An Open Letter To Robert Stacy McCain

Hi Robert,

It was actually over two years I was on my own fighting the good fight in all aspects. I was calling for VR to be investigated for fraud. I cybersleuthed some scoops. Mandy Nagy and Patrick Frey have done nothing for me. In fact, I have major gripes against everyone except Aaron and ok Dustin too. But the other four members of Team Breitbart are no good in my eyes and never will be- Patrick, Mandy, Brandon, and Lee. That goes for Ali Akbar too while we're at it. But he showed up out of nowhere and really has nothing to do with anything other than making "our" side look bad.

I like you. I actually like you a lot. We would probably despise each other though if we started talking politics. I don't care if you hang a Confederate flag. I do not believe you are racist. We don't even have to go there or anywhere, but say you weren't married, I wouldn't assume you'd be averse to dating and marrying a beautiful black woman.

My life has been ruined by this. It's that simple. Ron Brynaert's life has been ruined. Mike Stack's life has been ruined. None of us deserved any of this. None of us can have our reputations restored. None of us are getting a payday out of this.

I understand your good intentions here. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to not be brutally honest. I have nothing but my mind to go with above average research and writing skills. If you want specifics of why I am not happy with those others, I'll fill you in. Otherwise, I don't know what to say.

I've got a lot of theories, if you want to discuss them. I'm not sure though how they could ever be researched or proven. So I try to keep things simple. This is a story of myself. Then Aaron became involved. That's it. All this other stuff is pure conjecture. Patrick Frey crossed a serious line. As has Mandy. I have proof she believed I was working with Neal Rauhauser, when she was purporting herself as being in my corner. Patrick Frey could have gotten me to a hearing for a few hundred bucks yet was a cheapskate. His explanation was I was not family. These people did absolutely nothing for me.

The so-called fight against the BK-NR axis is garbage. That is a mere promotion of the Breitbart business model. Twitter fights are pointless.

What must be confronted is what's been done to Ron. I've had it pretty bad too, but I can live with it now after you basically documented it was my scoop.

I'm humble too. Yeah, I know that probably sounds like bullshite. I have two Master's degrees. Mandy Nagy has a degree in Music. Patrick Frey is a public prosecutor and no scholar who without proof has ruined an individual in Ron Brynaert. Lee Stranahan is the ultimate marketing whore. This has all been proven. Brandon Darby, wow, he is as un-American as they get. That dude is psychotic. Again, that is all public record. I wouldn't be surprised if Brandon Darby made the swat calls. I am now positive Ron didn't. That's the elephant in the room.

My advice is to ignore those complaints. They are cheaters to think they can make complaints to the #1 journalist covering the story. I am asking you to suspend ideology. Sure, I know you have integrity. Yet we are all vulnerable to peer pressure. Human nature is a bitch.

Sorry if I sounded like an ass in this email. I truly believe I am the closest to having figured out the whole truth. What I would do if I had the money would be research voice analysis tests and find out if they are legit. If they aren't legit, the swats will never be figured out. The swat calls cannot be traced. And if they are legit, apparently Frey cherrypicked the results in order to condemn Ron.

We do have all the various recordings. The swat caller is logically either someone we know or someone who was hired. There appear to be three suspects for who we know: Ron, Neal, and Brandon. I think it was Brandon who did it. That's just my opinion but based on a very informed guess. As for Ron, here's the thing. If he did not make the swat calls, then one of the biggest parts of this story has become his victimisation. He may appear nutty. He has definitely been an ass at times. Nonetheless, senile Vaughey is correct that even a prostitute deserves a defense.

Robert, I've been studying internet convolution since 2006. My background is Social Theory, an interdisciplinary Sociology including History, Psychology, Philosophy, basically all the liberal arts goodies. I know my stuff. I read a lot of books back in the day. Ron is in over his head. He's scared. He's on his own. And it's not like we two are in great contact. No, not at all. There was just a flurry of emails last week, and what one sees on Twitter with a bit more at Pffugee Camp. That being said, we have basically been in the same milieu since 2006. He had the cushy job. I was the academic, yeah eccentric, who by life chance somehow ended up on blogs. I may not appear as all that, but my academic resume speaks volumes.

