Patterico's Pontifications

7/1/2012

One Year Ago Today: July 1, 2011

Filed under: Brad Friedman,Brett Kimberlin,General,Neal Rauhauser — Patterico @ 7:27 am



I was SWATted.

I described the experience here. I’ll quote a bit of it:

At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.

When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.

They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?

I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.

. . . .

[P]olice rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to make sure they were alive.

The call that sent deputies to my home was a hoax.

Here’s a little bit more detail about what happened at the time and in the immediate aftermath. This is all from memory, from a year ago, so minor details could be wrong.

I had been talking with Ron Brynaert when the police arrived. I had been threatened a week earlier, but I also knew that Mike Stack had been SWATted. So when people knocked on my door and rang the doorbell, I didn’t know who it was. I looked at the oven clock that is currently to my right, and it said 12:35 a.m. I leapt from my chair and moved where I couldn’t be seen from the front door. I told Brynaert that it was 12:35 a.m and people were pounding on my door and ringing the doorbell. He seemed to ignore me and kept ranting about whatever he had been ranting about. I said: “Listen to me! It’s 12:35 in the morning and someone is knocking on the door!” I heard the people at the door yelling: “Fire!” I told Brynaert I didn’t know if it was the people who had threatened me or the police. I asked him if he thought I should keep him on the phone or hang up. I don’t remember what he said, but I decided to keep him on the phone. If something awful happened, I wanted a witness.

I ended up deciding it was the police and opened the door. Before they handcuffed me, they took the cell phone from my hand. They shouted the questions at me and some police went in the house. At that point, while we were still on my front porch, I addressed the deputy who had cuffed me. Because I knew Mike Stack had been SWATted, I said words to the effect of: “Let me guess. Someone called and said I killed my wife.” The cops looked at me like I was confessing to something. I said something like this: “Look. This is a hoax. I think I know what’s going on here. I’m a blogger. I’m also a Deputy D.A., but I don’t think this is about my job. It’s about things I wrote on my blog. This same thing happened to someone else last week, in New Jersey. Someone called and said he killed his wife, and the police showed up at his house and pointed guns at him, just like this. He and I were writing about the same story. We were both writing about Congressman Weiner, the Congressman who sent the picture of his underwear. We were both writing about that. We both got threatened by email. Check my phone. I talked to a New Jersey detective about it. His name is Jason Larson. His name and number are on my phone. I know this all sounds crazy, but that’s what’s going on.”

I continued talking to the cop about it as he walked me down the street to the patrol car. I told him that I had warned my wife that this might happen. I had also told a neighbor about it. I said: “The neighbor I told lives in that house right there. You can ask him about it. I told him this might happen. He asked if I had talked to you guys, and I didn’t, because I didn’t want to sound paranoid. I can’t believe this is actually happening to me too.”

As we walked down the street, there was a helicopter overhead, shining down a spotlight on the street. I was put in the back of the patrol car. I can’t remember if I was still cuffed any more. I think I was. It was quiet. I sat there for a few minutes.

They came back, opened up the patrol car, and uncuffed me. They had talked to my wife, who had told them the same thing. They knew now that it was a hoax. They asked me to tell them more about it. I was addressing about 4-5 sheriff’s deputies on the sidewalk by the patrol car. I told them about Anthony Weiner, and the threatening email I had gotten, and the guy in New Jersey.

They asked me if I had any idea who had done this. I told them I didn’t know for sure, but they might want to look into a guy named Neal Rauhauser. I had been talking with Brynaert about him on the phone, and had just been blogging about him when the SWATting happened.

They gave me back my phone. I think Ron Brynaert was still on the line. My memory of some details is spotty as it was a stressful situation. Either on the phone or in a DM or both, I can’t remember for sure, I told him not to tell anyone what had happened. I know at some point he said he had already told Lee Stranahan. More about that later.

I asked the deputies if we could talk in the house. We came inside and sat at the kitchen table where I am now. The house was a wreck. I told them I was in trial; we were “dark” (the trial court was not in session) the next day, but I had been very busy and had not had time to clean up. I felt embarrassed having all these deputies in my home when it was so dirty. I spent a few minutes telling them what I knew and asking what would happen next. Would a detective be assigned? Yes, he would. He should call me. They would treat it as a false report of a crime.

The deputies were sympathetic. By now they knew that both my wife and I are Deputy D.A.’s. The guy who had cuffed me and frisked me was very polite. I said I thought I recognized him, and he said the same about me. He said he had been a bailiff in Compton at times, and we agreed that was probably where I had seen him. The officers handed me a pamphlet with my “rights” as a victim and the URN (the report number for the report).

The deputies left. I asked my wife about her experience, and she told me what had happened from her perspective. I was concerned about the kids. She didn’t think the kids had been awakened more than slightly.

I called Ron Brynaert. He told me he had told Lee Stranahan what had happened. I can’t remember if he was confirming something he had said before, or telling me for the first time. I wanted to make sure that this did not become an Internet story immediately, as I worried it would impede an investigation. Although it was late, I called Lee and woke him up. I said I was sorry to wake him in the middle of the night, but this was important. I asked if he had talked to Brynaert. He said he had not. I asked if Brynaert had emailed him or gotten in touch with him in any way. He said no. I said that if he got any communications from Brynaert, to keep the subject matter to himself.

I called Brynaert back. I said Lee said he had not heard from Brynaert. Brynaert said he had sent Lee a DM. I said that Lee said he had not heard from Brynaert in any way. Brynaert said he had DM’d Lee. I said, hold on, and called Lee again.

