Originally Published on August 23, 2008 at 8:05 as “Jon Roland—Hypocrite Lecteur, Mon Semblable, Mon Frere”

For about five years now Jon Drew Roland, three time failed Libertarian Candidate for Texas Attorney General and who knows what else, a man who never campaigns and never puts himself at risk for anything, has published a nasty little snipe against me on his otherwise rather marvelous website, www.constitution.org.

Jon Drew Roland in some ways is the exact reverse of me: he is a native Californian who came to Texas (so the Californians claim he’s from Texas and the Texans claim he’s from California).  Jon was for a very long time a wonderful mentor, advocate, sponsor, trustee to me.  He was one of my most enthusiastic supporters and best friends during my divorce and child custody battles of the half-decade of 2002-2007.  And indeed, Jon and I were for some years quite inseparable around the Central Texas world of Patriotic Constitutionalism and Civil Rights Litigation on behalf of the oppressed but silent majority in Texas.

Quite frankly, our collaboration was hardly an unqualified success either in legal or political terms although it WAS a great philosophical and spiritual journey. We lost almost all the cases we worked on together because we picked on people who were just too damned powerful: among them, I inherited the enmity and hatred of Jon Roland’s oldest nemesis Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott surely ranks one of the worst Attorneys General in the history of the United States, never mind of Texas.  Even flying under color of conservatism, as Texas Republicans from Bush on down love to do, Abbott  has institute one of the most oppressive regimes of Maoist Family destruction and mass imprisonment (never mind mass execution) in these formerly great states of the Union—and Texas, even into the 1990s, was one of the freest corners of the United States, believe it or not.  That all changed with the election of Governor George W. Bush and Attorney General Abbott.

I suppose one of the proudest moments Jon Roland and I had was when we jointly, together with (then State Senator) Jerry O’Neil from Kalispell, Montana, made parallel grant/project proposasl to the  Ford Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to fund a trial program in the High Schools of the State of Montana whereby the entire first year curriculum of law school would be taught during the 10th-12th grades.  The “High School Civics” that most people receive is essentially a nugatory nullity.  Our proposal was rejected, although the MacArthur Foundation gave it three full hearings (final grounds for rejection being that we had not one single specialist in secondary education or adolescent psychology among us and were therefore not qualified to make the proposal). The Ford Foundation’s response was probably the most honest: teaching law to high school students would heighten their frustration and discontent and therefore be counterproductive to today’s broader social and economic policies.  Oh yeah?  Well, I guess that was our point: we think people SHOULD be discontent and frustrated and if education is the tool to make them that way—and avoiding education is a way to prevent that—

But one day in November 2006, Jon Drew Roland told me about a friend of his who needed some help.  She needed to find out if she had inherited anything from her mother, who had died 10 years earlier.  I told Jon it was almost inconceivable that she would inherit anything now, or could claim anything now, after so long, but Jon asked me to talk to this dear and long-time friend of his, knowing that I had practiced quite a lot of probate & trust law back when I was a semi-normal attorney in private practice, before civil rights and the reaction to my efforts in that department changed my life forever.

To make a long story short, I found that Shelley Sue Thomson, then living in an incredibly depressed slum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had indeed been the victim of one of the most bald-faced cases of probate theft and conversion I had ever seen.  Shelley Sue Thomson couldn’t afford to hire a licensed attorney, and she asked me to back up Jon Drew Roland as her Trustee, as Jon would act merely for free.  Shelly Sue Thomson promised me 1/3 of whatever estate she could recover in exchange for my efforts—actually she promised even more than that—she promised me that, since she had no children of her own, she would leave her mother’s house to my son Charlie if she could live in it for the rest of her life.

As it turned out, victory was swift, coming by May 1, 2007: after merely filing two state and two federal lawsuits, Shelley’s old, greedy, and evil stepfather simply gave up and vanished, deeding everything to her, with his large team of high-paid attorneys trumpeting his generosity.

