If there ever were a contest for the most deranged left-wing journalist, the guy with the biggest head start would have to be Jason Leopold, the fabulist most recently embarrassed for his phony report that White House aide Karl Rove had been indicted May 12. Since his journalism was exposed as fraudulent, he's been on a tear lashing out at anyone daring to question him.
But Leopold hasn't stopped there. Most recently, he's been involved in complicated sock puppet scandal, posting comments defending himself under pseudonyms on various blogs, disclosing others' private information, and hurling around accusations of forgery and pedophilia. Instead of being alone in his deranged quest, however, Leopold seems to have a few others helping him in his quest for truth, including Larry Johnson, an obsessed former CIA employee who has become known as one of the most quoted defenders of Bush-hater Joe Wilson. Leopold's retinue also seems to include his former colleague at the leftist news site RawStory, Larisa Alexandrovna.
The whole affair was uncovered by the Seixon blog (here and here), run by a formerly anonymous American blogger living in Norway whose identity was exposed by Leopold's monkeys.
The story begins where any tale of leftist idiocy should begin, at the Daily Kos, where Leopold's false reports had finally begun to attract suspicion from the community. In a June 12 thread discussing Leopold's latest defense of his "scoop," a Kos member going by the name "AnonymousArmy" accused Leopold of being snookered.
This remark attracted the attention of the notoriously self-obsessed Leopold as Seixon recounts:
Mr. Leopold searches Technorati and other blog search engines for his name to hunt down members of the anonymous army who sought to discredit him. I know Leopold does this because the access logs for this blog reveal that almost every time he visited was after searching Technorati or Feedster for his own name.
Leopold apparently ended up going to a diary entry at DailyKos suggesting that everyone should take his new article “with a block of salt”. At 15:58 PDT on June 12 a commenter by the name of AnonymousArmy suggested that the report was an invention of Wayne Madsen who is notorious for conspiracy theories and bogus information, banned even from DailyKos. This prompted Leopold to send AnonymousArmy an email at 16:34 PDT titled “Think again, genius” stating:
Here is a screenshot of Pacer with the Sealed v. Sealed indictment, which still is under seal. http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j157/Topsecretk9/JasonsScoop.jpg
AnonymousArmy responded to Leopold saying that he was a fraud and asked him why he would even bother emailing him at all; Leopold responded at 21:00 PDT by taunting him, “You can go back and beat your kids now.”
After Leopold's bizarre email, AnonymousArmy kept writing about his antics (including impersonating another reporter while talking to Karl Rove's attorney) at DailyKos which soon led to his receiving an email from "Harrison Shepard," one of Leopold's sock puppet aliases, warning AnonymousArmy that he was "about to be exposed" as working for the military, presumably disrupting the web sites of leftist nutjobs at the direction of Karl Rove, using Diebold machines with a picture of Donald Rumsfeld on his desk. This was odd, especially, since instead of being a DOD employee working in Ohio, AnonymousArmy lives in Canada.
Army kept writing about Leopold on his Daily Kos diary which apparently did not please the disgraced reporter or some of his friends who also came under fire. Shortly before Leopold's threatening emails were sent, Leopold's former colleague Larisa Alexandrovna, editor of the leftist news site Raw Story ("the liberal alternative to Drudge") posted a comment on one of Army's threads, accusing him of being a DOD plant, thus making her the apparent source of the allegation.
All of this attracted the attention of Seixon who started trying to find out why Leopold and Alexandrovna would be attacking some anonymous commenter in such a bizarre fashion. He emailed Alexandrovna who refused to respond to the questions, alleging instead that Army had faked the threatening emails from Leopold. When confronted with evidence that this was not true, Alexandrovna refused to discuss things further via email and asked for Seixon's phone number instead. He gave it to her. She never called.
While this was going on, a Leopold follower going by the name of "John Dean" got involved. He had become convinced that not only was AnonymousArmy a DOD troll, but that he was also Seixon as well as a commenter on his site hellbent on impugning the magnificent credibility of Jason Leopold. To "prove" this, Dean concocted a scheme to crudely spoof an email from AnonymousArmy in order to prove that Army had actually forged the first, non-sockpuppet email from Leopold.
