Twitter thread from Stephen McIntyre
Mark Steyn has filed an eviscerating and well-informed Motion for Summary Judgement in the Michael Mann vanity libel suit. https://www.steynonline.com/documents/10973.pdf
with memorandum
2/ Steyn, for the most part, stayed out of the complicated SLAAP proceedings, holding his fire for the Summary Judgement phase. I’m not going to review or precis these documents, but will quote a couple of sizzling early paragraphs.
3/ Steyn notes that court previously identified issue as whether Penn State conducted “inadequate and ineffective investigations into their employees, including Sandusky and Mann”. Steyn: “it has been thoroughly adjudicated” and Mann’s mentor “is heading to jail”.
4/ rubbing salt in the open sore, brief says: “while Mann claims he was defamed by Steyn’s linking him with the Sandusky case, in his just-published book The New Climate War, Mann thanks one of the convicted criminals in the Sandusky case.” Ouch.
5/ Steyn observed that Easterling participated in Inquiry Committee activities despite purporting to recuse. Steyn omitted most important example: Easterling intervened to prevent Inquiry Committee from contacting Mann critics and victims
6/ some astounding revelations in Steyn memorandum from discovery on Penn State conduct during investigation. Initial view of Inquiry Committee was that they “could not prove that [Mann was] not guilty” of first 3 counts and therefore would have to proceed to an investigation.
7/ in discovery, Foley said that Inquiry Committee “could not find anything to prove Mann’s innocence” and that, according to pleading, did not “exonerate” Mann.
8/ Steyn says that Foley “secretly” sent a draft of Inquiry Committee report to Penn State President Spanier (who is now a convicted felon in connection with Sandusky scandal) and that Spanier secretly replied to Foley with changes to report.
9/ Spanier then told Foley to be mindful of the impact that “bad publicity” of the Mann case would have on Penn State. Needless to say, in Freeh report on Sandusky case, Spanier’s concern about bad publicity also marred Penn State’s handling of that case.
10/ the brief goes on and on, revealing the failings of the Penn State inquiry and investigation in excruciating detail.
Originally tweeted by Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) on January 24, 2021.
This thread may have had more tweets added since this post was prepared.
Go to the thread on Twitter to see for yourself.
Thanks for the great report. I really hope it turns the case, but I really don’t a much faith in our Federal Courts anymore despite the efforts of Trump.
I want to thank Steve McIntyre for his tireless efforts to expose the lies (and the liars) behind this so-called “climate movement.” Even as we now see Sleepy, Senile Old Joe Biden exercising naked power to advance the fraudulent agenda of the climate catastrophists, Biden may have the power, but he does not have the right.
I’ll second that motion, LiT. Mr McIntyre should be nominated and awarded his country’s highest civilian honor for his diligent pursuits and explanations in his blog. He was an early adopter of using a blog for “citizen science”. Another great unassuming fella from Canada eh. I have stop being surprised by the number of Exceptionals I have met that hail from the great white north.
I fear that Mark Steyn may be walking into trap by bringing up Mann’s inclusion of Graham Spanier in the acknowledgements of his latest book. The Sandusky case was an emotional moral panic that created an unchallengeable narrative.
Yet, a challenge has come from an astounding amount of investigative work done by podcaster, documentary film maker, former radio talk show host and senior Mediaite columnist, John Ziegler. He thought Paterno was getting a bad rap and interviewed almost everybody related to this case and concluded that, as unbelievable as it sounds, Jerry Sandusky was innocent! He’s pursued this toxic story only to get beaten back time and time again. Along the way he’s picked up an impressive list of converts:
Ziegler has also been interviewed about the case by many prominent figures:
He’s about to come out with a new podcast series and a documentary. If he’s finally successful in getting this story into the main stream, Mann will have something to crow about by including Spanier in his acknowledgements and may be able to overshadow any success Steyn has in the courtrooms. I think Steyn should write about this and beat Mann to the punch.
If Spanier is vindicated, then Mann could not possibly have been defamed by association to him.
I think you mean Rand Simberg’s statement that Mann is the Jerry Sandusky of climate science. I tweeted to Rand Simberg that he owes Jerry Sandusky an apology and he retweeted it:
https://twitter.com/DombroskiMike/status/1083683829091569664
Interesting. Difficult to address in a short comment, sorry.
tldr;
I’ve seen several high-profile cases of sexual molestation, both child and adult, dismissed or reversed as more careful critical analysis exposed the fact that the “evidence” was coerced and that additional witnesses either lied or “remembered” their allegations incorrectly based on careful examination. I have never cared about the Sandusky case enough to follow it. I instinctively thought that others who got dragged along like Joe Paterno were wrongly blamed. Pedophilia invokes strong emotional reactions in people, sabotaging attempts to view the facts carefully and rationally.