This is the greatest thing I've ever accomplished, and I will not let self-promoters steal my destiny. They have tried, and they have failed. You may chalk this up to megalomania. However, it just so happens I am who I say I am, and for the most part I am the most trustworthy of them all. I am the only true scholar in the bunch. I never made a death threat. I am not mentally disabled. I've explained it all on my blog in that backstory entry and in others. I am willing to answer any questions you have. I'm very sorry to say I have no respect or trust for those others, not after what they have done to myself, Ron, and Mike. Three regular guys should not have been thrown under the bus so the remnants of the Breitbart Empire could rise again. They are doing to us, especially now Ron, what we have proven the other side does. There's a little bit of truth to everything. The BK-Rauhauser side has been insane and somehow gotten away with some very creepy lawfare. But the way this turned into Swatgate has also been outrageous. It's mythology.

The Troll Wars 7.77: Across the Great Divide

By: donkeytale
Monday June 11, 2012 8:15 am

[It's unfortunate Firedoglake.com censored an eccentric, contrarian blogger going by the pseudonym donkeytale. It's ironic, riotous, or wtf they would do so on a topic one of their top bloggers had mangled in a recent entry, one donkeytale links to below. Not to mention that one of the primary issues at hand is freedom of speech. Oops, guess I just mentioned that.

Donkeytale had two updates, but I have only been able to partially retrieve those:

UPDATE House Republicans Demand Swatting Investigation:
"On Monday, 85 House Republicans, including Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), [...]"

UPDATE II: Brett Kimberlin’s website now claims that he too was swatted on May 31, 2012 and offers $10,000 reward for information leading to the indictment of the swatter(s) of Stack, Patterico, Erickson and himself.

I also see donkeytale made a response to someone's comment, but this is all I got: I think your assessment is right on target in many ways. This is why it IS a war and it IS partisan. Shots are being fired from both sides and battles are escalating unpredictably. I also believe the motivations go deeper as well for both sides. There is fame and fortune (relatively speaking) for the participants [...]

Anyway, I just fished this out of Google cache. Enjoy! ~~ DFQ2 editor Not Brad Friedman of BRADBLOG.COM]

In the US criminal justice system you must bring your charge of wrongdoing by individuals to the authorities and then they decide whether to investigate/prosecute the case.

I think I’m fairly knowledgeable about most of the activities involved in this case. I believe that justice will be served. And if it is not, I will write about it to the best of my ability. This case is very important on several levels, both legal and ethical.

Part of the problem comes from the inevitable politicising of this case along partisan lines. It cannot be helped. The story was born out of a politically charged partisan battle between the Breitbart Media Empire and the attempts by leftwing social media players, including Kimberlin, to fight back in a mostly online battle begun after Breitbart release inflammatory hoax videos of Shirley Sherrod and ACORN which went viral into the MSM, and also related to Breitbart’s activities promoting Weinergate.

If you read virtually any comment thread on the right you see the connection is being made over and over again between Kimberlin, his funders (Soros, always useful for rightwing conspiracy theorists, among them) and the left. Essentially, the meme is that the court tactics BK implemented are how the left pushes its political agenda, meaning we routinely abuse the system for our advantage, using money from shadowy left wing financiers and Hollywood in order to do so.

Some of the connections are implied but many commenters are very explicit. And such comments occur even in the blogs of people who are reporting the story with a fair amount of objectivity. The crowdsourcer cannot control the crowd reaction.

I’m reading blogs and comment threads on both sides, including the very recent juvenile comedy /stylings of TBOGG right here at FDL, and can say with certainty that the lowest form of commentary about this case comes from those who wish to use it merely to score political points on either side of the partisan divide.

It’s become drearily partisan, in fact, although many thoughtful people of right and left, including this reporter, wish it weren’t. The real issues for bloggers involve first amendment rights and for me anyway, the uses of crowdsourcing to press for investigations and criminal charges against individuals who stand accused of committing no crime.

I believe blogging can be all about vengeance (and here I’m not implying either innocence or guilt to any participants in the Troll Wars, talking strictly the principle), perhaps even rising to the level of conspiracy if taken up by any orchestrated group. I hope that among any legal decisions, one is rendered on the use of this technique, which may be applied against anyone at any time a large group of like-minded bloggers working in concert decide to focus their speech on one person or group, for whatever reason.

I believe crowdsourcing in general to be a constitutionally protected form of speech. I believe it has the potential to shake the foundations of political and business power structures that seem ever more remote and unreachable from our systems of justice and regulation. However, I’m very concerned when individuals are targeted, and yes, even those, especially those, with criminal pasts and questionable present day activities, such as BK. The constitution was designed at its most fundamental base to protect exactly this type of individual from the wrath of the vengeful crowd. Whether the system can withstand the rising influence of social media and remain relevant is the most intriguingng question of the Kimberlin Kerfluffle for me. Its not at all about the individual actions and reactions of the actors involved in the game.