I asked Lee to check his DM’s. He said he had no DM’s from Brynaert.

I called Brynaert back. I told him Lee said he had no DM’s. Brynaert said he had sent Lee a DM. I said, that makes no sense. I asked him to check. He says he didn’t get anything. Brynaert repeated that he had sent Lee a DM. Lee should have gotten it. I said this was really weird.

Christi said she was going back to bed. I said that I was worried I was not the only SWATting victim that night. On June 25, 2011, Alicia Pain had exchanged numerous emails with me, giving me some idiotic story about having material on Anthony Weiner. At one point she had asked me questions about where I lived, and said: “Anyway if I wanted to send you the material we talked about, where would I send it?” She included four street addresses (no city names, just number and street), one of which was mine. Of course I didn’t tell her anything about where I lived.

I remembered that Stack had told me the police had been given the wrong address by the guy who SWATted him. New Jersey police had gone to the wrong address, he had told me, and pulled an older couple out of a house where Stack used to live.

I thought: I wonder if they are making hoax calls about all four of those addresses they had for me.

By now it had to be between 1:30 and 2 a.m., but I felt an obligation to follow up on the other addresses. I called the dispatcher at the Lomita Sheriff’s station. I told him that he probably was aware that there had just been a hoax call of a shooting at my address. I explained that I was worried that similar events might be occurring at three other addresses in Southern California. I gave him the addresses and asked if he would be willing to call the other police departments to warn them. He was very friendly and said he would.

As I said, Alicia Pain had given only street names and numbers for the four addresses. I Googled all four of them and found they all belonged to various people named Patrick Frey in Southern California. I determined the city for each of them. I can’t remember whether I did that before I called the Lomita dispatcher or after.

I do know that I started to worry that the Lomita dispatcher was going to be too busy to contact the other police departments, so I started doing it myself. I called all three of the other departments. Two of them had already received calls from the dispatcher at the Sheriff’s station in Lomita, and knew what I was talking about. They said no hoax calls had occurred in their cities that night. (I had never even heard the term SWATting and did not use it with these police departments.)

The third police station had not yet heard from my Lomita dispatcher. It was an awkward conversation, occurring at probably 2:30 or 3 in the morning, that started out something like this: “OK, this is going to sound really weird, but there’s a reason I’m calling you . . .” However bizarre the situation I described sounded, I know I sounded rational and level-headed, and after a couple of minutes they understood what I was saying and took down the information.

I tried going to bed but had a hard time sleeping.

Early in the morning Lee called and asked what was going on. I really didn’t want the word to get out, but I realized that he was a potential victim, so I told him. After I woke up, I called Ace of Spades, who had also been threatened by Alicia Pain by email, and told him what had happened to me.

Ace wanted me to write about it right away. I said I didn’t want to jeopardize law enforcement investigations. He said I would be “scooped” if I didn’t break the story on my blog. Which is pretty funny if you think about it, since Big Media never reported any of this until I blogged about it on May 25, 2012.

That morning I got in touch with a friend who I knew had contacts in the FBI. I asked him to put me in touch with them. One of his friends works in Long Beach, and I talked to that agent, who invited me down to the Long Beach office to make a report. He worked in a violent crimes unit, but said he would take an initial report and pass it along to the cyber crimes people.

Later that day I met with him and gave him my story.

On July 1, 2011, Ron Brynaert sent me 7 emails. Not one referred to the SWATting that had occurred the night before. All were bizarre, impossible to understand emails about Neal Rauhauser, and sock puppets he had spoken to, and Anthony Weiner, and starchild111, and Jennifer George, and Jennifer George’s film professor. One said:

[T]he entire M.O. of these sick fucks every one of them is to DIVERT!!!!!! So they pretend to go after lee stranahan…..when that’s not their real target.

It’s you. They want to damage your career…

Another said:

so with that nightmare scenario…i would guess that neal and his crew are writing everyone at your work….telling them what’s with this crazy guy throwing fake docs on the site…i can prove they’re fake….

anyway…im imagining your offices aint gonna fall for that deception….so hopefully if they do that we just get more evidence….anyone sending letters to complain you is almost definnitely a neal r dude or been duped by him….

Months later, Ron Brynaert contacted my workplace to complain about me, to damage my career. But that’s getting ahead of the story . . .

77 Responses to “One Year Ago Today: July 1, 2011”

  1. Patterico,

    as I said before, I’m grateful you and your family are safe. Don’t let up.

    One thing I’m curious about. What made you trust Brynaert in the first place? Was he feeding you legitimate information that was verifiable elsewhere? What made you feel he was a trustworthy person?

    The two trust questions are different when you think about them.
    Thank you.

    NJRob (fe68e7)

  2. Keep pulling on the string, Pat.

    CausticConservative (b29599)

  3. “…Ron Brynaert sent a letter to my workplace to complain about me…”

    And this is the guy you were talking to while the LASD was marshalling its forces outside your door; and then he lied to you about DM’ing Lee; and you still trust him?
    And here I thought that DA’s were all overly cynical.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  4. Oh, I see. Two open comment threads with the same title. Retitle as “part one” and “part two” to lessen confusion maybe, Patterico?

    elissa (9c5ce7)

  5. Or, perhaps like our computers do when we download the same thing twice, put “(1)” after the second title?

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  6. Is the person or persons responsible for these deeds upset about the blogging regarding Anthony Weiner?

    If so, why did bringing Weiner down provoke such a nasty response? Was he such a hero to these nasty people? He was a piece of work himself.