I had a read through Ziegler’s posts, which are pretty compelling about the dearth of evidence presented at trial for this specific case and the apparent witch-hunt fervor that gripped the prosecutors, the Penn State community, and the media. Ziegler doesn’t disprove all the other allegations of pedophilic behavior against Sandusky, and added up they suggest that even if they wrongly prosecuted Sandusky in this case, he has a known history of misconduct with young boys that was ignored for years. This profile of Ziegler counterbalances his apparently sincere effort to identify prosecutorial misconduct:
https://jeffpearlman.com/2015/03/04/on-matt-sandusky-and-the-worst-guy-ive-ever-dealt-with/
I feel sorry for people with pedophilia. Pedophilia, like all paraphilias, describes the impulses, not necessarily the behavior. Unlike other forms of sexual deviancy that have been normalized in many Western societies, pedophilia is especially fraught with moral outrage because the targets are children. Those who act out their impulses, knowing without any doubt it is illegal and reprehensible, should be prosecuted and punished. There are many pedophiles, however, who never act on their impulses and are disturbed that they even have them, but, according to a wealth of research, neither can they just make them go away. On their own or with therapy, they learn to ignore the feelings or find ways to divert themselves during moments when the thoughts or impulses are difficult to ignore. Psychologists call it cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s really just self-discipline, a concept at least as old as the Bible.
Being animals with highly evolved brains, we all encounter bizarre thoughts that wander in uninvited, sometimes repeatedly. There is no shame in that though they (should) make us uncomfortable. Sexual thoughts are especially volatile because they evoke strong physiological responses in us. It is the conscious effort to dismiss them, rather than entertain them and act on them, that distinguishes the moral from the immoral, the mature from the immature, the criminal from the law-abiding. Those who learn to override the impulses are heroes. Those who struggle deserve our sympathy. Those who fail…? Consequences commensurate with their actions and therapy if they are willing. If there are victims of their failure, the victims deserve our unwavering sympathy and support.
stinkerp,
A very well though out, rational, and balanced response. We need more of this in the world, and less temper tantrums from emotionally stunted adults.
Thanks for responding. You state that Sandusky “has a known history of misconduct with young boys that was ignored for years.” This looks to me like it consists of the single case of eleven year old Zachary Konstas in 1998, where Sandusky lifted him up to rinse his hair. This case was actually investigated by police pretty thoroughly. Detectives hid in closets and listened to conversations between Sandusky and Konstas’ mother. AFAIK there are only two other reports of Sandusky showering with kids. There’s the case of the janitor who saw a man perform oral sex on a boy. That janitor did not testify because the prosecutors claimed he had dementia. But he did do a taped interview with police where he said repeatedly that the man he saw was not Sandusky. Sandusky’s over worked lawyer did not use this tape and may not have even had time to listen to it, though he did have a copy.
The other case was the boy that assistant coach Mike McQueary saw in the shower with Sandusky. One prosecutor said in the closing statements that his identity was known only to God, but it is well established that his name was Allen Myers. He was a 2cnd Mile kid who had lived with the Sanduskys. He wrote letters to the editors of newspapers defending Sandusky (as a sergeant in the marines) and made a sworn statement to the prosecutors. His mother had worked for a lawyer named Andrew Shuben who ended up getting multi million dollar settlements for several accusers, including Myers. Myers went to Sandusky’s lawyers to offer support and then disappeared. He was later subpoenaed for an appeal hearing where he gave evasive testimony.
The chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s book is about how John Ziegler found evidence that Mike McQueary waited over a month before reporting the incident to Paterno at a time that a coaching position had just opened up.
It should also be noted that Sandusky was by all accounts a square religious person. He grew up in a rec center with communal showers. He was definitely a touchy feely person. He’s from an older time. There used to be a popular bumper sticker that read, “Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?”
We can never know exactly what someone’s thoughts are and we don’t prosecute them for having them. Sandusky had low testosterone, which is why he had to adopt children. Medical records also show that he had hypogonadism (small to nonexistent testes) which no accuser reported.
John Ziegler is a podcaster and documentary film maker, so he has the story remarkably well documented. There are scores of people who have contacted him about accusers. Him and reporter, Ralph Cipriano where leaked all of the settlement documents. They show many to be blatant scams. AFAIK every accuser got a settlement.
Thanks for the link. I’d not seen that one. I don’t find his defense of Matt Sandusky very convincing. There’s a lot of other details he’s missed. For example, Ziegler got arrested just for showing up at an event where Matt Sandusky was speaking. Ziegler had a ticket in his own name. It’s on video!
