Attacked by Michael Gribbins of the Alt-Right
TLDR I was assaulted by Michael Gribbins a ‘Journeyman Naval Architect at American Systems’ in Washington DC, and he led a right wing smear campaign to deflect his responsibility, which led to death threats & harassment and an alt-right-backed lawsuit. My lawyer died during COVID when the case was unfolding, and Gibbins and I have settled with an NDA on terms with prejudice.
This longer story below tracks what happened and serves as an interesting micro case study in right wing disinformation campaign tactics towards individuals. It also happened in context of the years-long run up to the January 6th 2021 insurrection that took place a mile away from this incident. It’s hard to explain what it was like living in downtown DC the prior few years before Trump left office, but the notion that the Insurrection was a one-off event is laughable to anyone living here. In ways big and small, the alt right were empowered throughout the Trump presidency, taking to the streets & following up online until their rabid anger peaked. This is a case study in those early alt right clashes happening all over DC for years.
My story starts on August 31st 2019, where I was assaulted by Michael Gribbins outside of Planned Parenthood on 4th St NE in Washington DC. Gribbins had been chalking hate speech on the sidewalk as me and my girlfriend were walking back home from lunch. We passed by Gribbins without noticing at first, only realizing down the block what the words were that he was writing — conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood intentionally ‘killing black babies,’ names of alt right information sources and instructions for people to ‘Google Search’ various conspiracies, but also names of ‘culpable’ people and institutions involved.
Halfway down the block and far away from Michael Gribbins’ bent over, still-furiously-chalking frame, that stuck with me. The assassination of Dr. Tiller was a formative experience in my young political life. More recent entrants to the abortion debates may not be as familiar with the bloody history of this sort of escalating violence, but it has accounted for over eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons since 1977. Like much political violence in America today this trend has continued unabated, with attacks on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood killing three (two civilians a police officer) and injuring nine more (five civilians and four police officers) as recently as 2015. These experiences led me to some of my first civically minded jobs, including canvassing for Planned Parenthood off and on summers of 2009 & ‘10.
As we walked, I scuffed some of the chalk away, drawing Gribbin’s ire. He noticed and yelled something I don’t remember, but we walked away. I got home but was still bothered, and washing dishes I resolved to return and wash away the chalk. It was a typical DC summer day, which is to say 90 degrees and humid as hell, and it had been over half an hour since I had returned. Most of the sidewalk had been chalked up when I passed, so I assumed Gribbins would be gone. I threw some soap and water in a water bottle and headed the half mile or so back, locking my bike to a post around the corner.
When I arrived at the corner of 4th & M St NE I didn’t see Michael Gribbins, and I got on my hands and knees and began to sponge away the chalk. Each tile contained a more fantastical claim than the last. A common theme was around Planned Parenthood “harvesting” and “selling” fetal tissue, based on a “bombshell video report” from The Center for Medical Progress (CMP). Unfortunately the legitimate-sounding CMP was (of course) actually an alt-right agitprop group who fabricated claims on the back of zero evidence. Oh and the founder of CMP has done this before with a similarly alt right abortion agitprop group Live Action. Planned Parenthood sued both groups in 2016 as essentially “complex criminal enterprise[s],” helping spur several injunctions and criminal charges against the firms and founder. This was all obvious and known history on that hot summer day in August 2020, and it felt cathartic in a way to work tile by tile to remove that sheer insanity from my community.
That feeling changed as Michael Gribbins returned from who-knows-where, and before I knew it he was standing over me, repeating the conspiracy theories over and over in that halting, stoic-but-stammering way unique to the alt right. I didn’t respond at first, didn’t look up, just kept washing away the tiles. This made Gribbins upset, and his ire turned towards me. Who was paying me? Why was I there? Didn’t I (a ‘lib’) know that doing this wouldn’t help me “get any pussy?” No one was around to see my virtue signaling so why was I continuing? Why was I supporting murder? I must be a murderer. I must love to kill.
As I kept to myself or with one word responses, slowly making progress on my knees he would periodically wave his little bag of chalk in front of my face to make clear he was just going to add his hate to the sidewalk again. Eventually, he simply stood in front of me and wouldn’t budge, shaking his chalk in my face. I stood up and said the same — anything he wrote I would simply come back and erase. I live in the community, he does not, so it was easy to bet on him giving up. This again made him irate and sent him back into his anti abortion arguments. The impasse was obvious and I said as much — we were obviously not going to convince each other on that sidewalk in the blistering heat. The spectacle was absurd.
This cycle happened a few times — Michael Gribbins would imply that Planned Parenthood was in the middle of some giant murder-cash conspiracy he had to unveil to the world by way of sidewalk chalk, and I would shrug and reiterate that he was not going to convince me. It was hot, and Gribbins was going to block me for the moment so I walked up the stairs near the entrance of Planned Parenthood, into a corner where there was a spot of shade.