    AZ Bob (1c9631)

  7. Heh. In your position, I’d look into setting up a trust fund to use for anything that results in public info. It should keep unscheduled guests to a minimum.

    A favorite fantasy of mine is to buy a lot I know with a big boulder in it, trim the boulder to house shape, paint it, and let people think it’s my home. Break into /that/, Suckah.

    I hope you can tell us some time how Weiner got involved, that’s a bit strange.

    Phillep Harding (1b8b26)

  8. Pure Speculation:

    Consider the possibility that Kimberlin, Brynaert, Rauhauser, et al are the visible cat’s paws of a sinister Democrat Party version of Nixon’s Dirty Tricks operation headed by Anthony Weiner in the role of Nixon’s Donald Segretti.

    When Weiner was knocked off, his band of gutter snipes were enraged and now seek revenge on selected targets who helped to destroy their leader. Weiner is still connected to Hillary Clinton through his wife’s staff position.

    ropelight (d3bf5e)

  9. So, the underwear tweet precipitated all this. Weiner himself is out of this saga? I sure hope so, since I always felt that, aside from having no sense of privacy or shame, he wasn’t really part of this story.

    At some point, it would be helpful to create a reasonable cast of characters.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  10. Ropelight’s speculation is as plausible as anything else I’ve been able to come up with. Yes, keep pulling on that string.

    Old Coot (8d3bbf)

  11. Weiner and the gutter snipes – Rock band.

    papertiger (e55ba0)

  12. The schizoid rantings of Ron serve only to squirt squid ink over the activities of others as well as himself.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  13. “Weiner and the gutter snipes – Rock band.”

    papertiger – How about Rauhauser and the Butt Hole Surfers?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  14. Fixed the post: don’t think Ron sent a letter to my work: he called.

    I didn’t trust him but I was talking to a lot of people I didn’t necessarily trust at the time to try to get information. It happens.

    Patterico (70ea6e)

  15. How about Rauhauser and the Butt Hole Surfers Sniffers?

    FTFY.

    SDN (d6c98a)

  16. In fact, Ron initially called the same person Kimberlin had called…

    …even though that person was no longer my boss.

    A call to the general line asking for my boss would not have been forwarded to the person Ron first called.

    But if Ron had asked Kimberlin who HE had complained to…

    Patterico (70ea6e)

  17. Ironically the Butthole Surfers isn’t the name of the band. They originally started out as sock puppets, but it got too confusing for the perpetually trying to pretend they are hip and with it media.

    The band did not begin as the Butthole Surfers, although they did have a song of that title, possibly an early version of 1984’s “Butthole Surfer”. This changed at their first paid concert, when an announcer forgot what the band was called and used the song title for the group’s name. They decided to keep the moniker, and have largely been billed as such ever since.[10] Prior to that, the Surfers performed under a different name at every live show. Early aliases included the Dick Clark Five, Nine cm Worm Makes Own Food, the Vodka Family Winstons, Ashtray Babyheads, Ed Asner Is Gay, Fred Astaire’s Asshole, The Right To Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole, The Inalienable Right To Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole.

    From wikipedia.

    papertiger (e55ba0)

  18. Is the person or persons responsible for these deeds upset about the blogging regarding Anthony Weiner?

    If so, why did bringing Weiner down provoke such a nasty response? Was he such a hero to these nasty people? He was a piece of work himself.

    Comment by AZ Bob — 7/1/2012 @ 7:42 am

    It may have seemed at the time that someone was upset about people who were blogging about Weiner. But apparently that’s just a diversion from the true motive.

    In retrospect, the various parties were involved in prior disputes that had nothing to do with Weiner.

    It’s tough to sort out, but the invention of the non-existent teen girls who were interacting with Weiner, then offering supposedly damaging evidence about him, and other friends of his online (both real and fake) as well as their fake families and fake Dan Wolfe very well may have been (or quickly became, midstream) simply bait for Patterico and other Breitbart-O’Keefe-allied bloggers & journalists.

    While the girls seemed like sex-bait for Weiner, they were really scandal-bait for the right-leaning blogoshpere. The purpose of this could have been to lure Patterico, Dana Loesch, Breitbart, Liberty Chick, et al into investigative reporting on an entire web of people who later turned out to be fake.

    Patterico & others were reporting day-to-day in weeks prior to July 1, 2011 about these “people,” and, at the time, it seemed like investigative reporting about real people. And it seemed like great, captivating investigative journalism.

    Later the world found out that it was an elaborate hoax.

    Three easy questions:

    Which MSM liberal reporter first reported that the “girls” and the characters surrounding the girls were fake?

    And who says he was instrumental in figuring out that they were fake, allegedly working behind the scenes on the liberal MSM reporter’s scoop?

    And who was on record, in writing, at Kos and other places, as being bitter about the loss of important assets on the left, such as ACORN, which could be directly attributable to the work of O’Keefe & Breitbart?

    Those of you who are paying attention know the answers to those three questions.

    This hoax appears to have been a trap for “Team Breitbart” to make them report about fake people as if they were real in order to later publicly discredit their reporting. The thinking, in the delusional minds of the plotters, is that if Patterico, the Breitbart BIGS, and allies all were suckered into authoritatively reporting things that were later proven to be phony, that their future projects would similarly be viewed as without merit. That is, the next time O’Keefe came up with a “sting” operation, and Breitbart began releasing it, the MSM would only have to report about the time in 2011 that Breitbart reported story after story about the teenaged girlfriends of Weiner, when those girls turned out to be fictional.

