The main item, here. The follow-up, here.
The focus in this post is the latter. It is tacky and self-demeaning for Wardlow to reflexively blame Kieth Ellison when this story landed. As the second item explains, he is plain wrong, but went that route anyway without inquiry of PiPress about Ellison in relation to the main item. The Wardlow statement did not mention the collaborating person mentioned in the main item, Kopp, who is pictured in the main story when he and Wardlow were school students.
Wardlow did not respond in person, but by a written statement, something which he knows cannot be cross-examined. As Dave Orrick notes in the second item, Wardlow exaggerated his accuser's web posting history, which appears as a reflexive step to blame the accuser; much as the reflex was to try to disarm the story by suggesting Ellison produced it to PiPress when the PiPress author pair clearly indicate it was independently sourced. The second of the PiPress items makes that crystal clear.
Apart from that, Wardlow is too young to have lived through the turmoil of the sixties and Nixon years, but Bob Kroll is older and likely did live during Kent State and Jackson State and the ending of the J. Edgar Hoover timeframe, up to and including the Lee Atwater - Willie Horton BS, affirmatively run as a campaign ad by/for George H.W. Bush, to the disadvantage of Michael Dukakis. Bob Kroll is mentioned online in at least three items, here, here and here. Treat this paragraph as a comment in passing, a written statement which cannot be cross-examined.
The main PiPress story does shine some attention onto the right-wing extremist blog where it is near certain Doug Wardlow wrote it in a partisan way while being a judicial law clerk under a duty to not reflect badly upon judicial impartiality. It also includes an embedded video of Wardlow testifying at a hearing of the Anoka-Hennepin School District Board Wardlow has previously characterized as "representing a client" that being the ADF. Whether it was an attorney-client relation or an employment with policy-making input by Wardlow is a question left hanging. Was it a fee for services, or being on a payroll with executive decision-making is a question worth consideration.
PiPress links are given. Readers of Crabgrass are urged to follow them.