This was a mistake. Gribbins did not continue chalking like I thought he would, he followed me and now blocked my only exit from this situation. I stood there, taking abuse and conspiracy theories for a few more minutes until he ran out of steam. He leaned back against the handrail jutting out from the wall and dropped his chalk from his hands, only inches from me, and in one motion I swooped down and grabbed it.
This was my moment of weakness. I was sick of Michael on that hot summer day, sick of obvious escalating conspiracies, sick of reasonable people just letting any lunatic take over public spaces, never responding for fear of drawing the Mob’s Eye like an alt-right Sauron clone. It was a ziplock bag of maybe $1 of chalk pieces, and snatching it up I walked away mock waving it back at Gribbins. Childish & foolish? Yes. Proud moment? No. And I want to apologize here for taking his chalk as my one crime here. (He called the cops on the “robbery” and I actually did talk to them, they were not interested).
Gribbins followed me, filming me, claiming assault. I want to note here that even while Gribbin’s was taunting me he wasn’t apparently all that angry, he didn’t raise his voice very loudly as much as just prattle on which made the situation feel all that much more absurd. I thought this was comical at first. I waved his bag at him, dashed it on the sidewalk, told him to shove it, and danced a little jig for the camera. If he wants to film me and throw up a youtube video about a guy who took chalk from him and then claim life-altering assault, go for it. But he didn’t do that.
I got to my bike and began to unlock it. He said he would call the police and I said fine. I said “I guess I will see you next week then.” This was too much for Michael. Saying out loud “I’m not going to let you leave” he held my bike. As I pulled my bike to leave Gribbins pulled at my arm grabbing the bike, restraining me, so I removed Gribbins from the bike and me. He looked very surprised that I would not cordially agree to be detained by him.
I want to note now that I have a few inches of height and weight on Gribbins, so I was quickly able to free myself and Gribbins from the bike, and within a moment was on top of him on the ground. I made myself very clear to him not to put his hands on me again. I didn’t punch, kick, or assault Gribbins in any way, I simply held him there, threatening overtly not to try that again.
You can see all of this interaction happen really fast here
I got up, walked over to my bike still resting against the pole, and began to leave. Before I could get far, Gribbins sprinted to catch up to me, throwing me off of my bike and onto the ground and holding onto me now with both arms. I again freed myself, again not punching or kicking or really defending myself in any way other than to free myself from his grasp. Gribbins was tired at this point and I could have likely gotten free then, but my bike was a mess of tangled chains and bent spokes.
Gribbins then begins filming again, and as you can see I am a dozen yards away from the first video trying to fix my bike. Gribbins points to his knee scrapes as a sign of assault. He even mocks me for not fighting him hard enough while I was trying to escape his grasp. The video ends with me grabbing his phone, thinking (similarly as incorrectly as the chalk) that I could throw it and he would go get it and I could escape.
That didn’t happen, but it did drop to the ground and I took off. Gribbins again chased me but when he wasn’t able to keep hold, he sunk his teeth into my arm. Michael Gribbins bit me so deep that I had to get a tetanus shot:
He even somehow bit the inside of my knee while he was attacking me:
This trend of me fighting Michael off of me, and him desperately clawing, kicking, grabbing, and now biting me to keep me in his grasp continued until a cop finally was flagged down from a few blocks away by a passerby and pulled up. The cop assessed the situation (remarkably well I might add for someone with two strangers yelling at him at once), and turned to me to ask if I wanted to press charges. I said no, I just wanted to get the F — — out of there. He nodded and told Gribbin’s he couldn’t detain me for no reason. I got on my bike and started riding away, and Gribbins absolutely lost it at the cop, and upon seeing me ride away he sprinted in the other direction.
I assumed he was going to follow me so I rode around the neighborhood and took a circuitous route home. I didn’t see anyone in particular following me so I got home, nursed my wounds, cursed myself for trying to help, and looked for a doctor’s appointment online for my arm and knee, which Gribbins had also somehow managed to bite. The knee also was developing quite a bit of swelling from repeatedly crashing off my bike onto the ground, and I eventually had to get it X-Rayed for potential damage.
Unbeknownst to me, Gribbins driving aimlessly in his car happened to see me pull into my alleyway. He looked up house numbers until he found a facebook event I had hosted publicly a year ago which he tied to my face and name. He discovered I worked at Google and took his story to J. Arthur Bloom of the right wing rag DailyCaller (too toxic even for Tucker Carlson), a journalist who at the time had written 15 anti-Google pieces (of 26ish in total) since May of 2016.
