Setting the Table

My discovery motions are denied

Judge Porter has decided on briefs about my three motions in limine and attempt to compel an answer from Mr. Apelbaum about the Central Bureau of Investigation complaint in India against Rajat Khare over tens of millions in embezzlement and fraud. So there wasn’t a hearing today. They are all denied, which means Apelbaum’s exhibit list stands in full, mostly articles from this blog.

Mr. Apelbaum now disclaims the involvement of Khare as an investor, and has disclaimed the involvement of everyone else associated with the company in print too, including reported co-founder Guy Ron. The reason this is potentially relevant to a libelous falsehood is that I have alleged he is in business with a criminal, which harms his reputation. Mr. Apelbaum concedes the reporting in Reuters about hacking by Khare’s company does indeed allege illegal activity, but denies they have a business relationship.

The substantiation for the link between Mr. Khare and Apelbaum is to a standard sufficient for any large publication: Yahoo News, Biometric Update, two venture capital tracking platforms, and Mr. Khare’s own website. If something is attested to in multiple journalistic sources, two databases, and by one of the parties to the business relationship, that would be regarded as fairly solid by anyone.

At any rate, Mr. Apelbaum contends this is false, and has told me he will endeavor to correct these false statements which have persisted about his company for the past seven years, thereby admitting this purported falsehood did not originate with me. Why I should be held liable for repeating them, he does not say; it probably has something to do with my views on other subjects about which he is passionate, like the U.S.-Israel relationship.

What Mr. Apelbaum contends in sworn statements about XRVision is that instead of having three investors—Khare through Boundary Holdings, a Vietnamese tech accelerator, and a Singaporean VC fund—it’s only his money in it. There aren’t very many self-funded sole proprietorships in the world of high-tech facial recognition.

If Mr. Apelbaum’s assertions are true, I have written in my reply to their briefs that it would seem XRVision is nothing more than a front to give him a reason to be in possession of the Hunter Biden files, his assessment of which would help cover the libel risk of the Murdochs when they put his nudes in the New York Post.

The other statement Apelbaum contends is libelous is that I have called him an Israeli spy. He has now admitted he was an intelligence officer in the IDF for seven years, in part in the 35th Paratrooper Battalion. Paratroopers have been fairly central to Israeli military doctrine as long as it has existed, and this is one of the more storied units of the IDF, which Ariel Sharon commanded, and has supplied multiple chiefs of staff, Netanyahu’s defense minister in 2016, and supported the Entebbe raid. Not a normal unit, in other words, and his service was much longer than the standard period of conscription in Israel.

It would seem to be true tout court to call an intelligence officer in the IDF an Israeli spy. Ordinary usage when talking about a veteran who served on submarines is to call them a submariner, a military engineer is often still called an engineer after his service, and so on. When one writes a profile of a storied intelligence officer who has retired, it is ordinary to call them a spy, and this does not inherently allege the commission of a criminal act. America has spies too.

But Mr. Apelbaum alleges I have falsely called him, an IDF intelligence officer, an Israeli spy, because I hate Jews. Let us try to humor this to the extent possible. Assuming he has not disputed the truth of my calling him an Israeli spy because he simply does not want to be identified as a veteran IDF intelligence officer, my characterization infers something about acts committed since his service. In that case, it is now admitted that he worked for known Israeli intelligence front Mati Kochavi, and shares patents with him. It would be difficult to come up with a standard by which anyone could ever be called an Israeli spy that would not be satisfied here.

Mr. Apelbaum has been reported, in the New Yorker and Wall Street Journal, to have a long working relationship with Laura Loomer, who has managed to get multiple top national security officials fired for purported disloyalty to the president. Loomer also had a working relationship with Dr. Bob Shillman, former board member of Friends of the IDF. So if we have an NGO supporting a foreign military, a former military intelligence officer of that foreign military, and an influencer getting top national security officials fired, one would think this rises to the level of a serious counterintelligence problem, and certainly within the scope of public interest.

In any case, the plaintiffs contend I have very maliciously pointed all this out because I hate Jews. In support of the notion that I hate Jews, they intend to call Stephen Coughlin, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The first paragraph of the first article about Israel I wrote after 10/7, now submitted as an exhibit, reads:

Nine months ago I wrote about the crisis I thought was coming, which is now here. I’m not going to say I feel vindicated, or that I told you so, when there are people dying. But I think the logic there is still correct. Israel needs to be coerced into the American orbit in the interest of the long-term safety of American Jews, who our obligations to, as our countrymen, precede our obligations to Israel.

I greatly look forward to asking Mr. Apelbaum on the stand what about this made him think I hated him because he is a “devout” Jew.

Here are my concerns about what the Plaintiffs have called “pattern evidence” in my last brief; I will be permitted to raise them at trial:

Mr. Apelbaum and XRVision have every right to charge a machine gun nest, but I’m also willing to talk. My settlement offer is on the table.