    As it turned out, Breitbart’s BIGs sites weren’t reporting as much as the plotters wished that they would about the “girls.” Most of the reporting was at Mediaite, Patterico, Ace of Spades, & Stranahan – each of whom was targeted by the plotters explicitly.

    Tommy Christopher, a diehard liberal, was highly useful to the schemers – his reporting that he’d interacted with the girls & their families lent credibility to their existence. Tommy reported that he’d talked with them and had seen their IDs, addresses, etc. Tommy has or had an assigneed seat in the White House press room, making him, supposedly, a credible source in the established media world. Apparently he was used and fooled too. (Evidently, the schemers found Tommy’s credibility to be disposable, just like they did Weiner’s reputation. In both cases the schemers had correctly surmised that their ideological allies (Tommy & Anthony) were already compromised…and therefore usable and disposable, if necessary.) But Tommy’s reporting fueled the reporting of the real targets of this plot: Patterico, Ace, Stranahan, and, to a lesser extent, the Breitbart organization.

    The SWATting was “effective” in that it took the key players, Patterico, Stranahan, Ace, etc., out of the discussion. Suddenly they were not chiming in on the story, because they’d been instructed not to comment by the FBI or whoever was working on this. This let the online chatter about this go far afield, further confusing the matter for everyone involved.

    Plutonian (b1153c)

  19. I should add that as nutty as the schemers are, their motive makes perfect sense.

    Breitbart is a media powerhouse, even after the loss of Andrew. The things that Breitbart reports on, when no one else is doing so, really do make a difference.

    So the plotters were correct in calculating that if Breitbart, O’Keefe and allies like Stranahan & Patterico & Ace were highly effective in taking down ACORN, discrediting NPR and causing its top management to resign in disgrace, Pigford, Sherrod, etc.

    And, strategically, planting fake stories to discredit Breitbart and allies was the right thing to do, in their minds. The MSM already treated Breitbart as disreputable – the schemers were trying to finish off his reputation. Recall how Breitbart was blamed by the MSM for the alleged hacking of Weiner’s accounts during the early days of Weinergate. Completely false, but the MSM reported it that way.

    Combine that strategy with the plotters’ twisted ethics and taste for revenge against those who would expose them, and the sting makes perfect sense.

    Perfectly evil, but perfect sense nonetheless.

    Plutonian (b1153c)

  20. Plutonian,

    There may be something to some of what you say.

    However:

    Recall that it was well known the teens were fake when I was SWATted. Indeed, the discussion at that point revolved around learning their identities. That was an academic discussion until Mike Stack was SWATted; then it seemed critically relevant.

    I increasingly lean towards the fake teens being a part of a disinformation campaign targeted at me and Breitbart, as you say — trying to get us to report fake stuff as real. The problem they ran into is that I didn’t ever fall for the trap. I always used my interactions with Wolfe and Reid to get them to talk — to give up information — and that information was useful in helping to reveal clues as to their motivations and similarities. And I kept a core group of people apprised of the fact that, while I was giving a forum to Reid, I believed that he was a likely a fraud and was, in fact, Dan Wolfe himself.

    I warned people for a reason. I saw your scenario — a fake operation aimed at me and Breitbart — as one of the possibilities. And I believed that, if your scenario was right, the people behind the teens would start mocking me for supposedly believing them.

    There soon came a time when Neal Rauhauser started doing precisely that. Saying: look! A D.A. is being taken in by fake evidence! And one of the people I had told about my Wolfe=Reid theory said to me: is that the kind of thing you were worried about? I said: it sure is. Lucky thing I told plenty of people in advance that I wasn’t getting taken in.

    (Interesting, too, that Ron was “warning” me about that possibility one year ago today, instead of talking about the SWATting he had heard going down the night before.)

    The thing is, Dan Wolfe actually had quite a bit to do with Weiner’s political demise. Wolfe tipped me off about a real issue relating to a real underage girl. This is the part that always had me questioning why Neal or his confederates would be Wolfe. Because Wolfe actually harmed Weiner terribly. If Wolfe was Neal or his pals, they are largely responsible for the breaking of a story that, subsequent reports show, was instrumental in Weiner losing support from the White House.

    So, Neal Rauhauser, if you or your friends are really Dan Wolfe? Congratulations on helping to bring down Weiner!

    I believe a real investigative journalist ought to look into the payments that Friends of Weiner et al. made to T&M Protective Services in September AND THEN AGAIN in December 2011. Such a journalist should determine whether it’s a coincidence that Mark Rasch, general counsel of Infragard where Neal is a member, worked at Arent Fox, a firm with the same street address as Baker Hostetler, the firm hired by Weiner. Such a journalist should ask whether Baker Hostetler, a firm with Clinton ties, used Clintonian tactics or hired people who did.

    These are all still live questions a year later — because they could relate to a string of federal crimes. But at this point they’re just questions.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  21. Plutonian,

    Do you have a theory on how Dan Wolfe, Gennette Cordova, and John Reid fit in?

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  22. A call to the general line asking for my boss would not have been forwarded to the person Ron first called.

    But if Ron had asked Kimberlin who HE had complained to…

    Comment by Patterico

    Now that is telling.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  23. “While the girls seemed like sex-bait for Weiner, they were really scandal-bait for the right-leaning blogoshpere.”

    It wasn’t exactly a good situation for Weiner. Even if it came out that he was “only” talking to fake underage girls, I think many people would have been disgusted.

    I’m having trouble believing that people on the left would set up a leftie politician like that just to get other people.

    Mama AJ (d5eb5a)

  24. I’m having trouble believing that people on the left would set up a leftie politician like that just to get other people.

