Ezra Derangement Syndrome #177: Miles, damned lies and stochastics

A rare-these-days distinction for Ezra Levant, faded clown prince of Canadian alt-right cobblers.

Rebel News’ USA/Malaysia corro., Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray), is currently rated the fifth-biggest fibber on Twitter, by measure of having his posts slapped with 176 reality-checking community notes.

This put the bumptious fake newsman well ahead of chief liar Elon Musk himself (28th), but also such legendary ex-Rebel News fabulists as Laura Loomer (12th) and Jack Posobiec (37th).

Cheong also laps a wartime Russian Foreign Ministry (18th), no ordinary feat. Consider that when not stretching nose for Ezra, he’s made extra rubles as a correspondent for RT, Russia’s most patriotic English-language news fabrikator.

Readers will no doubt recall Cheong’s exclusive scoop in 2022’s Buffalo grocery store shooting, wherein an 18-year-old racist killed 10 Black people and wounded three: the Ukrainians dunnit!

“[He] wore a ‘sonnenrad,’ a symbol used by white nationalist groups and most notably Ukraine’s Azov Battalion in their official logo,” quoth Cheong, for Der Rebel.

Cheong’s story scored the daily double. Rebel neatly skirted hurtful accusations that they trade in the same white replacement/great reset rubbish that informed Buffalo killer Payton Gendron’s manifesto. At the same time, they could march in cadence with Kremlin propaganda that their nvasion of Ukraine is about crushing Nazis —  one nursery-full of the evil little bastards at a time.

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In other Rebel News.
So, farewell then, without prejudice, to Lügenpants’ longtime libel lawyers, Minden Gross LLP. The firm is “on the verge of collapse,” after an exodus of senior talent and a scrubbed merger with KPMG Law, reported Robyn Doolittle and Andrew Willis on the front page of the ROB Dec. 22. (The firm’s website confirmed the sad news the following Monday):

“[P]artners who left the firm in recent years – and who are still owed capital repayments – were notified that the firm was “no longer financially viable,” according to an e-mail that was viewed by the Globe and Mail.

“‘There is no reasonable expectation that we will be able to continue to operate beyond the spring of next year, if that,’ Irvin Schein, a member of Minden Gross’s executive committee, wrote in the Dec. 1 letter. As a result, the former partners were told that capital repayments were being suspended.”

Time was, a letter from Irv was a prelude to a SLAPP.  Hacks like Justin Ling, Shannon Gormley, Scott Gilmore and Brendan DeMelle impugned Ezra’s increasingly delicate sense of honour, and got served by Irv’ with a Writ of Pisher.

While only some of these shvantz-stretchers resulted in actual legal action, where Irv and Ez’ did sue, they lost big.

Gilmore’s legalist, Howard Winkler, got Ezra’s claim dismissed and had the little nudnik eating most of Gilmore’s costs, to wit: $69,491 in fees (plus $9033.90 HST) and $3,422.86 in disbursements, for a total of $81, 948.26.

Phil Tunley and Jennifer Saville similarly got actions against Al Jazeera and The Narwhal flushed by the Ontario Superior Court as SLAPP suits, arguing in part that Ezra’s reputation was so fercockt as to be impervious to further blackening by pointing out Rebel’s popularity with mosque shooters and other nativist nutterbutters. (Cost award: $250K).

Ling retained Sandy Lockhart and Andrew Max of Polley Faith LLP, working pro bono while Irv’s meter ran at $725/hour. Levant switched to the more affordable David Elmaleh and Aaron Rosenberg of RE: Law, sometime in-house Rebel counsel, who urged settlement.

The terms of peace? No money, discontinuance costs on the plaintiff, no apology, not even a confidentiality clause. (And Ezra made a $500 donation to the Red Cross).

RE: Law also filed a $250,000 suit for Ezra and Rebel News against Paypal in April, presumably for cancelling them in 2021 for Terms of Service violations. Ezra immediately launched a begathon at the time: “I really need your help. I hate to say it, but this could destroy us,” moaned Lugenpants, not for the first or last time.

But Der Rebel is still with us — unlike the house that Arthur Minden built.

Nobody is suggesting, nor should they, that outstanding billings for unsuccessful but time-consuming defamation lawsuits played any role in the demise of Minden Gross after 75 white-shoe years in commercial real estate.

But on that subject, whither Levant’s extended defamation titty-twister with blogger Robert “Canadian Cynic” Day (Franks passim), launched by Schein back in 2016?

In those days Levant was recorded by ex-employee Caolan Robertson boasting that he had Day “in a five-year trap.” He was finally examined for discovery over Zoom in October — seven years in.

Soon after that, the little pisher’s latest legalist, Tamara Markovic, joined the stampede from Minden Gross and the radioactive file got shuffled to another junior henchthingy, whose name escapes me.