Within 24 hours, Bloom was contacting me stating he was writing a piece and asking for my comment on the incident (he contacted my workplace before he contacted me). I didn’t respond, and with no other witnesses or evidence or journalistic follow up of any kind, Bloom published the article under the ominous headline “Senior Google Employee Appears to Have Assaulted Pro-Life Activist Near DC Planned Parenthood.” The article begins with a close up interview with Michael Gribbins, with the more direct headline “Meet The Man Assaulted Outside Planned Parenthood In Washington, DC” where Gribbins recounts how he was injuriously assaulted by a ‘middle aged man’ (ouch) while he was peacefully chalking religious text
Gribbins, an alt-right facebook troll who loves Alex Jones memes, lied to journalists and his church while going on facebook to say he was fine and to promote the spread of his alt right articles:
He encourages sharing on his facebook page over the next few days and months, and does a few more interviews with sympathetic alt right websites. Like so much of the DailyCaller and the alt-right internet ecosystem, the chance to write an article like that was enough to write it, facts be damned. The fact that there were no other witnesses, and in follow up discovery there was no video from Planned Parenthood or surrounding houses, just made it easier for them to write the piece.
The DailyCaller is the biggest alt-right rag, and so the story was picked up immediately. A dozen websites re-ran the story under more and more aggressive headlines, the original video interview garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Right wing personalities began sharing the story on social media, so it picked up more and more steam, garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of shares.
Gribbins received funding from the right wing legal group Life Legal Defense Foundation for his case, and sued me for millions. He sued me for both assault and religious hate crimes, saying his deeply held beliefs were what was really under attack. I filed a counter claim for assault and libel similarly. As the case filings opened, Mary Margaret Olohan from the DailyCaller, the same alt-right news rag, reached out in a way beautifully encapsulated how DailyCaller views ‘journalism’:
As the news spread, threats started to pour in. Across social platforms, emails, work HR teams, etc, and then by mail to my home address. To my family. Someone somehow got a hold of an old phone contact list of mine from college and pretended to be me, spamming every woman in my contact history horrific stuff from the (never mine) number of 925–378–1454. A few examples for you:
Friends, my side business TheMeatEmpire & our partners, my personal pages, various old colleagues of mine, nothing was off limits. From QAnon trolls to the ‘best’ the alt right journalism world has to offer, they all reacted in the same way.
I have (of course) excluded some of the worst cases, some of which that are still with investigation teams. Also others that are mostly just porn images that the alt right thinks are edgy. I worked with my attorney to try to respond to these threats in the spring and summer of 2020 (in the middle of COVID, so these processes were taking a long time), and we tracked the phone number down to a dead Verizon number registered to an woman outside San Francisco, but seems both were fake. While we were working on the case, the courts were unbearably slow, so there were month long gaps I went without speaking to him. He recommended I go to see a therapist, and so I did. When I explained my situation she reacted very strongly and suggested I was in immediate personal danger and that I should move as soon as possible. I didn’t return.
Because of the slowness in the case, I didn’t think too much of not hearing from my attorney for a couple months. However when I did receive a call from his office, it was to inform me that he had died. I had about an hour notice of this event before I was required to get on a call with the court to resolve next steps. In that conversation, the court gave me 30 days to find a new attorney. I talked to several, and struggled to retain new counsel. So instead I asked the new counsel to review terms the opposing counsel put together in a settlement agreement and be done with it. We did that, and the case unceremoniously ended under NDA terms with prejudice in April 2021.
There is a frequent joke on Twitter that goes “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” This is true for the right wing of this country. I was a ‘person of interest’ for a few weeks, garnering all the hatred and fanfare that came with it. It was definitely scary for a couple days, but it was also very revealing as time continued.
Time speaks to the inherent weakness of the alt right. For all the cascading efforts to malign my person and end my career(s), literally all of them were generally responded to by broader society with a shrug. Stakeholders from inside my company, to (even conservative) friends and family, to my small business partners outside, no one cared other than if I was doing okay. I am blessed with a good network of people around me, but I expect I am not the unique one here.
By crying wolf at every possible slight, outside their bubble even the largest “news” site the DailyCaller is basically ignored, and for good reason. While we have yet to settle in this strange moment on what ‘good’ journalism looks like in the age of disinformation, we know what it looks like when done poorly, precisely because we have so many examples, 99% of them coming from the same group.
If you made it this far, I want you to know my takeaway from this saga is that these people are all full of shit, they don’t scare or bother me at all, and I look forward to more energy wasted on DMs I’ll just delete. All of this amounted to an interesting side note, but if you refuse to succumb to the pressures of angry online messages, then they have nothing else to hurt you with (well, other than their teeth I suppose).
