Patterico’s Nuts

Aaron Walker is a very bad lawyer, but he is also the blogging buddy of LA Deputy District Attorney John Patrick Frey. Walker inserted himself into a lawsuit that was none of his business and became East Blogistan’s chief martyr in its phony war against Brett Kimberlin. At the time, Kimberlin was suing a psychologically disabled man named Seth Allen.

Allen (@Prepostericity on Twitter) is the original source of the Kimberlin-conspiracy theory, and many of the assumptions built into that right wing blogwar narrative are actually his original ‘creative content.’ That’s right: East Blogistan has spent the last eighteen months expanding and expounding on the unique obsessions of a certified lunatic.

Allen (pictured right sans dentures) has a long and well-documented history of alarming internet communities with his deranged behavior. Allen generally begins as a supportive presence, but once triggered by butthurt he becomes a constant and unrelenting nuisance. While he calls himself a liberal, in fact Allen is simply a nut with fringe obsessions. For example, he runs the busiest chemtrails conspiracy forum on the internet. Seth Allen is a grand master ninja of insane conspiracy theories.

In 2007, Allen became convinced that a Ron Paulite named Steven Hertzberg was somehow a key figure in the 2004 Ohio election irregularities. Allen pressed election-integrity blogger Brad Friedman to cover the story. But Friedman (correctly) saw the story as a minor distraction. As a result, Allen became convinced that Friedman was a secret right wing operative — and began “investigating” Velvet Revolution, the election-integrity organization Friedman had founded with Brett Kimberlin, to “prove” Friedman was a fraud.

Allen’s comments at BradBlog.com became increasingly hysterical, insane, and obscene. Many were deleted. When they became too numerous and spammy, he was banned. Not one to be easily stopped, Allen started creating anonymous sock puppet accounts and had to be banned several more times. Many of these comments mentioned Friedman’s partner in Velvet Revolution, which is why he eventually blocked the name “Brett Kimberlin” from all comments at BradBlog.

Allen spent the next four years unsuccessfully pimping his insane story to liberal blogs, becoming ever more strident in his defamations and denunciations of Kimberlin, who finally sued Allen in 2010. In court testimony, Allen admitted his psychiatric disability, and his courtroom behavior in 2011 even led to an arrest for disorderly conduct.

But Allen had new allies on the right who were keenly interested in Kimberlin — and in leveraging Allen’s obsession.

Kimberlin seems to have come to the attention of Andrew Breitbart in July 2010, when Velvet Revolution asked Maryland’s Attorney General to pursue wiretapping charges against James O’Keefe and his associates. Kimberlin registered the domain IndictBreitbart.org that September to publicize the campaign. By October, Breitbart.com writer Mandy Nagy was reporting on Kimberlin as a “convicted domestic terrorist.”

In fact, Kimberlin has a sordid and complex public history that begins with a series of bomb blasts around Speedway, Indiana in 1978. Having been convicted and served his time, Kimberlin was exactly the sort of “bomb-throwing liberal” character tailor-made for right wing fantasies — much like former Weather Underground radical William Ayers, whose early endorsement of a state legislative candidate named Barack Obama became controversial in 2008, when that candidate ran for president.

Right wing blogs eagerly used Kimberlin’s name any way they could. At Glenn Beck’s website, Kimberlin was repeatedly denounced for supposedly terrorizing right wing bloggers. Likewise at Patterico.com, where the Los Angeles Deputy DA has attempted to tie every critic or contrary opinion to Brett Kimberlin. By May of 2012, when the execrable Lee Stranahan promoted “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” East Blogistan had united around the narrative — but Seth Allen would not see any benefit from it, despite having been their primary source:

Frey’s initial research that day led him to stumble upon previous writings about Kimberlin by blogger Seth Allen, aka “Socrates.” While the two cannot recall for sure who contacted whom first, it was that teaser post that first introduced Frey and Seth Allen to each other, and alerted Allen to the upcoming Kimberlin article – none of the victims had ever known Seth Allen prior to the article.

That is how Mandy Nagy recounted events in a lengthy document, dated January 31, 2012, that attempted to tie Kimberlin to another right wing blog obsession named Neal Rauhauser. Despite her denials, Nagy clearly got most of the information she had used in 2010 from Seth Allen’s blog posts, causing Allen to complain that his work had been plagiarized. Much of her January 2012 document is a defense of Allen; Nagy even credulously refers to his testimony that defamatory comments about Kimberlin had been made in Allen’s name by third parties out to get him. Because conspiracy!

Having “discovered” Allen, LA Deputy DA John Patrick Frey would encourage his fight against Kimberlin’s suit. By August of 2011, however, Frey was distancing himself from Allen — for obvious reasons. Maintaining his usual pattern of behavior, Allen became increasingly erratic in his communications. Unemployable and broke, Allen also wanted money to help him get to court. When he sent Nagy a despairing email suggesting “maybe I should murder (Kimberlin),” she notified the police department in Allen’s hometown, and Kimberlin won a judge’s peace order against him.

Obviously, Allen would no longer do for a sympathetic blog martyr. Enter Aaron Walker, Frey’s co-blogger, who happened to live near Maryland where Kimberlin’s suit against Allen was underway. Walker seemed to offer Allen legal advice and support, but once he turned up in the courtroom it was clear that Walker had another agenda. I will let Alex Pareene describe what happened:

After the hearing, Walker and Kimberlin had a confrontation outside the court. They argued, and, according to Walker (his account is in the massive post linked above), Kimberlin raised his iPad and Walker snatched it away from him. Then he gave it to a deputy. Kimberlin soon filed criminal charges against Walker, alleging assault, claiming to have been rather badly beaten up. “He took my iPad away from me, hit me in the eye, sent me to the emergency room,” Kimberlin told me. Criminal charges were filed, then dropped by the state. Walker claims Kimberlin forged or falsified his hospital records.

Having successfully inserted himself in the situation, Walker’s own legal confrontation with Kimberlin took center stage in East Blogistan, while Allen’s cause diminished. Now that the litigious Kimberlin was engaged in “lawfare” with a seemingly more-sympathetic right wing blogger, Frey and Team Breitbart had no further need of Allen.

Today, Allen contents himself with the notion that he has somehow “proven” Brad Friedman is a fraud. He still writes at Blogspot, though Google did pull his libelous posts about Kimberlin. He doesn’t like Frey very much.

Walker’s suit against Kimberlin was dismissed with prejudice on December 4. Notably, Walker also suffers from cognitive problems — he had to obtain special treatment at law school, including private exam rooms. His outrageous behavior in court has offended many a judge. He still seems to adore Frey, but perhaps that is because he is more useful to Frey than Allen. Indeed, Walker is crucial to the “terrorized by Kimberlin” narrative because he managed to get fired from his job, and despite all evidence that he simply isn’t very good at his job, he blames Kimberlin.

Both Allen and Walker were manipulated by a county prosecutor in pursuit of the Breitbart narrative of “convicted domestic terrorist” Brett Kimberlin terrorizing right wing bloggers. Frey has paid no price at all, and as this blog will demonstrate, Allen and Walker are not the only mentally disabled persons that Frey has victimized for East Blogistan. It is in fact his modus operandi.