This clinched it for Dean who proceeded to continue his "sleuthing" (or is that stalking?) efforts. Somehow or another, likely through Alexandrovna, he managed to find out Seixon's name, George Gooding. He then proceeded to call Gooding's parents to obtain more information about him, posing as a journalist writing an article about blogs. Shortly thereafter, someone on another leftist web site, Think Progress, made a comment unveiling Seixon's identity.
This strange and bizarre behavior prompted Gooding to delve further into the leftist swamp. Knowing that Dean believed him to be both Seixon, AnonymousArmy, and a Seixon commenter named Topsecretk9, he emailed his commenter. She informed him that she had also been the figure of a leftist sockpuppet accusation (oh the irony), one lodged by Larry Johnson, a former CIA official who has become a somewhat notable Bush hater, conspiracy theorist, and supporter of the mendacious Joe Wilson who despite (or perhaps because) of his deranged political beliefs has also been a frequent media source about information pertaining to the CIA.
More importantly for this story, he has also been a big web supporter of Leopold, repeatedly defending him across the blogosphere. According to Topsecretk9, Johnson believed that she was really an employee of Diebold, the electronic voting machine company and leftist bogeyman. Johnson apparently believed that Topsecretk9 was really in some sort of conspiracy with the Republican party, Diebold and he Department of Defense.
That wild allegation piqued Seixon's interest and he proceeded to question Dean, Johnson, Alexandrovna to explain why Johnson was so fixated with some blog commenter. None of them answered. Seixon emailed Leopold to get his side of the story, he threatened to sue.
Sexion continued being critical in various blogs, posting a comment critical of Leopold at Think Progress, the same site where someone had previously divulged his identity. It apparently had the same effect setting off a poster named "monkey" who made a series of vulgar and stalkerish posts in reply including this one:
Sexion is a right wing plant along with the man who goes by the name of AnonymousArmy. Together, SEXION, er, George Gooding, a 20-something stoner who lives in Norway, troll around left leaning sites and post disinformation about people and engage in smear campaigns. AnonymousArmy has been doing this on the Daily Kos blog for a long time. These two are part of a Republican campaign in which bloggers are paid to do this. George Gooding's father is going to get a phone call. I will soon have George Gooding's photo to paste all over the net. It's one of him molesting a little boy.
After those posts were deleted, another sockpuppet named "DOJ" turned up on Think Progress, this time, posting genuine emails from Seixon, interspersed with false language meant to sound threatening but instead coming off as more ridiculous than anything else, including such gems as "I will make up stuff about you and your family. If you do not admit to me that Larry Johnson was your source I will make up things about you and post it on my blog. I will smear you until you commit suicide."
I wonder where Leopold would get the idea of making up false information about someone? I'm with Ace in wondering, "Who announces in an email 'I INTEND TO LIE ABOUT YOU'?"
Later, Leopold sent an email in his own name. Its lunacy and monkey fascination is worth reprinting in full:
OK, Curious George, you monkey. You are so goddamn funny and insane it really cracks me up. Do you think this hurts my feelings or something? I have this picture of you wearing diapers, shitting yourself while calling me names and telling me how many people supposedly hate me. I love it. Keep going. Monkey boy, you do nothing remotely good in this world. You really don’t contribute anything to society. Do you honestly believe that there are normal people out there who listen to you? You think your rants mean anything to me? You must be confusing me with someone who gives a fuck. George, you must realize that you hate [sic] way too much time on your hands.You live with your parents. You are pathetic. And sad. And a loser. And a baby. And a monkey. And a loser. But you’re [sic] lunacy is very funny.
I'm sure glad Leopold is a member of the "reality-based" community. I'd hate to see what he'd be like if he weren't. The guy is clearly in need of psychological help but instead he's been propped up by the likes of Democratic Underground. Now that that feeble reed has collapsed, perhaps he could lean on the equally sturdy Keith Olbermann for his mental health.
All of this would be funny in a disturbing way were it not for the fact that someone (probably Leopold) has continued the vendetta against Seixon by posting his address, phone number, and mother's maiden name in a comment at the Ace of Spades blog.
UPDATE 07/26: The story took a much nastier turn today as Seixon received threatening emails from Johnson and a death threat from someone he believes to be Leopold.
