By Alison Maynard

TO: opinion@newyorktimes.com

(Sent April 7, 2019)

[Editor’s Note: The author concedes that the New York Times typically does not publish pieces in direct in response to, or complaining about, reports which appear in the paper. Still, a perspective defending school safety expert Wolfgang Halbig’s credibility has yet to appear in the Times, or for that matter any other news outlet reporting on the legal actions brought by Sandy Hook parents. Nor have such outlets honestly covered any of the ensuing controversy leading up to these most recent activities. Such one-sidedness more than suggests the increasingly propaganda-like nature of such news media’s “reportage” and commentary.]

Wolfgang Halbig’s Quest for the Truth

The article by Elizabeth Williamson published in the New York Timeson March 29, 2019 (“How Alex Jones and Infowars helped a Florida man torment Sandy Hook families”), is so monstrously full of misinformation—and disinformation–that it deserves a response.

The “Florida man” is Wolfgang Halbig, a 71-year-old school security expert and former state trooper. Mr. Halbig has been dogged—and uncompromisingly ethical—in his search for the truth about the so-called Sandy Hook shooting, a search prompted initially by horror, giving way to astonishment and disbelief at glaring inconsistencies and falsehoods in the reportage.

At no time has Halbig “harassed,” “hounded,” “pursued,” or “tormented” Sandy Hook families. He has focused, instead, on obtaining public records from state, federal, and local agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Newtown Police Department; Newtown Public Schools; and Connecticut State Police. Most of these agencies provided no records whatsoeverin response to Wolf’s Freedom of Information requests, despite legal mandates.

For example, Wolf has tried, in vain, to obtain the log created pursuant to a sign that said “Everyone Must Check In” which shows up in photos of the fire station taken Dec. 14, 2012, as well as the transmission log of “Trooper 1,” the state police helicopter in the air that day, purporting to track a suspect in the woods. Halbig has been denied these indisputably public records. He subpoenaed witnesses who had presumptive knowledge of conditions at the school for his FOIA hearings, but Newtown’s attorney Monte Frank improperly told them to ignore the subpoenas, and Wolf was provided no relief for this misconduct. The police at last gave Wolf “dash cam videos” he had requested, which are not, in fact, dash cam videos, since they do not show the hood of the car. They also show different scenes putatively taken from the same location at the same time, so were clearly faked.

After Ms. Williamson’s initial contact with him, Mr. Halbig provided her a document he had filed with the court explaining and linking to over 60 exhibits, available here. These are largely the FOIA requests, although Exhibit 21 is a forensic expert’s analysis comparing photos of Avielle Richman and the living girl Lenie Urbina, concluding they are the same person. Wolf requested Williamson use her clout to obtain the check-in log and Trooper 1 transmissions. She said “Do not contact me again,” and then reports that Halbig “did not respond to emails and telephone messages.” But the questions she asked of him show that, instead of investigating the event, her goal is embarrassing Halbig. She asked, for example, why he was not represented by an attorney in the lawsuit brought by seven Sandy Hook families. Although it is anyone’s guess why she would ask this, in answer Wolf can point to a Connecticut attorney who contacted him in 2014, Abe Dabela, who, three weeks after their conversation, was discovered in his overturned car shot in the back of the head, a death determined by Redding police to be “suicide.”

Williamson also asked why Wolf had requested documents relating to the “cleanup of bodily fluids, brain matter, skull fragments and around 45 to 60 gallons of blood.” The point is, there are no such documents—and of course there should be, given 26 putative shooting victims and that biohazard clean-up requires a permit. She refers in her article to a letter Wolf received from the Diocese at Bridgeport ordering him to “stay away” from St. Rose of Lima Church, reciting that he had been previously warned not to come there. But no previous warning was ever made: the Monsignor sicced police on Halbig the first and only time he went to that church. The letter thus recites a falsehood, and is not among the matters Williamson asked Halbig to comment on, yet she stamps the imprimatur of “the Nation’s Newspaper of Record” on this scurrilous hearsay, again saying he failed to comment. Speaking of St. Rose of Lima, the video CNN showed of cops rushing around with guns drawn on Dec. 14, 2012, was shot there, not at Sandy Hook School. The mendacity and breach of public trust exhibited by CNN extend to the entire mockingbird press, obviously including the New York Times.