Yes Ziegler is boisterous and takes potshots at everyone, including me. I may disagree with some of his premises once in a while, but he always has a logical argument for what he does. On the Sandusky case, he’s amassed mountains of evidence. He’s also had some recent good calls. He was the first media figure to call out the Jussie Smollett hoax and I haven’t seen anyone anticipate the election results and its aftermath better than him. He’s the most principled media figure I’ve ever seen.
I think Steyn should look into the research that suggests that Sandusky was actually innocent. If there is any merit to the argument, then Stein could follow up with a retraction of his comparison of Mann to Sandusky.
“Sorry, I had compared Michael Mann to Jerry Sandusky. Recent evidence suggests that Jerry Sandusky may actually be innocent so my comparison turns out to be flawed. My bad.”
That was actually Rand Simberg of CEI who called Michael Mann the Jerry Sandusky of climate science. Simberg and CEI are also being sued by Mann.
cove. n. A fellow; a man. Chiefly British.
Discovery is a bitch.
What is going on here?
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State Pen sounds about right
This case has been a travesty from the very beginning (to borrow a handy word from CO2 alarmist Kevin Trenberth). I hope some judge finally twigs to the SLAPP nature of Mann’s lawsuit and slams his ass to the ground as happened to Mann’s nuisance lawsuit against Tim Ball, and awards Mark Steyn some big damages as well as costs. But I hoped Trump would win the election, too. My wishes are not coming true, lately.
As a non-scientist but extremely pissed off observer, I can state that Mann gets paraded as an authority by the climate scientologists.
Mann needs to go down a peg but more importantly needs to be seen doing so.
He needs a public thrashing like any bully
Wow, this case is just steaming right along. I look forward to hearing from Steyn’s and Mann’s grandchildren as they argue the case twenty years from now.
Our alarmist BBC further smeared the reputation of the beloved but unscientific Attenborough by parading Mann alongside him in a dreadful tv doc called ‘climate change the facts’ which attracted multiple complaints because of dishonesty. Became known as ‘Climate. Change the Facts’
Legal Professional here. Calm yourselves and wait for the outcome. Are you professionals or not?
I wish this comment had been a bit more timely, but I would advise great caution when it comes to getting one’s hopes up about this motion. If Mann’s lawyers are remotely competent, this motion will fail. It will fail because it is horrendously flawed. It has numerous errors, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
Some of the problems are just bizarre. For instance, the motion to dismiss provides numerous quotations while citing a motion of (supposedly) undisputed facts. However, the quotations in the cited filing often differ from the ones in the motion to dismiss. I doubt the judge would appreciate misquotations in general, but I’m sure he’d find it bizarre someone would cite their own document for quotations while providing different versions of those quotations.
There are much bigger problems though. One which really jumps out at me is Steyn’s motion claims to provide a quote which shows Mann cherry-picked data because an e-mail of his said he eliminated records with negative correlations. However, the infamous NOAMER PC1, the key proxy for Mann’s hockey stick reconstruction, had a negative correlation. This makes Steyn’s claim impossible. As it turns out, Mann’s e-mail was about an entirely different study, but for some reason, Steyn’s filing portrays it as being about the (in)famous hockey stick study.
If Mann’s lawyers are remotely competent, Steyn will lose this motion, and he will lose it because he (or his lawyers) did a terrible job of crafting it. The best thing anyone could do to support Steyn in this legal battle would be to sit him down and explain to him the importance of getting basic facts correct.
The NOAMER PC! proxy having a negative hockey stick is a rather arcane point that Mann’s lawyers are unlikely to notice unless Mann points it out to them and I don’t think anyone would expect Steyn to be aware of this specific detail.
I don’t think PC1 being upside down is necessarily a negative result. If Mann’s method does not distinguish between positive and negative hockey sticks, then finding any hockey stick is a positive result.
Steyn’s lawyers could also argue that Mann’s method not distinguishing between up and down hockey sticks was a form of cherry picking/pruning against negative results.
Knowing that NOAMER PC1 has a negative correlation is in no way important. The more important point is the quotation Steyn relies on was about an entirely different piece of work, having nothing to do with the MBH hockey stick. I only brought up NOAMER PC1’s correlation because it’s direct proof what Steyn’s filing says is false. Even if Mann’s lawyers don’t notice the same factoid I noticed, they should certainly know what Steyn’s filing says is false. I’m sure Mann would know if they asked him.
As for claiming not filtering negatively oriented hockey sticks is a form of cherry-picking, that would be a weird argument to make as the orientation of principal components, by definition, has no meaning. 😛
So again, if you want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit because there are no material facts under dispute, you shouldn’t state things as fact that are patently untrue. A good motion for summary judgment could have been written, but by writing such a terrible one, Steyn and his lawyers sabotaged their own case. This motion will likely fail, and if so, it will fail because Steyn and his lawyers were utterly incompetent.