Cleaning Up the “Chan v. Ellis” Mess (Part 2)
In my last post (Part 1), I began the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. My legal adversary, Linda Ellis, has caused a mess for many people with her reckless, irresponsible choices which was supported by other poor choices by her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride.
After two years, I finally went back into the ELI Forums archive to find the original, unblemished version of the forum posts that Linda Ellis submitted as court exhibits. What I found was both distressing and upsetting to me. It showed not only how poor quality her court exhibits were but how much was left out altogether misleading the lower court. I believe it was an intentional act by Linda to shield certain facts that she did not want the lower court to see or know. Betsy did not did herself any favors by failing to vet her client’s so-called exhibits. She is going to get some blowback from what Linda did.
Through strategic concealing, cropping, obscuring, and altering the photocopies of the original forum posts, the true context of the forums posts were greatly skewed against me. Because I didn’t have access to my computer or the original posts in the courtroom, I was forced to make do with the poor quality, misleading, and deceptive Ellis exhibits.
In my last post (Part 1), I directly confronted and called out Linda’s false assertions within the WXIA TV interview. I am now continuing to directly challenge and refute the other false assertions she is making about me (out of context) on her Facebook page and other websites.
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The Truth About Me Allegedly Posting “Death Threats”
Linda has more than once accused me of making “death threats” against her. Her assertion largely comes from two poorly photocopied forum posts submitted as court exhibits. The first one is the “Hearse Song” Exhibit. It contains the “Hearse Song” YouTube video along with the print lyrics beside it. The title of the forum post is:“Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!”. It is the 7th post within an extended online discussion (I will come back to this later.)
In the “Hearse Song” Exhibit that Linda provided, the first point I want to make is that I wasn’t the person that posted it. It was April Brown, author of “Poetic Justice”. This one simple point is clearly seen even in the modified court exhibit. Even if it had been a veiled “death threat” (which it wasn’t), I didn’t post it plain and simple.
The second point I want to make about this exhibit is that you see lyrics next to the YouTube screenshot. It implies that the original forum post contained visible lyrics, hence, conveying a written message of death. You will see below that the actual forum post was far less “threatening”.
The original, untouched forum post of the “Hearse Song” did not have any text or lyrics whatsoever. It contained no lyrics, text, or comment, only April’s lone post of the “Hearse Song” YouTube video. I included, in my screenshot, one of April’s follow-up posts to show the proper context. As you can see by April’s comments, April was angry that Linda was trying to go after the California author who had received the $100,000 demand letter.
“Linda Ellis and Johnny Boy – the gift that just keeps on giving. They just had to revisit the famous author. Just couldn’t drop it. They just had to try one more time to get him to pay their extortion demands. Had they left him alone, the A-Team might have just limped along waiting for another high profile person to get really pissed off and go public. Now, thanks to Linda and John our fight back campaign just got the boost of high octane we needed. Linda, you simply do not posses the ability, the cash or the integrity to go up against Mr. Big. Your history is so tainted, your words so revealing and your tactics so unscrupulous that now the world will finally hear the truth about Live Your Dash and You! little missy.”
April was certainly angry at Linda but at no point is April even hinting anything violent or physical against Linda, much less a “death threat”.
Another complaint Linda made was the title of the forum post “Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!” which was actually the 6th carryover title from the original first forum post.
Below is the first three posts of that forum discussion. I wish I had a copy of it at my original hearing but I didn’t know what Linda had as “evidence” beforehand. My team and I never imagined I would be dealing with highly modified, cropped, obscured, and incomplete screenshots. I naively assumed that any screenshot of forum posts presented to the lower court would have been reasonably clear and complete and that most of them would speak for themselves as NOT being physically dangerous. Again, I was quite naive.
As you can see, April was the originator of the discussion thread “Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!” and it was concerning Linda hiring Atlanta lawyers to issue a $100,000 demand letter to the California-based author. April expressed her anger by naming a forum topic the way she did. But if you read the first three posts and all the subsequent posts, the discussion is far tamer and largely surrounds others reactions to the $100,000 demand letter. No physical threats of any kind were express much less a “death threat”.
The next forum post relating to the “death threat” assertion is Linda’s Exhibit where I make a comment about Linda being “dead” right. As you see, the word “dead” is in quotes. It is a figure of speech being “dead” right.
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Compare the exhibit version to this one, the uncropped version of that forum post.
Once again, you can see that Linda conveniently leaves off the quoted text written by April which my post was responding to.
“Just when I thought I might get a good night’s sleep.”
It had nothing do do with physical threat or violence much less a “death threat”. And yet, Linda considers all of these disparate forum posts as “death threats”.
As a final comment on Linda’s “death threat” assertions, Justice Keith Blackwell rather astutely observed that Linda’s poem is often associated with “death and a tombstone.” I need not say anything more regarding the issue of death as it relates to Linda.
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The Truth About the “Cult Leader” Title
I find it both amusing and sad that Linda seems to think that calling me a “cult leader” might actually convince someone that I am one. It is true that I have referred to myself as a “cult leader”. Does it really need to be said that it is meant as a “tongue-in-cheek” title?
In any case, I did write a commentary on my “cult leader” status on January 11, 2015 titled “Can I Convince You I Might Be a ‘Cult Leader’?” However, what I left out is where it actually came from because I forgot when I first used that title. In looking through my computer files, I came across a rebuttal letter from June 2012 that I wrote to Seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack in response to his unsolicited, unwelcome letter to me and Oscar Michelen regarding his views and remarks about my opinions of recording telephone conversations as a defense tool against overly aggressive collection calls from copyright extortionists.
As some might expect, I wrote Timmy an unhappy and snarky rebuttal letter to him in my own “unique style”. I disrespected him so much, I didn’t print the letter out to waste a perfectly good envelope and postage stamp to send the letter to him. I efaxed the letter to him and posted my rebuttal letter (from June 2012) online for everyone to see. The one paragraph, out of the 17-paragraph letter, that Linda really enjoys and shares with others:
“You should realize that creating and managing an online cult such as ELI is actually more challenging than one where you physically meet and interact with my followers. My dazzling, hypnotic, persuasive, and entrancing words and prose are somewhat masterful I must confess. I can convince the most intelligent, self-determined, and self-motivated person to blindly follow any public suggestion I might make.”
Although that whole communication between me and Timmy McCormack had NOTHING to do with her whatsoever, Linda has “adopted” this one paragraph from that 17-paragraph letter to share with others. She can knock herself out with it. In many ways, it would really be cool if it was true. Alas, I know my influence is relatively low. I am not delusional in that regard.
This concludes Part 2. Read Part 3.
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