Shelley could not even believe it had all happened so fast, but my loyal assistant Peyton Yates Freiman and I, at Shelley’s initial invitation and Jon Roland’s enthusiastic backing and support, met in Albuquerque.  I came from Santa Monica, California, where I had been celebrating another commercial litigation victory [actually a post-Katrina insurance victory in New Orleans Federal Court].  I was specifically in Santa Monica for a birthday party—a certain California TV actress friend’s 30th birthday, while Peyton came from Austin, where he left his only recently acquired new girlfriend Mercedes behind out of sheer loyalty and devotion to the causes of justice).

In the midst of all this euphoria, something went wrong.  I had talked with Shelley for hours and hours but never actually met her.  Jon Roland and I had done all the actual work (as a matter of fact, Jon Roland, ironically enough, was under investigation and injunction for UPL as a result of his litigation activities on Shelley’s behalf).  All I can say is, apparently, Shelley hated me on sight and everything went downhill from there, but Peyton and I ran around Albuquerque renting trucks, hiring a moving crew, loading up Shelley’s cat ridden house (I’m allergic to cats….of all kinds) and even finding a way to move Shelley’s immense private safe….yes that wasy fun.  After a few tense days and one extremely pleasant farewell dinner, Peyton and I moved all of Shelley’s worldly possessions to her mother’s sumptuous suburban (not-quite-palatial but extremely nice) residence on Windsor Drive in a Western Suburb of New Braunfels, Texas.  Shelley does not, at first glance, fit the Disney image of Cinderella, but her rags to riches transformation in less than six months was, to put it mildly, very dramatic and not at all dependent upon fairy Godmothers or glass slippers, but on about 2000 hours of work between Peyton and me put together—Jon Roland had advanced most of the costs of litigation, Peyton had advanced the costs of moving Shelley, Peyton and I had “done our time” and Shelley was now ready to commit a crime: she wanted to stiff us.

Well, I don’t take it well when people want to stiff me.  I especially don’t take it well when I haven’t had any money down, no retainer, no cash up front, NOTHING, and yet I pull off a major victory within less than six months and can truthfully say that the result is the complete transformation of someone’s life from near homeless pauperism to near Texas-Hill Country Royal living.

I accordingly have NO apologies whatsoever for the fact that Peyton and I slapped first one and then an amended lien on Shelley’s property.  Jon Drew Roland had been directly responsible for the amended lien.  He knew that Peyton’s parents were respectively a Deacon and a Sunday School teacher at a major Baptist Church in Austin, and that Peyton could often be found with them there on Sundays.  So, one Sunday in August 2007 (it was almost exactly one year ago as I write this, maybe one year and two weeks ago), Jon Roland went over to Great Hills Baptist Church and cornered Lennie and Claudia Freiman and told them that their son (Peyton) was going to jail for having filed the lien against Shelley on behalf of my Tierra Limpia Trust fund.  Peyton was there and tried to set him right, but anyone who knows Jon Roland knows him to be one big talker—very forceful and almost impossible to shut up (it was a large part of why I liked him so much….honestly).  Jon Roland said that the Notice of Claim of Lien Peyton had filed was improper (1) because I hadn’t signed it and (2) the Lien didn’t mention him (Jon Roland) as Trustee for Shelley Sue Thomson.  Well, I was by this time in Montana visiting Senator Jerry O’Neil, and so I prepared an amended Notice of Claim of Lien which I signed and included reference to Jon Roland as Trustee for Shelley Sue Thomson.

Well, I suppose that was when Jon Roland decided to slander me, to accuse me of filing a false lien against Shelley Sue Thomson on his website.  I was totally disgusted and suppose I will eventually have to sue Jon Roland for defamation and libel—and I guess I can sue him anywhere since people from Florida to Russia have now read about how I take advantage of poor people by filing liens on their property without moral or legal justification.