    That’s always bothered me too. Unless they were working for another leftist — like another Democrat that was running against Weiner for mayor.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  25. To go after Weiner and Breitbart etc. at the same time would be a very sophisticated effort.

    One that has not been uncovered due to something obvious like indented paragraphs, IYKWIM.

    Mama AJ (d5eb5a)

  26. P, that would be the only explanation, that the effort was related to work for another left-lending interest …except, I suppose, a very personal grudge of some kind,

    Pardon the flight of fancy, I don’t really think it’s the case myself: there are rumors that AW nd HA had a sham marriage.

    Ive heard some of the suspected actors involved take that kind of closeting very personally. Or Perhaps he didn’t do what someone demanded he do and they felt let down.

    That theory is weak sauce but since I thought of it, why not say it,

    Sarahw (c2a92a)

  27. One that has not been uncovered due to something obvious like indented paragraphs, IYKWIM.

    Dan Wolfe and John Reid had their own “tells.”

    Nobody who talks as much as they did can avoid leaving clues.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  28. Such a journalist should ask whether Baker Hostetler, a firm with Clinton ties, used Clintonian tactics or hired people who did.

    Small world, I worked for Baker Hostetler for a brief time … but had nothing to do with any politically connected partners, instead I made the world safe from “counterfeit” Power Rangers toys …

    SPQR (26be8b)

  29. “Weiner is still connected to Hillary Clinton through his wife’s staff position.”

    and

    “Such a journalist should ask whether Baker Hostetler, a firm with Clinton ties, used Clintonian tactics or hired people who did.”

    This is where we cue the the theme from Jaws. The ghosts of Danny Casoloro, Paul Wilcher, Charles Black’s mother, John Wilson, Kathy Furguson, Jon Parnel Walker, Luther Parks, etc. rustle in their graves.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  30. If Neal Rauhauser / Brett Kimberlin et al actually were the puppeteers of “Dan Wolfe”, it may be that the underage girl revelation was a foulup. They may have thought the information was false or a poisoned well in some way, and screwed up releasing it.

    While their successes at times make us frustrated, its important to not overestimate their competence at the same time don’t underestimate their effectiveness. The latter is not really a function of the former. They are really quite incompetent and substitute brazenness for it.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  31. The reason I always thought Weiner was selected as the leftist the “fake teens” (at some point, we are going to have to find a pithier phrase for these sock-puppet identities, or this whole discussion is going to collapse under the weight of the absurdities of terminology alone) were focused on because he’s one of the few congress-critters a teen girl might semi-plausibly want to engage in a sexual fantasy about and with.

    Think about it. I’m not exactly an authority on Democrat Congresscritters, but the number of Congresscritters period who are attractive is fairly limited. Even those who are reasonably attractive are generally not teen-fantasy bait. So the field is limited, to begin with.

    Personally, I think picking Weiner was an act of desperation on the part of the operatives. Though they were not exactly blessed with an embarrassment of riches. Honestly, trying to squeeze all the actors and actions and their consequences into one plot is always going to imply superhuman intelligence on the part of either the plotters or their opponents.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  32. Some people think that whatever operation was in motion, was continued even after Weiner did the Weinertweet. As if the machinery couldn’t be stopped.

    If the idea was to take down Breitbart, one wonders whether the machinery is still moving to do so even after Andrew’s death.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  33. Patterico, I think that’s completely true.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  34. Patterico,

    Yes it was well known that the teens were fakes when you were SWATted. It was known for about two weeks prior to that.

    Indeed, you didn’t fall for the trap of the John Reid documents that started coming to you a week after the girls were found to be fake and about a week before your SWATting. You absolutely warned people that it could be a hoax when you started publishing that material in the last week of June.

    Prior to the mid-June MSM revelation (allegedly with the help of you-know-who) that the girls & families were fake, my recollection is that you did report on them at length as if they were real. I’m not faulting you for that. If I’m mistaken in my recollection, please correct me. You may have caveated it somewhere, but, for the most part, the reporting from you and other bloggers was treating the girls as if they were real. I don’t blame you at all. Stranahan, Tommy, & Ace were treating them as real (as a story that the MSM was ignoring in order to protect Weiner)…although later, in the final days just before the big story broke that they weren’t real, there was increasing skepticism about the girls & related characters, such as Dan. Lee posted that they seemed fishy at that time (approximately June 15).

    Prior to that, though, the story of teens interacting with Congressman Weiner was treated here and in like-minded blogs as a potentially even bigger political “sext” scandal (the cherry on top of his actual sextcapades with consenting adult women). My contention is that the cherry was for you, Andrew, Lee, and company.

    Without re-reading all the early June 2011 posts you wrote about this, here’s a clip from one that supports my recollection that you (and others) were treating them as real. In this quote, you explain how you were trying to keep the true identities of the underage girls confidential… Stranahan and Tommy went to great lengths to do the same. Admirable behavior all around. The quote:

    Now that you have this background, I should add some corroboration. All this is difficult because I want to protect the girls’ identity and not even drop breadcrumbs that could identify them, if possible. But I can note that, although “Betty” has deleted her Twitter account, if you know her Twitter handle, you can do a Google search that shows you her real name. If you know the name of the person who contacted Stack, as I do, you can do a Google search that shows you conversations between Betty and Veronica using the names they used on Twitter (Betty used a clear pseudonym while Veronica used a first and last name as her Twitter handle. Incidentally, the real name she used has Kossacks incorrectly alleging that she is a 20-year-old from Arkansas, which I believe to be false). The Google searches in question identify Betty’s first and last name, and when I quote Veronica’s DMs to Stack, the first name Veronica uses for Betty is the same one associated with Betty’s Twitter handle. That full name is on the Internet page from which I have taken the above screenshots, in which “Betty” asks Weiner to the prom and fights with Ethel.

