Neal posted the following on his blog on August 11th, 2014. Neal’s information was out of date on the lawsuits and in typical fashion he introduced information that had nothing to do with anything but lets him mention the FBI and name drop members of Law Enforcement he claim’s to have talked with.
The “alleged member of Aryan brotherhood”, Thomas Retzlaff is declared a vexatious litigant in Texas so he can’t file a lawsuit without permission. It appears he’s tried to clumsily circumvent this by using Neal to file.
Retzlaff’s is a mess. His defamtion suit against Jay Leiderman was thrown out and Retzlaff was ordered to pay $10,000 to Leiderman. The court also put a permanent restraining order against Retzlaff (which he’s already violated) and he has an arrest warrant for contempt of court.
Retzlaff has a long history of violence and harassment against women including sexual assault, “even a little bit of due diligence would have uncovered this.”
Providing a link in your blog Neal, even via anonymouse, to ViaViewFiles, which is run by Retzlaff, was not a smart move.
Rauhauser vs. McGibney Texas Appeals Case 02-14-00215-CV
The case Rauhauser v. McGibney 02-14-00215-CV was filed in Texas state appellate court right after lunch on August 11th, 2014. The underlying statute being used is the Texas Citizens Participation Act, which you can learn more about at SLAPP’ed In Texas.
The original case behind this was a frivolous lawsuit filed by James McGibney which included me, a New York Community college professor named Jennifer D’Allesandro, “Amelia Sanaka”, the only name known for the operator of the defunct @OccupyRebellion Twitter account, and an alleged member of the Aryan Brotherhood named Thomas Retzlaff. The case number for this is Texas 067-270669-14.
McGibney almost immediately filed another frivolous action in California federal court which again named me, Retzlaff, Sanaka, and that also one includes Lane Lipton, a school teacher who lives somewhere on Long Island. Lipton hired Clark Braunstein, who is just in his second year out of law school, but he works for the firm his father owns, so she is in good hands, and they also filed an anti-SLAPP motion similar to mine. The original federal case number is 5:2014-cv-01059.
Thomas Retzlaff was subject to a variety of threat hoaxes by McGibney, which were done to circumvent the discovery stop provided by the Texas Citizens Participation Act filing. McGibney resides in San Jose, in mid-May I spoke to SJPD detective Nathaniel Braxton, and the next day he told me the case had been referred to the FBI. One individual briefly employed by McGibney this year has a serious computer crimes conviction, and another former employee is under investigation for a hospital intrusion connected to the Steubenville rape case. Usually a referral to the FBI is a local police department punting a complex interstate case, but this time I think there is some substance behind it.
Retzlaff filed a libel suit against McGibney’s attorney, Jay Leiderman, who had referred to him as a “convicted sex offender”. There is a Thomas Retzlaff, same middle initial, who is on the sex offender registry in Oklahoma, but he is under age thirty. The Retzlaff named in the various lawsuits has a daughter who is in her late twenties, even a little bit of due diligence would have uncovered this. I do not know the case number for this one, it’s a state case in Maricopa county, Arizona.
My representation on this case is Jeff Dorrell, a Houston lawyer who worked for Congressman Charlie Wilson during the height of Charlie Wilson’s War. Jeff is a past national president of the Log Cabin Republicans, he is admitted to every Texas state court, all three Texas federal courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2nd, 4th, and 5th districts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. I could not wish for any better representation in what will be a precedent setting 1st Amendment case.
As I mentioned earlier, SLAPP’ed In Texas is an excellent source for technical information on the Texas Citizens Participation act. Ongoing coverage of this saga happens at ViaViewFiles. I used Anonymouse to provide this link rather than making a direct connection. I stronglyadvise you to use this as the means to browse that site, unless you are comfortable using Toror a VPN. Some of the regulars are McGibney partisans and any links in the comments should be treated as a trap.