.

    And I am sure that a lot of people who have influence in education are pretty close to having Ayers views. They just didn’t get caught or maybe had a moral episode that caused them to not go as far as he did.

    I mean, the freaking White House had a Christmas tree with a goddamn Mao ornament…you can’t tell me the left really disavows those monsters. I just won’t believe it. Too much stuff like that is out there…

    Rev Dr E Buzz (1eb242)

  83. any updates? did Brett actually sue anyone?

    Nehru (4d45ec)

  84. I believe he has, and — given the fact that I still have an upcoming post reviewing the book “Citizen K” — he may still be planning to sue me.

    Which, if he does, there are a few things that will then happen that I don’t think he will like very much.

    Time will tell.

    (Please note: I haven’t backed down on doing the “Citizen K” review, but simply haven’t had the time to finish the post.)

    Patterico (c218bd)


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