In her latest email, Williamson asked Halbig for contact information for his wife. If she were interested in the truth she would be inquiring, instead, into such things as:

Why there are no videos of any children evacuating from the school;

Why no emergency personnel ever entered the school—why they were, in fact, prohibited from entering, and were hanging out at the fire station over 500 feet away;

Why demolition contractors were required to sign confidentiality agreements;

Why none of the Sandy Hook teachers filed claims for disability stemming from PTSD, or even physical injuries, despite two reportedly shot;

Who ordered the Port-a-Potties and when;

Why several people in the photos wear lanyards around their necks;

And a multitude of other things, not to mention the literal millions of dollars pouring out of the public spigot into the wide-open mouths of hundreds of “stakeholders.”

And of course she would be reporting on the government’s thumbing its nose at the law in lieu of responding to his FOIA requests.

Ms. Williamson could also have reviewed Wolf’s filings in the defamation lawsuit to see what substitutes for due process in the “Constitution State.” In fact, her initial email to him said the lawsuit was what she was looking into, yet she reported nothing about what he has filed. On July 12, 2018, Wolf filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction (since he is a Florida resident who conducts no business in Connecticut) and lack of subject matter jurisdiction (since the plaintiffs failed to allege a single false statement he has ever made about any of them). That motion has languished for over nine months, yet is required to be decided before anything else.

Instead, the judge, one Barbara Bellis, blithely and regularly convenes conferences with the other parties without notice to Wolf, and issues orders apace. Bellis has ignored his motion to recuse, pending for five months–another type of motion which must be ruled on before a judge takes up anything else–and recently ordered him to submit to the plaintiffs’ deposition, although he disavows the court’s jurisdiction over him! And she has ignored his motion for sanctions for the misconduct of plaintiffs’ attorney Matthew Blumenthal, the son of a senator, who appeared on television to smear the defendants in order to poison the well of potential jurors. This is an open-and-shut violation of the Rule of Professional Conduct prohibiting pretrial publicity. Instead of taking swift action to remedy the prejudice to the defendants, Judge Bellis just blows it off. Some judge. But the point is: Williamson said she was writing about this suit, asked Wolf to comment on being ordered to submit to deposition, and was informed by email specifically about his filings, yet has said not one word about them. Apparently the truth would cause people to be sympathetic, and the NYT can’t have that.

As for the notorious Lenny Pozner, he filed a frivolous lawsuit against Wolf in Florida in 2015. After 2½ years, the court ordered Poz to appear for his video deposition. Pozner dismissed the suit three days before that was to take place. So there are many things Ms. Williamson could have written about, but chose not to, revealing an agenda which is obviously the same as Blumenthal’s: to prejudice the venire.

Here are three particularly compelling facts Halbig documented for Williamson, which she also failed to mention. Newtown Public Schools applied for FCC reimbursement for Chalk Hill School—in the Town of Monroe, not Newtown—on March 13, 2012, a full nine months before Sandy Hook students were reportedly moved there because of the “shooting.” Food was also being delivered to Sandy Hook School “@Chalk Hill School, 375 Fan Hill Drive, Monroe, CT” on April29, 2012. He provided her the delivery records. And Google Earth popped up an image of Sandy Hook School when the address “375 Fan Hill Drive, Monroe” was input on March 29th, 2012. This hard evidence that the event was staged is among Wolf’s stunning discoveries. It is the real reason the Sandy Hook plaintiffs are “struggling to stop him.”

Alison Maynard

Alison Maynard is a lawyer with 32 years’ experience, who has been informally assisting Wolfgang Halbig, without compensation, in the suit Sandy Hook families filed against him in Connecticut Superior Court.