    – Patterico, June 5, 2011

    It was a captivating, amazing story and it was shocking to later find out that it was a hoax. I’m in no way trying to pick a fight with you or blame you for anything. You weren’t the only one taken in for a time by this elaborate scheme. I’m not claiming that you or anyone else (except maybe pseudonymous Mediaite White House Correspondent, Tommmy Christopher) ever said “the girls are real.” I think we all assumed that they were at some time. The schemers knew that we’d want to believe that which is why the story had legs.

    Your cautions about this came only after you started to realize what might really have been happening. Completely understandable.

    Only later did we find out that it was a hoax that may have been perpetrated with parties who have an ax to grind with you and your associates. An ax that existed long before many readers, who learned about you only because of your great reporting on Weinergate, had ever heard of you…or Ace, or Stranahan, etc.

    Without disparaging you, Stranahan, or Ace, the fact that you reported extensively on this, while being fooled by the schemers, is of little consequence. It doesn’t discredit you in any way because the story never got picked up in a big way by big media. If Andrew had pounced on the teen girls story, he was a big enough target to face humiliation on a huge public scale. No doubt there would have been 5,000-word exposes in the liberal media on how Breitbart (and perhaps Fox?) had reported about these girls in order to “get” Weiner without doing their journalistic homework…”See, Breitbart & Fox are fake news.. you can’t believe anything from them ever again.” Online bloggers have reputations within limited circles. Ultimately, your conduct on this story showed you to be a straight shooter…and someone who was explicitly targeted in this hoax, prior to the Weiner tweet, prior to the resignation, prior to the revelation that the girls were fake, in the fact of your SWATting, and in countless other ways.

    This ultimately was about silencing you and or Liberty Chick, Breitbart, etc. I don’t think the plotters correctly thought through the end game and they definitely underestimated your resolve. They’ll end up in jail and you’ll be vindicated.

    A parallel is the Fast & Furious case, in which the MSM insists on calling it a “botched scheme,” when in fact the scheme went as planned by ATF/DOJ. They wanted the US guns to be found in the hands of Mexican drug lords in order to affect gun control policy in the US. The media is (predictably) complicity by misreporting the motive. Likewise, the fake girls part of Weinergate was meant to look like it was intended to sting Weiner, when it was really there to sting Breitbart and you. The schemers knew that it would be misreported as an anti-Weiner plot if it was ever covered by the MSM, when in fact it was an anti-Breitbart/right-leaning media/bloggers plot, with a good dose of revenge tossed in.

    Plutonian (b1153c)

  35. I have wondered if two different things were going on with some overlap of players. If “friends of hillary” were working to privately to expose Weiner’s philandering on behalf of his wife and Weiner fat fingered a tweet that was supposed to be private and some of those same players were involved in a “get Breitbart” operation and the two became connected quite accidentally. That would also explain another thing.

    crosspatch (1a92a2)

  36. Plutonian:

    Links are always good. This particular quote is from a post dated June 5. The line right before the one you quote:

    And if Betty and her mom are lying about that, as they sing Weiner’s praises . . . what else are they lying about?

    I was basing my post primarily on Tommy Christopher’s report, together with what else was publicly known about these “girls” — and suggesting that the story as Tommy was uncritically reporting it did not hold up.

    Now: I freely admit that at this point, early on, after Tommy Christopher reported about the girls, I assumed (like most people did) that they were real. My focus was mainly on whether they were telling the truth. I agree with you that this does not reflect on me badly in any way, because I was just commenting on news that was out there — that OTHER people had vouched for.

    When sock puppets came calling at MY door, and I was reporting actual news, I did no vouching. My feeling was: if I can’t verify who these people are, why would I vouch for them?

    So that’s quite different, and from the full context of your comment it looks like you agree.

    But I think it’s right that some may have been disappointed I didn’t take the bait.

    If you don’t mind my asking, where were you during all of this? You seem to have followed it closely, yet you sort of swoop in with all this knowledge and insight a year later. Mind if I ask why? Feel free to email me if you’re uncomfortable talking about it in public.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  37. Patterico – re-read Plutonian’s lengthy comments; I’m catching a whiff of “praising with faint damns.”

    Dianna (f12db5)

  38. I keep coming back to one thing:

    The SWATtings.

    Who hated Mike Stack, and me, and Aaron Walker, and anyone else who criticized Brett Kimberlin?

    Neal Rauhauser.

    Neal Rauhauser’s enemies list and the list of SWATting victims lines up very nicely.

    Plus, he wrote Kos posts that seemed to allude to the SWATtings before they were made public. LIke a post titled “Patterico’s Penalization” published 3 days after my SWATting. Like a post titled “Weinergate Perps Pay Dearly” in late July 2011, about me and Stack — the two SWATting victims at that time.

    Neal sent Mike Stack a letter to the same wrong address that the SWATter used.

    Neal made references to the LADA stalking unit just like Alicia Pain had. (She threatened me one week before the SWATting.)

    He has for a year engaged in the same kinds of cyberstalking tactics that the FBI says is characteristic of SWATters.

    An account called “LulzShack” that sounds very much like him (same enemies, writing style, etc.) referenced the SWATtings and mocked me in tweets about SWATtings and Weiner. In one tweet, he talked about doing the same thing to Pat Read — specifically mentioning an address that Neal later referenced in an email to Read.