Can our court system sort this out in good faith under the constitution?

The flow of crowdsourced speech tends to run like a river at flood tide, especially if the flow goes viral as in this case. Flood speech can easily jump the banks into areas of defamation and libel, and it can cause escalating hostilities and recriminations, types of payback not anticipated by the initiators of the crowdsourcing. We are seeing this now played out in the Troll Wars.

I believe that Judge Vaughey attempted in his way to address those concerns in his ruling. The word is that there will be an appeal and famed 1st amendment lawyers are working on behalf of Walker. I say this is a good thing. The system is working as designed. Walker will have his day in court.

I see that in his most recent post about Erick Erickson, Patterico has refrained from naming the individual he suspects of swatting him, which seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that he had previously gone too far. Now, he notes only that the Erickson SWAT caller sounds like the same caller on his and Stack’s recorded SWAT calls.

The problem I have with Patterico naming the person or persons he suspects of swatting him came after, as he admitted, the police were alerted but decided against investigating the person he suspects. And. while he shaded his comments carefully with qualifiers when stating his suspicions, his story and the audiotape broke nationally in the blogs and mainstream media, with prominent mention made by name of the person he suspects, but whom the police have declined to investigate.

Likely, there were several related reasons for Patterico’s incendiary May 25 post.

Certainly, it is very reasonable to guess that among his potential motivations are revenge against the individuals he blames for his swatting, political partisanship and a very excellent self promotional sense of timing for maximum self-publicity in conjunction with Everybody Blog About BK Day. He had to know that there was a very good chance this story would be picked up in the MSM.

In fact, both Patterico and Aaron Walker had already arranged to be interviewed by Glenn Beck, where they discussed the swattings and Aaron Walker’s arrest in detail, while providing the audiotape to ensure its going viral at least to the vast right wing side of the blogosphere.

The Band - Across The Great Divide (LIVE!) 1976

Brad Friedman of BradBlog Part 4

Up until recently, Brad Friedman has had only one moderator, a neonazi sympathiser named Agent 99. The Last Name Left did a brilliant job exposing this, after I had given him the tip.

Here's the link to a TLNL entry concerning BradBlog and links within explaining the TLNL-Agent 99 backstory.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that Brad Friedman is a confidence man. In late 2004, Brad became Brett Kimberlin's frontman. He is an ex-actor. He's been basically playing the role of intrepid citizen journalist, with the objective being to inspire donations. He's been the clean-cut, goody two shoes, fighting for the regular guy Joe Schmoe.

VR-BradBlog have been adept at procuring big bucks from well-meaning but naive people. Brad's crucial error, imho, has been not cutting ties with Mr. Kimberlin. Now that basic truths have literally transformed the internet zeitgeist into pure schadenfreude, are large numbers of local and national media outlets about to pick up the story? If so, what will that do for Brad Friedman's prospects as a so-called 'activist journalist'?

When it was first leaked out in late 2006 that Brett Kimberlin was the brains behind BradBlog's emergence, Larisa Alexandrovna was sent in to vouch for the Speedway Bomber. Oh my, did she ever tell a whopper, that Brett had been a political prisoner who did nothing worse than sell pot to Dan Quayle.

Fast forward to 2008-09. The Michael Connell threatened by Karl Rove hoax fizzled fast, primarily because a small but persistent crowd were speaking out against it as being unsubstantiated bunk. It thus couldn't be realistically spun that one "mentally deranged" person such as myself was running around with sock puppets making up crap to protect Karl Rove.

Ironically considering Kimberlin's past, Velvet Revolution has been peddling themselves off as being at the forefront against domestic terrorism. They've even claimed that due to their efforts, the Department of Justice was now making it a top priority to stop such hate crimes.

BradBlog and Velvet Revolution are business models, period. They are not sincere leftier than thous. Their marks have been such, e.g. the lovely heiress to the Oliver Grace Estate, Lori Grace. VR has taken in a lot of money precisely because there are many good-hearted folks willing to donate who lack awareness of rat aroma. Brad's schtick, in short, has been a confidence game.

Of course BradBlog censors. That's been proven. Of course he has had the Democratic Underground in his back pocket. That made it impossible for the word to truly get out until very recently. We can't blame a decent philanthropist such as Lori Grace or Babs Streisand for that matter for having contributed funds to them. Lori thought the 2004 election was stolen. She wanted to make a difference. A similar reversal of support occurred with Howard Stern for GW Bush. My President lied to me!

