Tea Party's Star Gladney Witness Found Guilty of Fraud, Blames Gay And Pro-Abortion Activists

Remember when tea partiers were completely humiliated during their fabricated story about evil "union thugs" brutally beating a guy selling tea party merchandise?  One of the tea party's alleged "witnesses" of the "brutal beating" was Harris Himes, a Montana pastor oddly attending a St. Louis political event who told conflicting stories about what he saw.  After a jury took less than an hour to reach a not guilty verdict for the "union thugs," Himes sent a letter to Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, one of the primary pushers of the fabricated story, declaring that the trial was a "miscarriage of justice."

So yeah, about that guy:

A Ravalli County jury found Hamilton pastor Harris Himes guilty on three felony counts of securities fraud Friday...

The charges followed a yearlong investigation by the state Office of the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance on accusations that Himes and another pastor, James “Jeb” Bryant, promised a Hamilton man a large return on $150,000 of his inheritance for his investment in the Mexican-based building materials company Duratherm Building Systems.

The man told the jury this week that he was surprised when he traveled to Mexico to find the factory was nothing more than an empty agricultural shed.

Oh, and guess who he previously blamed the charges on:

Himes went on to claim that gay and pro-abortion activists may be behind the charges against him and co-defendant James "Jeb" Bryant, another self-proclaimed pastor.

Himes seems like quite a guy.  He's the perfect spokesperson for Jim Hoft's right-wing victimization fantasies.

Response to Gateway Pundit's Latest Gladney Conspiracy Theory

Gateway Pundit is out with a new conspiracy theory about the Kenneth Gladney trial originating from tea partier Harris Himes. Himes, if you recall, was one of the people mentioned in the original highly-flawed police report as a "witness". However, the prosecutor decided not to use Harris Himes because he has a sketchy record as an extreme partisan, something I've previously reported about.

Himes and Hoft allege some grand conspiracy as being behind the not guilty verdict of the case. But their reasoning is unsurprisingly highly flawed.

First of all, Himes claims that the jurors ignored the fact that his wife was a witness and he criticizes the prosecution for not including him as a witness. He writes his letter as if both he and his wife saw the initial altercation:

Following this sham townhall meeting, as Sandra and I walked back to our car, she stopped to look at some buttons and flags, “Don’t Tread on Me,” etc., being sold by a nice, young black man (Kenneth Gladney), when—just as she was walking away—a large, black man in a purple tea shirt (Elston McCowan) confronted Gladney, “What kind of a son of a n_______ are you?” and slapped his hand which held the yellow flags. Then he punched Gladney in the side of his face , knocking him down. Another large, purple-tea-shirt white man (Perry Molens) attacked him from behind, jerking him to the ground. The fight continued across the sidewalk, out into the street—where the video began recording the incident, with Sandra and me and several others trying to break it up. We identified McCowan and Molens to the police, and they arrested them. As it turns out, Sandra and I were only two of three witnesses to the start of the fracas. This becomes important, since the union thugs claim that Gladney started the fight.

This sounds a lot like what was in the police report, but in fact is a blatant lie. Himes (ironically in a different interview with Hoft) previously admitted that his wife did not see how the fight started:

Well, actually my wife had stopped to look at the buttons and the flags he was handing out, and just as she turned away, that's when he was attacked by the two SEIU guys..."

In fact, his wife testified under oath that she didn't see how the fight started. So Himes is clearly misrepresenting reality, and also is ignoring the fact that his wife's testimony was irrelevant to the crucial question of how the fight started.

Harris Himes also admitted that he was away when the incident started and only turned around after he heard a "noise:"

And so I looked back because I heard a noise behind. And, it was my wife however, who could corroborate the fact that it was really a hate crime because she heard the black man who claims he's a minister also said "what's a ..... doing here" ... that was essentially what she heard. And I looked back and then I saw this guy slap Gladney...slap his hand away and start striking him but the other big white guy grabbed him and threw him down to the ground. So I came back, and I was trying to get them off Gladney, and my wife was circling to keep any of the others from jumping me. And so then we got them off and broke it up once and then they attacked him again.

Given that Harris and Sandra Himes did not see how the fight started, we are left with the following situation: other than the defendants, there was one witness for the prosecution who claimed that he saw how the fight started, and one witness for the defense who claimed that she saw how the fight started. Furthermore, Gladney's "medical records" were apparently sketchy enough that the prosecutor decided not to include them in the evidence. So one witness for each side who actually saw the fight start obviously does not create a convincing case on behalf of the prosecution.