    And so on.

    It seems like anyone who really cared about solving the SWATtings would look at this kind of material. Y’all have my phone number. Give me a call.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  39. Patterico – re-read Plutonian’s lengthy comments; I’m catching a whiff of “praising with faint damns.”

    Maybe. I’m instantly suspicious of any anonymous person I’ve never heard from before, who comes waltzing in with extensive knowledge of the whole affair.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  40. But then again, maybe it’s just someone trying to be helpful. You never know for sure with the Internet.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  41. A parallel is the Fast & Furious case, in which the MSM insists on calling it a “botched scheme,”

    That is what, after all, a “Ministry of Truth” would say about the operation, and is the shorthand version preferred by the AP (Administration Press).

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  42. LulzShack, I should add, was largely the work of Darrah Ford, if writing styles are any indication. But Neal came on from time to time, I suspect. It read like a joint account. Much of it Darrah to be sure.

    She has a birthday coming up in three days, by the way. Her 31st.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  43. Gee, Pat, is SWAT what you get the girl who has everything?

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  44. But then again, maybe it’s just someone trying to be helpful. You never know for sure with the Internet.

    Comment by Patterico

    Ack.

    It’s enough to make a weekend reader retire from commenting.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  45. One of these days, perhaps we’ll have knowledge of when it was that Rauhauser and Kimberlin hooked up, when it was that Rauhauser started sucking at the tit of Kimberlin’s non profit funds.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  46. SPQR,

    I’d be surprised if that question doesn’t get asked as part of discovery in some lawsuit in the next few months.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  47. Patterico, far be it from me to make any suggestions about discovery … 😉

    SPQR (26be8b)

  48. Dianna,

    NOOooooooooooooo!!!!!!

    Machinist (b6f7da)

  49. This ultimately was about silencing you and or Liberty Chick, Breitbart, etc. I don’t think the plotters correctly thought through the end game and they definitely underestimated your resolve. They’ll end up in jail and you’ll be vindicated.

    A parallel is the Fast & Furious case, in which the MSM insists on calling it a “botched scheme,” when in fact the scheme went as planned by ATF/DOJ. They wanted the US guns to be found in the hands of Mexican drug lords in order to affect gun control policy in the US. The media is (predictably) complicity by misreporting the motive.

    There are several reasons why I don’t believe this to be true. Weiner got caught being a boy. He would have hired the private investigator not to look into to seeing of his account because he knew darned well what he didm but he would have hired the PI to check into the target of his tweet and see if she really was who she was representing herself to be on twitter and to make sure she wasn’t some “Breitbarian” sock puppet. If that were the case, he could have wriggled out of it. When it turned out she really was who she was portraying herself as on Twitter, Weiner resigned. He had no other choice at that point.

    Weiner resigned after only about 20 days. There is no way he would have risked sending such a tweet out in the open just to “get Breitbart”. He screwed up, plain and simple.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  50. “not to look into to seeing of his account ” should have been “not to look into to seeing if his account had been hacked”.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  51. NOOooooooooooooo!!!!!!

    Comment by Machinist

    Just for you, Mac, I’ll hang about.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  52. So, has it ever been settled that Genette was (what amounted to) an innocent by-stander, or what?

    Dianna (f12db5)

  53. I *will* buy the notion that there were sockpuppets attempting to do some combination of protecting Weiner and/or attempting to get him to send them a dirty tweet. To my mind, that would play into the sort of stuff that O’Keefe might do in attempting a *sting* but it could also be something a “friend of hillary” might do in order to nail Weiner and get him to change his ways.

    Why did Huma stay with Weiner after the tweet considering he had admitted to sending other such tweets and having “online relationships” with six other women?

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  54. crosspatch, regardless of what might think of Huma and Weiner politically, I don’t think that some risque talk and pictures over the internet is a reason to end a marriage.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  55. SPQR, it would be in my book!

    Seriously, if a guy can’t keep to his wife, there’s something very wrong with him, and the adultery won’t stay virtual for long.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  56. There’s more to it than “risque talk and pictures”. His career was destroyed. He is a major embarrassment to her, but then again, she works for Hillary who has a similar problem but Anthony Weiner is no Bill Clinton.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  57. Dianna, I think that there are worse betrayals. Internet chatter is pretty low on the list.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  58. crosspatch, the Clinton clique is pretty good at deflecting the consequences of their behavior onto their “enemies” – not least in their own minds.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  59. SPQR – Symptomatic, though.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  60. That VRWC affords an almost endless list of possibilities for blame.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  61. The Clinton clique is pretty good at a lot of things, in my opinion.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  62. Went and found that Alicia pain “interview” with the belligerent/silly legal pronouncements made by that sock.

    In hindsight it strikes me as having the likes of a jailhouse “lawyer” standing over the shoulder of the author, or perhaps as the author.

    Sarahw (c23a3a)

  63. I will say one thing, this whole overall story fascinates me because I believe there is something here that someone is going to great lengths to keep hidden.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  64. Danny Devito will play Kimberlin in the movie.

    scable (40a8c6)

  65. When twitter provided “all Twitter messages ever sent” to the National Archives, did that include tweets that were “hidden” or deleted by the user?

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  66. Some online commentators raised the question of whether the library’s Twitter archive could threaten the privacy of users. Mr. Raymond said that the archive would be available only for scholarly and research purposes. Besides, he added, the vast majority of Twitter messages that would be archived are publicly published on the Web.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/technology/15twitter.html

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  67. Ok, I guess it was the library of Congress, not the archives.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  68. 67. The catch is, I think, that actually nobody has access to the twitter archive now. At least no ordinary people. At some point in the future probably it will be searchable. What you read there is misleading publicity.