For all of Brad & Company's snooker abilities, BRADBLOG.COM has some blind spots. Those have certainly come home to roost. No way should Brad Friedman have allowed neonazis to dominate his comment sections for so many years.

One of VR's affiliates is or was the Lone Star Iconoclast. They were running articles written by a kooky anti-semite named Captain Eric May. Eventually Brad did wise up and fired Agent 99. Alex Jones made a similar decision when he cut the cord with Michael Rivero of What Really Happened Dot Com. I think we have TLNL to thank that Agent 99 was finally given the boot. Talk about persistence.

With no due respect, imho, Brad isn't smart enough to pull off this good guy facade for much longer. Too much information has been revealed. Sure he eventually let Agent 99 go, but how is he to explain his close ties to the Speedway Bomber?

The problem is the election integrity angle has been finished since a Democrat in Obama won. In addition, the nature of Brad's extensive list of hoaxing has been documented. His Green Report has gone nowhere. His Stop Domestic Terrorism campaign will go nowhere considering who his partner is.

The Team Breitbart hoax has to be the final straw for Brad Friedman's credibility. It's his own fault too. He treated me like dirt, while daring me to dig up dirt on himself. Which I did.

I then found unlikely allies in Patrick Frey, Mandy Nagy, and Aaron Walker, who each agree this story transcends predictable repukelican versus libtard rhetoric. Brad can ignore all which is going on around him. He can write on it too, though I doubt he will. Either way he can't win. In the blog war between DFQ2's David versus BradBlog's Goliath, little old me won, and Brad Friedman lost.

After letting Agent 99 go, Brad posted how he has had only volunteer moderators. That was a knowing lie. He's had only one moderator before adding on corporate attorney Ernest Canning. Brad was merely downplaying Agent 99's historic moderator role at BradBlog by alluding to some imaginary others.

In the past, Friedman has referred to me as the psychopath stalker. He has basically been reduced to being a scared little man fretting over having been outed as a money making fraud. If he were to discuss myself or the current zeitgeist, that would direct people to seek out information which transcends myself. Brad Friedman's ultimate problem is that the reader decides.

That's why Brad Friedman censored myself, TLNL, or anyone else who has dared speak truth to con man. If he had been a man about it and honest, he would have let us get whatever out of our systems on his blog while doing his best to reply to disturbing questions. The gig is basically just about up for Brad Friedman. BradBlog has been a sham house built on hoax cards, and those cards are a tumbling.

In September 2010, I left the following post at BradBlog in the early am before finally tumbling off into Sleepy Land. It made it to the board. However, by the next day it was gone. It was as if it had never existed. If Brad hadn't been afraid of what had been written, he would have come up with his standard, "comment deleted- banned poster is a psychopath stalker troll- banned means forever Soc. Edited by Brad."

No, even then Brad realised even a smidgen of the truth of his shenanigans couldn't remain visible. He could not afford to let folks get to content which transcends who I am in real life. Thus, the comment was completely whitewashed not just censored with the standard Agent 99 or Brad lame explanation.


The internet as a whole is finally learning more about Brad's partner, that he's a liar, a conman, the murderer of Carl Delong's spirit, a prime suspect in the murder of Julia Scyphers, and other things.

The world is also learning that Brad Friedman is not an intrepid journalist. We now know that without Brett Kimberlin, Brad would still be the same no-name, failed actor he was before joining forces with Speedy in late 2004. We now know Brad Friedman has accomplished nothing tangible as an activist. We now know he has been involved in the spreading of crap hoaxes in pursuit of profit.

Here's a bit more proof Brad friedman is into censorship.


And here's one more screenshot. Enjoy!


The above photoshop had to do with BradBlog Act One: The Clint Curtis Hoax. That was the origin of a cult of personality built around Brad Friedman. In regards to finding out some backstory, it's been somewhat difficult since Brad has cheated by putting robots.txt blocks on the wayback machine.

Now why would he do that, if he has nothing to hide? I'm happy many are now researching how much money Velvet Revolution has taken in over the years. There was a big stinkydoo over Bev Harris back in the day and perhaps for good reason. I don't know. Maybe Brad has broken no laws. I'm not a lawyer. But at the least, I should have the right to declare based on facts which transcend myself that F is for Fake Brad Friedman.

Comments From The Past:

the_last_name_left said...

S: The only conclusion I can make is that Brad Friedman is a confidence man.
--------

What does that mean?

They run paragraphs with hyperlinks - to Bradblog.com frontpage - instead of to places substantiating their claims.

