UPDATE 6:25 p.m. ET: Sources say that blogger Aaron Walker has been released from custody in Rockville, Maryland. He was charged with “incitement,” but released on his own recognizance. Readers are encouraged to donate to the National Bloggers Club to help support Aaron’s defense against Brett Kimberlin.

*** PREVIOUSLY (11:59 a.m.) ***

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

Aaron Walker, whose complaint against convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin became a conservative cause célèbre this past week, was reportedly taken into custody today after a court hearing in Rockville, Maryland.

One person who attended the hearing in Montgomery County District Court said that Kimberlin asserted that Walker’s continued blogging represented a violation of a “peace order” Kimberlin had obtained against the Virginia attorney, who says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him for assault earlier this year.

During the course of the hearing — which reportedly lasted about an hour — Judge C.J. Vaughey appeared to become increasingly hostile toward Walker, who was taken into custody when the hearing concluded.

On Thursday, May 17, Walker published a 28,000-word account of his experience being targeted by Kimberlin, which soon caught the attention of leading figures in online New Media, including University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who writes the popular Instapundit blog, and bestselling author Michelle Malkin, who warned her readers, “Please remember: Kimberlin is a radical, violent, lying, dangerous felon.”

UPDATE: According to a source, Kimberlin claimed during the hearing that he has received death threats as a result of Walker’s violation of the peace order. In 1981, Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for his crimes, including the 1978 terrorist bombing that brutally maimed Vietnam veteran Carl DeLong.

UPDATE II: A copy of the “final peace order” (time-stamped 10:52 a.m.) states that Kimberlin is “in fear of imminent serious bodily harm” as a result of a “countless number” of death threats, and that “there is clear and convincing evidence that [Walker] is likely to commit a prohibited act in the future against [Kimberlin].”

UPDATE III: To understand what is going on here, please see my column today at The American Spectator:

During his time in federal prison, [Kimberlin] became a prodigious jailhouse lawyer, filing more than 100 actions on his own behalf, and his litigious habits have continued until this day. When Patrick Frey, the blogger known as Patterico, wrote about Kimberlin’s criminal past in 2010, he was immediately threatened with a libel suit. By then, Kimberlin had already sued Seth Allen, who eventually got legal assistance from Aaron Walker, a Virginia attorney who had blogged under the pseudonym “Aaron Worthing.” This evidently made Walker a target of Kimberlin’s harassment tactics, with the result that Walker says both he and his wife lost their jobs. . . .

Kimberlin’s critics say his litigation against Allen and Walker, and threats of action against others, are a type of “lawfare,” which is defined as “the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a public relations victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent’s time so that they cannot pursue other ventures such as running for public office.” And this is part of what many see as a wide-ranging strategy of intimidation waged against conservatives . . .

Read the whole thing. I’m still trying to confirm facts about Walker’s hearing and reported arrest.

UPDATE IV: Just spoke to a source who confirms that witnesses saw Walker led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Ali Akbar, president of the National Bloggers Club, Tweets:

Will know more on Aaron’s situation at 3:30/4:30pm.

The National Bloggers Club has created KimberlinFiles.org to help call attention to the case and to enable “supporters to make financial donations to a relief fund as a show of support.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:









UPDATE V: Welcome Ace of Spades HQ readers!

Now a Memeorandum thread, with links by The Jawa Report, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, Wake up America, Bob Owens, Capitalist Preservation, Legal Insurrection, FilmLadd Blogs, That Mr. G Guy’s Blog and Truth Before Dishonor — thanks!

Michelle Malkin has been absolutely on fire over this.

UPDATE VI: Linked at Twitchy, Popehat, Nice Deb, Sooper Mexican, Darth Chipmunk, Daily Pundit, Andrew J. Patrick, Daley Gator, PJ Tatler and The Camp of the Saints — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE VII: A witness blogs about the hearing:

It went bad for Walker pretty quickly. . . .

Judge Vaughey had read up on the matter, knew Kimberlin’s history of felony convictions, but clearly was technically ignorant of even basic facts about what Twitter is, in one instance point saying “He Googled you 500,000 times” through the Tubes or whatever. The Judge had identified himself, earlier, as being “of the Royal Typewriter Generation,” and at another point, when confronted with the voluminous material from both sides, asked “don’t people have jobs, who reads this stuff?”

That said, Judge Vaughey did know a lot about the kind of respect a Judge is owed. He also, again, knew all about Kimberlin, saying “even a prostitute is entitled to protection.”

And Walker pissed him off. So did Kimberlin, but Walker identified himself as a Yale-trained lawyer, albeit one who was representing himself. Kimberlin made any number of allegations — essentially, everything that was said about his side -– issuing death threats, harming business interests, summoning SWAT teams to the home–was said by Kimberlin to have been done by Walker’s side.

The pair went back and forth, back and forth, with Walker getting increasingly flustered, and the Judge finally asking, “what did they tell you in Yale Law School about interrupting a judge?”

My own source who was on the scene said of Judge Vaughey: “He couldn’t find the Internet to save his life.”

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