Publicist Tim Bolen sought to undermine Stephen Barrett's defense with false claim

In “reporting” on the case of Doctor’s Data, inc. vs Stephen Barrett, Tim Bolen, a publicist who may or may not have been hired by Doctor’s Data, continues a downward spiral into false and entirely bizarre statements. In an August 18 report, he repeated his failed Aug. 3 prediction of a default judgment against NCAHF, now claiming that NCAHF would not be able to afford to hire a defense. His evidence? “(T)he last time they did a fund raiser, their current president (Robert S. Baratz MD, DDS, PhD), offered a photo of me, Tim Bolen, as an incentive for a contribution.” He also repeated his false claim that individuals can be added as defendants merely for supporting Barrett: “(Doctor’s Data) could just grab the emailing list for the Consumer Health Digest… including some who could be added on to the case as Defendants.” (Note that an amended complaint dropped the Digest as a defendant!) He is clearly unresponsive to multiple warnings and complaints by the (present) author David N. Brown that such threats have no legal plausibility, but could be considered legal misconduct. The Aug. 18 report provides even stronger evidence of misconduct, as he let slip an admission that he threatened the seizure of donations to Barrett’s defense on “information” he knew to be false.

In early July, Bolen made the following comment in a Respectful Insolence comment, “Doctor's Data is probably going to buy the $112,000 plus interest Court Judgment against the NCAHF who owes six homeopathic manufacturers for attorneys fees. That would give Doctor's Data immediate access to Barrett's financial records without having to wait for Discovery in this new case. Then they could start the process of seizing any money they find including contributions for his legal fund. Judgments last forever and are unstoppable.”

It was always obvious that this claim was false. Apart from any other considerations, Barrett’s donations page does not direct checks to the NCAHF, hence there would be no such funds in NCAHF’s possession to be seized. Furthermore, here is no attestation for the alleged $112,000 debt EVER existing outside of Bolen’s “report”: A public document relevant to the ruling does not specify this or any other amount. It does not help that Bolen previously "estimated" fees in the case to be “$500,000 to $700,000”. The threat of seizing records (no doubt meant to reinforce his threat that supporters would be sued themselves) also has no legal plausibility. A successful suit does not in any way guarantee a plaintiff direct and unlimited access to the Defendant’s records, which, after all, have no monetary value. The most a plaintiff could do would be to place a lien on computers or other property where the records were stored. But, that would still NOT give access to the records in the property, only a claim in advance to proceeds from its sale. In the event of a sale, drives would normally be wiped and printed pages removed from storage and/or destroyed.

No matter how blatantly false this claim was, it sent a serious message to Barrett’s supporters: They should not make further donations to Barrett’s defense, because those donations would only be seized by DDI. If this message had been taken seriously by a significant number of people, donations to Barrett would in fact have dropped, and his defense would have been weakened. Thus this claim, even more than Bolen’s attempts to silence public speech in Barrett’s defense by claiming supporters could be sued themselves, represents legal misconduct in the DDI legal proceeding. It now appears, based on an inadvertent disclosure in the Aug. 18 piece, that Bolen himself was aware of further information which even more completely precluded the events he described.

In his Aug. 18 report, Bolen made the following comment, “The last time I paid any attention to the NCAHF was when I tried to buy a $112,000 Court judgment against them, but a group of Homeopathic manufacturers would not sell it to me.” In other words, as far as he knew, the debt, if it existed and remained extant at all, was not for sale. Thus, it is beyond reasonable doubt that, when he predicted such a development, in a manner that threatened Barrett’s defense, he already knew it was too unlikely to consider.

No less troubling is Bolen’s unapologetic enthusiastic declarations of his intentions: “I would have been able to pierce their NCAHF corporate veil and gone after the money, plus collection costs, from the individual Board Members. Would I have done that? (smile here)... Doctor's Data could go after the whole twenty million from the individual NCAHF Board Members - just like I was going to do with the $112,000 judgment.” In other words, Bolen openly admits that he attempted to use a lawsuit which he had no part to seize the property and invade the privacy of others, in retaliation simply for being a part of an organization that criticizes those he supports. This would amount to an outright attack on free speech, freedom of association and the right to privacy.

Fortunately, Bolen is unable to inspire anything but ridicule from his enemies, and even in “alternative medicine” sources links and repostings of his “Reports” appear to be fairly rare. However, a number of sites have persisted in reposting Bolen’s material uncritically. The majority of them are owned by or closely associated with the Canadian Truman Tuck, a vitamin salesman, alternative health activist and founder of the Republican Party of Ontario. When contacted by David N. Brown with complaints about Bolen’s “reporting”, Tuck responded in part: “uncensored debate is critical to ensure fair and just due process and the best outcomes for the majority of society… we never `editorially censor’ anyone.” It is fair to say in answer that Bolen himself is, on top of being a consistently misleading “reporter”, a threat to free speech (or would be if his speech had meaningful influence). Therefore, the responsible course of action for editors is to remove his material.

On a lighter note, Bolen had the following to say to David Brown, in the latest of a series of emails sent in defiance of the author’s express wishes: “You are, of course, dumber than a box …We all laugh at you. We think the photo with the hat is hilarious. Go home to mommy, little boy. Maybe mommy can teach you research.” In summary, his answer to these reports is that the author's field geology hat looks funny. Clearly, whether or not Doctor’s Data have ever paid Bolen for his “services”, the most prudent use of their resources would have been to pay him to be silent.