    It should have all tweets made after April 2010 and many before.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  69. Comment by Sarahw — 7/1/2012 @ 3:47 pm

    Went and found that Alicia pain “interview” with the belligerent/silly legal pronouncements made by that sock.

    In hindsight it strikes me as having the likes of a jailhouse “lawyer” standing over the shoulder of the author, or perhaps as the author

    It sounded like someone with experience. This person was claiming that what she was doing wass NOT a crime, and Patterico was arguiong to the contrary.

    Patterico:

    You didn’t actually look up section 664, did you?

    As for there being no attempted 422, tell the people who have been convicted at trial.

    It’s amusing enough having you explain California law to me. Now explain federal law on Internet threats. Let’s see if you do as well with that.

    Then explain to me who your client is. Mr./Mrs. Not-Reid?

    And then “she” dared him to report the crime:

    …If you really want to bring me to justice, I encourage you to do so. Here is the best number to call: Stalking and Threat Assessment Team (STAT) Inside line: X[redacted] or (213) 974-[redacted]. If you hurry you might be able to get me off the streets before the weekend. But the chance of the warrant going in to the system before Monday is almost none. I am confident I have not committed a crime.

    I will only act in the best interest of my client. I will get in contact with telephonically and will make arrangements for you to receive the information, if that is the course of action that needs to be taken. Remember GL also had contact with me, as I advised her. She sadly chose against her best interests in going with GA.

    Unfortunately.

    Thank you for your continued cooperation, sincerely yours, Alicia *kiss*

    GL = Ginger Lee. GA = Gloria Allred

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  70. Comment by crosspatch — 7/2/2012 @ 12:03 am

    When twitter provided “all Twitter messages ever sent” to the National Archives, did that include tweets that were “hidden” or deleted by the user?

    Not those deleted before the first day the system started, the ones sent later were copied to the Library of Congress when they were sent.

    If anyone asks the Library of Congress if they can see them, I think they will get double talk.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  71. Comment by crosspatch — 7/1/2012 @ 4:08 pm

    I will say one thing, this whole overall story fascinates me because I believe there is something here that someone is going to great lengths to keep hidden.

    For one thing, Dan Wolfe had all the pictures before the night of May 27. He just didn’t know who it was for, and they were useless without a hook.

    I think most likely the socks were divided into two groups:

    Group A led by Dan Wolfe, who actually may have been teh only sock – the erst were real people he had recruited – had the job of exposing and harassing any women might be flirting with or more.

    group B, led by “Nikki Reid” had the job of befriending such women, before Weiner discontinued contact with them, in the hopes that after Weiner discontinued communication with them
    they would make things public.

    In both cases the socks would be kept completely out of the picture – and whoever hired them. Mike Stack would be made out to be the leader of #bornfreecrew and the mistresses would come forward on their own, and Andrew Breitbart would be pictured as the person who wanted to get and use the material.

    To really damage Weiner, I don’t know, maybe they thought he’d have to get caught in a lie.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  72. Patrick, you have a very good handle on what happened and where law enforcement needs to look.

    And the entire thing is VERY Clinton-esque. Huma/Hillary/Weiner … oh my!

    The Clintons employed a goon squad before. Used to be p.i.’s Terry Lenzer, Jack Palladino and Anthony Pellicano.

    Anita Busch (1c1971)

  73. Anthony Weiner is still telling lies. Or maybe the reporters just can’t take good notes.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/anthony-weiner-speaks-health-care-life-resignation-article-1.1104666 (June 29, 2012)

    “I still have regrets, I’ve paid a very high price,” Weiner said. “But I’m still committed to the same things I was. I have a 6-month-old daughter who I have to go and feed now. So my life is filled with great joy.”

    But….

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/new_weiner_roll_f86US0vTX44IphSanjE8qO

    Last Updated: 7:42 AM, May 29, 2012

    A year after randy ex-US Rep. Anthony Weiner’s political career collapsed in a sexting scandal, the disgraced pol is still without a job — left to pull duty as Mr. Mom for his newborn son as his powerhouse wife, Huma Abedin, globe-trots with the diplomatic corps, The Post has learned.

    In the body of the article

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/remembering-anthony-weiner-now-stay-at-home-dad/

    In the body of the article we read about “the baby” and we read the baby’s name, but there is no further reference to sex:

    But then everything changed for him with the birth of Jordan Zain on Dec. 21, and he was called on to help out at home as Abedin continued to work, pals said.

    ABC seems to think Jordan is a son.

    Now Huma was probably not carryinbg twins, nor is there any such claim.

    I think the working assumoption should be he has a daughter, but he’s also sending out disinformation, to catch people who might pretend he knows them.

    The mention of a daughter came from Weiner himself, while on the radio, but the mention of a son, although more widespread comes from anonymous sources.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  74. The preview wasn’t showing anything past the first blockquote and I didn’t notice that the ABC
    link (which references the New York Post story and has Weiner’s child as a son) came before my second quiote from the New York Post. I didn’t quote the ABC web page at all, but just gave the URL.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  75. Good catch, right?

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  76. Comment by Patterico — 7/1/2012 @ 1:01 pm

    Maybe. I’m instantly suspicious of any anonymous person I’ve never heard from before, who comes waltzing in with extensive knowledge of the whole affair.

    Plutomnian is the name of a commentator on “the Economist” website, but he didn’t have anything special to say about Weiner.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)


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