Ken white, of Popehat Blog
Why did Ken White, L.A. lawyer and publisher of the Popehat blog, trash me at his blog and in the pages of The New York Times -- even though he acknowledged I was in the right on the Rob Riley-Liberty Duke defamation case that caused me to be unlawfully incarcerated and admitted American courts are prone to trample First Amendment rights, especially of non-elites?We have developed a theory about that, and it began to form after evidence recently surfaced that the Alabama State Bar had interfered with our pending federal civil-rights lawsuit ("The Jail Case"), which grew from the Riley-Duke matter. We already had seen evidence that Ali (Akbar) Alexander, president of the right-wing National Bloggers Club (NBC) had bragged online that he had ties to the governor of Alabama and planned to call in favors with state lawyers. (Akbar has used the services of Montgomery lawyer/radio host Baron Coleman, who is tied to Tripp Vickers, assistant general counsel at the Alabama State Bar.) We knew Ken White -- who has been called a "libertarian lawyer" in some circles -- sought legal help for Akbar and Co. in a RICO lawsuit liberal activist Brett Kimberlin had brought against them. White even made a reference to the bizarre "RogerS theory," which had the Akbar crowd aflutter in the days before deputies beat me in my own home and threw me in the Shelby County Jail for five months -- making me probably the only American ever to be arrested for blogging.
You probably are starting to get the picture: White was connected to, and supportive of, the right-wing bloggers who thought I was "RogerS," the anonymous commenter at Breitbart Unmasked who was encouraging Kimberlin to file a RICO lawsuit against them. The RogerS comments, which did not come from me, had the Akbar bloggers in a frenzied state of agitation in October 2013. And then, wham, I unlawfully get thrown in jail as an outgrowth of the Riley-Duke case.
But the right-wing scheme quickly developed a flaw. Riley and Duke had included my wife, Carol, as a defendant -- for no reason other than to have her arrested, too. But deputies failed to apprehend her on the night they nabbed me -- and they failed to get her on multiple visits to our house after I already was in jail.
Carol's ability to escape capture allowed her to get the story in the press -- where I quickly became known as the only U.S. journalist to be incarcerated in 2013. We think the plan was to extort us into silence on Legal Schnauzer, and if that didn't work, to kill us. If deputies had been able to arrest Carol, we both easily could have been murdered while in custody, and no one ever would have known what happened to us.
But Carol remained free and worked the phones and computer like a PR pro to get the story to the public. And we suspect that threw a major wrench into the plan to silence this blog -- permanently. In my only hearing before him on Nov. 14, 2013, I saw that Judge Claud Neilson was highly agitated about press coverage of my incarceration. I was shackled from head to toe, but I still could not help smile at thinking that Carol had caused a crooked Alabama judge to be so pissed off.
Ali (Akbar) Alexander at the Grindr geo-social app
for gay sex.
The goal? Well, White could not publicly defend the actions of Riley, Duke and their lawyers -- or Judge Claud Neilson -- so he didn't even try. But he could try to make me look like a loon, causing me to be less sympathetic in the public eye and to discourage any competent lawyer, or civil-rights organization, from helping me.
That would explain White's tendency to engage in name-calling -- labeling me "creepy, crazy, and vexatious" -- while providing little or no evidence to back it up. It also would explain why, of all the civil-rights lawyers in the United States, New York Times reporter Campbell Robertson sought analysis from White -- who was in California, talking about an Alabama case he knew little about.
Does this make sense? The Times went all the way across the country to find a lawyer who happened to be supportive of the right-wing bloggers who thought I was "RogerS" and likely wanted me jailed because of it. Of course, it makes no sense, and it shows how far "The Gray Lady" has fallen.
Donald Trump and I don't agree on much, but I share his view that The New York Times, in some respects, is failing.
How is this for duplicity? Ken White falsely wrote on multiple occasions that, while in jail, I had refused to take on a lawyer. This was an absurdity, considering I had spoken to two lawyers while in jail, and Carol made it clear to Salon that we were very interested in having a competent, determined lawyer on our side. Both of us made this clear to Campbell Robertson, but he left that out of his story.
Bottom line? We have little doubt that Ken White knows who was behind my kidnapping and incarceration -- and a possible plan to murder Carol and me. White might not know about all elements of the scheme, but he likely knows about some of them. We suspect White was enlisted by various members of the legal tribe -- probably with the Alabama State Bar in a coordinating role -- to portray me as "creepy and crazy," providing a form of cover for the real bad guys in all of this.
We've read enough of White's blog to know that he is a devoted legal tribesman -- part of the gang, the fraternity. In his reporting on my case, White repeatedly said I needed to get a lawyer -- as if that would make my problems magically disappear. White, of course, ignored that all of my problems were caused by lawyers, in the first place. And I'm just one of many Americans who has found, through unpleasant experience, that many lawyers make matters worse, without ever making them better.
If our theory about Ken White is correct, perhaps he needs to take a breather from calling me "creepy" and take a look in the mirror. He might find that is where the real creepiness resides.
And consider this: It's documented that Ali Akbar has a criminal record of a felonious nature, with a history of trolling for gay sex on the Grindr geosocial app, reportedly has engaged in a homosexual relationship with GOP strategist Karl Rove -- per a letter from Alabama oppo researcher Jill Simpson to Obama campaign counsel Robert Bauer. But Ken "Popehat" White supports Akbar? Ken White calls ME "creepy"?
If you want to view real creepiness in action, check out the video below of Ali (Akbar) Alexander, as he defends Brett Kavanaugh, philosophizes on sex, and rails against feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. In a stunning show of arrogance, Akbar declares that he is "an interpreter of energy for this period." Whoooo-hoooo.
As for Ken White, maybe he needs to clean up the company he keeps before dropping unmerited bombs on others. If he was involved in a conspiracy ("deprivation of rights"), or covering up a conspiracy, there could be criminal or RICO implications -- or both.