Look through their stuff - they link to their own front page: bradblog.com - the place you're reading the fucking article!

The links should be elsewhere in their sentences, and linking to evidence to substantiate their claims. They do link to "real content" sometimes, quite liberally, but amongst it they litter a hyperlink to the frontpage of BradBlog.com - as if it indicates they have researched the claims they are making. Yet the link just goes to the frontpage......no particular story. Just to be clear.

Bradblog is far too self-referential. I think it sticks. But it's a nothing anyway? How many people go there?

Their coverage of the voting in NY was interesting - I thought they totally overplayed the sense of failure of the machinery of the elections. Their perspective is "fraud" and its association with wider conspiracy - yet the problems with NY voting that they linked to actually described machines failing to boot - scanners failing to scan - NOT vote fraud. Of course it's an issue with computers and voting, but that's no reason to push a wholly conspiratorial worldview.

Brad is pushing an Alex Jones perspective upon the voting system. Of course there are issues with electronic voting, but that's a long way away from proving a conspiracy which is deploying hokey electronic voting systems as a means to obtain (phoney) democratic legitimacy.

That's what Brad is pushing? There's a conspiracy to fuck-up the electronic voting system. For particular ends.....

A proportion of his audience accepts that the particular ends for which the voting machines are being fucked-up serve some jewish world conspiracy. Some others have more vague notions perhaps. Whatever it is, Brad is treading water amongst the conspiracists - vote fraud as grand conspiracy - if you want to vaguely suggest it's a jewish conspiracy in your comments go ahead, but if you want to suggest anti-semitic explanations don't cut the mustard then sorry, you're banned.

So, it's a vector for anti-semitism. And when we ask "so who is undertaking this subversion of the voting process, Brad?" he replies with the blade of a censor - long before the question can be put.

judging him on what he censors and what he promotes I have almost zero respect for him.

What he claims to be standing for might be admirable enough but that doesn't mean he really stands for it. Perhaps he does, but why believe it?

socrates said...

Thanks for the post.

You've asked me before what a confidence man is. The definition given by wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn: a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.

Hmmm. From a quick search, I see it was a phrase perhaps coined by American author Herman Melville, though that's just a guess. I bet conman is an abbreviation for confidence man, yet I'm not an etymologist, or is that one who studies bugs? Now I'm getting all confused. p:> You should never have to ask again what a confidence man is. It's a great phrase, don't you think?

Yeah, it's pitiful how much BradBlog links to itself, including like you say, linking to their own fricken homepage. Talk about lame. Sometimes it's entertaining. I'm not going to deny I ended up with a warped grin after reading Canning say Zionist apartheid supporters were showing up on blogs lately with Spanish names.

Now you're thinking! It's little things like them linking to their own page that give away the act. It's said that things repeated, even if not true, will start to gain momentum with the zeitgeist. Their biggie is that Brad is the leader of the election integrity movement. Or how Larisa kept repeating that BK was an exonerated, ex-political prisoner who never took part in the heinous bombings leading to one man's death.

If you search out their various hoaxes, you'll see the same kind of shell game with links. There are definite patterns to BradBlog and Velvet Revolution that are getting more and more difficult to cover up. At this point, I see BradBlog as boiling down to some lost soul screaming, "Goddamnit, I'm Brad Fricken Blog. SHOW ME THE MONEY!"

I agree with you that they overplay the electronic voting devices for their own kerching ends. We're on the same page. It's all they've got. There's no way they are going anywhere with their Green Report or Stop Terrorism campaigns. And if they even try to come up with another big hoax, people are ready to slice and then toss it into the hoax garbage pit where it belongs. That's what's meant by they can run, but they cannot hide.

For the record, vote fraud is different from election fraud. Their schtick is centered around the voting machines. They see no problem with voter fraud, i.e. fake names, things like that. I actually agree with Brad's basic ideas about how votes should be counted. But so what? It'd be like going leftier than thou more often with my equal schools, end all wars, tax the rich, etc. schtick and then ask for donations.

You know, it's interesting what you point out about the anti-semitism that's allowed to be posted at BradBlog against what isn't allowed, say an expose on BK or their hoaxes. It may be a coincidence, but Velvet Revolution is a major affiliate of Progressive Independent. PI was sponsoring Mike Rivero. Rivero worked with Alex Jones. I know these aren't paystubs like you once asked for. But they're darn close. And the Agent 99 thing is wild. Imho, Brad had to know all about her and the other anti-semites.