It was Jon Roland who had originally told me about how easy it is to resolve legal disputes without litigation through liens.  It was a very successful Texas mortgage broker (who hopes to stay OUT of the line of fire in this and who shall accordingly remain anonymous) who suggested to me that I just slap a lien on Shelley’s property if she didn’t want to settle up with me–because after all, my services (and Peyton’s) were in fact the equivalent of the “Purchase Money” of Shelley’s house—Shelley had never seen her mother’s will, never been aware that she was the intended beneficiary of a VERY large trust fund, or that her step father had embezzled 100% of the trust fund for himself and kept the house on top of that.  I am very proud of my work for Shelley Sue Thomson and frankly I enjoyed all our time on the telephone talking between November 2006 and end of April 2007.

I was so enthusiastic about the work I did for her that I actually LEFT THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA for Shelley (and no, I’m not kidding—I was actually staying at a place called THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA on the beach in Santa Monica, and yes, I really DIDN’T want to leave at all—I had a beautiful suite, room 19, less than five minutes from both the beach, third street, and the Santa Monica Pier, and I wouldn’t have left that place for anybody except someone I imagined would be a lifetime friend—I had just made several new friends in California that trip, and spent a huge amount of time with them at the Getty Villa in Malibu, the Getty Center on the 405, and LACMA Art Museum by the La Brea Tar Pits—the LACMA Art Museum having been the place I first became interested in archaeology, sitting and copying the cuneiform inscriptions of Asurbanipal on weekends when I was in High School with the Assyrian Primer my mother had brought me from the British Museum).

Now, as it happens, Shelley Sue Thomson later enlisted the pro-bono services of another friend and supporter of mine—a lawyer with whom I had a temporary falling out over yet more civil rights litigation, namely David A. Sibley of Corpus Christi, against me.  David definitely should NEVER have taken this job—it was not quite ethical since he was representing me the whole time I was working for Shelley—but I forgive David because of what he wrote about Shelley in his April 30, 2008, Motion to Withdraw as her attorney in Thomson’s suit against me and Peyton (No. 2008-119-C in the 274th District Court of Comal County, Texas) after Sibley finally had his own nearly fatal falling out with her.  What follows are only four excerpted paragraphs from David A. Sibley’s nine Page Single-Spaced Motion to Withdraw—possibly the most devastating Motion to Withdraw I have ever seen—no lawyer has ever felt this oppressed by has client to need to “nuke” her this way before—but if anyone ever deserved it, it would be Shelley Sue Thomson) TO WIT:

“4. Thomson sends repetitive emails (now probably numbering in the hundreds). She asks the same questions over and over and over and over again. Sibley has answered these questions over and over and over and over again. She will repeatedly threaten grievances among other things stating that Sibley has not answered her questions when he has answered them many times (and for other spurious reasons). She makes the same arguments over and over and over again even after Sibley has refuted her arguments over and over and over again (or expressed disagreement). Some of her arguments reflect profound misunderstandings of the law and she expects Sibley to answer endless questions about the law. More often than not, when Sibley explains the law, she disagrees or continues to ask questions about the same issue of law (or ignores his answer). She has recently taken to mixing her comments in her emails with previous emails so it is almost impossible without great effort to determine her new comments making her emails extremely burdensome (undoubtedly in the hope of Sibley missing one of her comments so she can argue that Sibley has not answered one of her questions — she doesn’t set her comments out by bold face, underline, or otherwise). Sibley has repeatedly asked her to identify questions he supposedly hasn’t answered and she never has. She just continues her endless repetitions, etc.

5. Thomson has suggested that Sibley and Peyton are having some kind of affair. She has stated to [a mutual friend & colleague Attorney Andrea S.] Atalay that Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet (Atalay is Jewish). She also told Atalay that Hitler should have killed all the Jews. Also, she told Atalay that she was putting witchcraft spells on Sibley (she claims to have various psychic abilities including “remote viewing” and believes in numerous para–normal things, for example she believes Lincoln is possessed by an Aztec “deity”). She has tried to sow dissension between Sibley and Atalay by telling inconsistent things to each and trying to turn each against the other. She repeatedly harasses Sibley with comments suggesting that Sibley wants to steal her house (or is in a conspiracy with other lawyers to steal her house), he is stupid, he is unethical, etc. Also, she has suggested that Sibley may be in conspiracy with Lincoln and/or Peyton. When Sibley planned to travel over 100 miles by airplane to a hearing, she refused to pick him up at the airport. She has never paid Sibley a penny and never offered to even reimburse any out of pocket expense. In fact, she mocks the out of pocket expenses incurred (suggesting they are trivial – the amounts are not trivial to Sibley – she has no appreciation whatsoever for Sibley’s efforts). Sibley has never demanded payment of a penny but he expects basic courtesies like being picked up at the airport (how far can the airport be out of her way in New Braunsfel – she said “you can take a cab!”). She clearly does not respect Sibley’s advice or strategies (or him). As a result, Sibley is unable to act as an attorney in this case. Sibley finds some of Thomson’s behaviors highly offensive.

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8. The attorney client relationship is completely destroyed. Atalay has been suffering even more from Thomson’s abuse than Sibley. Atalay has called Sibley on numerous occasions passed the point of tears (literally crying). The most extreme example was when Thomson made offensive comments including that Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet and Hitler should have killed all the Jews, etc. Thomson has repeatedly insulted Atalay including her abilities as a lawyer, her communication abilities, etc. Atalay called the Comal County District Attorney (or one of his representatives) and Thomson went ballistic (Thomson had been discussing this case with the District Attorney). Thomson and Roland clearly want to control everything (including all information). Thomson and Roland clearly want to handle this case themselves and just want a lawyer as a puppet. Sibley does not trust Thomson (neither does Atalay). It is believed Thomson may have been misrepresenting her conversations with the District Attorney and this is why she went ballistic when Atalay called the District Attorney. Thomson is an endless nightmare.

9. Atalay has been in the hospital for several days and it is not clear when she will get well. She has an extremely high fever (over 104 degrees at one point). She shows evidence of stress and exhaustion. It is entirely possible that her condition results from Thomson’s endless abuses, insults, etc. Her condition certainly hasn’t been helped by Thomson’s endless abuses. This situation has just got to stop. It has gotten way, way out of hand. Thomson is an abusive personality. She seems to enjoy harassing, annoying and abusing Sibley and Atalay. Thomson has had plenty of time and many second chances to end her abusive behaviors but she refuses.  She received an additional “chance” as recently as last week and responded with the same endless nonsense. A specific very reasonable plan was proposed for resolving the liens on her house and she rejected the plan and continued her endless pattern of abuse (endless insults, threats, etc.). It has to be done her way and no other way. Her way involves refusing settlements that involve exactly what the objective supposedly was (partial resolution of this case). She wants Sibley and Atalay to endless dance to her tune. She is not a lawyer and not only does her demands waste time and money they are likely to embarrass two lawyers severely.”

It is really hard to imagine why Sibley would find any of Shelley’s conduct offensive—I for my part feel rather flattered and intrigued by Shelley’s observations (of which she had informed me personally) that she believed I was either possessed by or even was the living reincarnation of one of the Aztec Gods, either Huitzil Opochtli (Hummingbird of the left, the Chief Aztec Tribal God & God of War—compare, perhaps, the Hebrew “Yahweh”) or his pair Tezcatl Ipoca (Smoking Mirror, a much older God in Mesoamerica, patron of kings, equivalent to Maya God-K, the great Mah Kinah Chimal Pacal buried in the Tomb inside the Temple of the Inscriptions of Palenque and Kak u Pacal of the Hieroglyphs of Chichén Itzá and History of Mayapán).  

Well, I could have warned Sibley that Shelley really does believe herself to be the original “Witchy Woman” (I have to confess she never revealed her virulent hatred of Jews & Israel to me).  But in any event—when people “Google” my name they too often find and go to Jon Drew Roland’s hateful defamation & slanderous comments on www.constitution.org.  Peyton and I did a lot of work, and shed a lot of “blood, toil, sweat, & tears” for Shelley, and she is just the consummate ingrate, and Jon Drew Roland is nothing but a treacherous Judas who stabbed his best friend in the back.  In the words of Paul Harvey, you now know “the rest of the story.”