Furthermore, there was additional information that the jury did not have that would have called into question the validity of the prosecution's witness. First, John Mirelli (spelled incorrectly by Hoft and Himes) claimed at the trial that he was not affiliated with the tea party and was "only at the town hall to see how health care reform would affect his employees." First of all, the forum was actually about aging, and would have included absolutely no information about how health care reform would have affected his employees. The claim that it was a town hall on health care reform was the exclusively tea party spin on the event. But more importantly, Mirelli is on video earlier in the day having to be held back from an altercation with an SEIU member. He's also on plenty of other videos from that day getting into arguments with Carnahan supporters. And if that's not enough, consider the fact that Mirelli was seen at the beginning of the video apparently leaning protectively over Elston McCowan while Gladney is in an attacking posture. Wouldn't it be a little strange for Mirelli to be protecting McCowan if McCowan had just gotten done pummelling Gladney? It was only after Molens pulled Gladney backwards that Mirelli started screaming "you guys attacked that poor man!!!" Also, in the trial, Mirelli claimed he was leaning down to help Gladney, which is completely inconsistent with the above photo.

Himes and Hoft also made a big deal about the fact that this was the first case the prosecutor had ever tried. From being at the trial, I think the prosecutor actually did a pretty good job. However, there was one crucial flaw in his case: there was absolutely no compelling evidence that supported his case (and, despite what the tea party claimed, there never was).

Himes also claims that it would make no sense for Gladney to attack the two larger gentlemen McCowan and Himes. However, this is not what the defense's argument was. The claim is that McCowan and Gladney were arguing, it escalated, and Gladney eventually threw a punch at McCowan. Molens only got involved in the fight when Gladney was allegedly attacking his friend. So it's just not true that anyone claimed that Gladney "attacked two larger men." Furthermore, Gladney can be heard in the aftermath of the original video saying he's going to "beat the hell" out of McCowan, so it seems clear to me that his temper might allow him to attack people larger than he is. And finally, for the record, short muscular people can actually be pretty tough.

Finally, Himes claimed that the "news tabloid" Riverfront Times said that the jury was stacked with union members. The RFT did mention this, but it was originally from KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen. In fact, this is what Kileen said:

More than half of jury pool has union ties -- in case of two union members accused of assaulting conservative. Two have Tea Party ties.

What this means, if you're keeping track, is that even two jurors with tea party ties reached the not guilty verdict in less than an hour's worth of deliberation. A jury's decision has to be unanimous, and even two tea partiers could see how weak the evidence was for a "union thug assault."

So, it's not surprising in the slightest that the tea party would resort to conspiracy theories to explain the fact that reality just does not match up with their conspiracy theories. In fact, yesterday Hoft idiotically claimed that "NAACP thugs" were intimidating the Gladney family outside of the courtroom. I was there, and this clearly wasn't true. And if you look at Hoft's picture, you'll notice that the so-called "thugs" weren't actually staring at Gladney's family: they were staring at the crazy tea partier Jim Hoft who was taking photos of them. Furthermore, none of the people in the photo are actually part of the St. Louis NAACP. So, that should give you some idea how Hoft's "mind" works.

The Gladney Police Report

Dana Loesch, who really does not actually know very much about the Kenneth Gladney case (as evidenced by her embarrassing attacks on a local county counselor), has recently been spreading more verifiable misinformation about the altercation. Pointing out some of these falsehoods will serve as a nice reminder of some of the main flaws in treating the police report on the incident as gospel. In fact, the police report contains several falsehoods and is based entirely on the testimony of biased tea party activists. As stated by someone arguing with Loesch on Twitter:

That, as we will see, is particularly salient in this case, but first I'll focus on some of Loesch's specific falsehoods. For starters, Loesch repeatedly claimed that Kelly Owens was "beaten" and "punched in the face." And, in fact, the police report also states that Owens was hit in the face. However, in an extended video from the night that includes Owens being interviewed by the police, Owens specifically responds, when asked by the police where she was hit, that her camera was hit which in turn hit her face. So she was not "punched in the face," and she certainly was not "beaten." Now, I'm certainly not saying that Cheryl Joiner's act of hitting Owens' camera was OK. Joiner was wrong to do that and I'm glad that charges were filed. However, to claim that a simple act of slapping a camera is the same thing as beating someone or punching them in the face, and specifically as being in the same category as stomping on a woman's neck, is just plain wrong.

Second, Loesh claimed the following later on Twitter:

Considering that at 8/09 townhall one of the guys fell to the ground and screamed "police brutality!" when ZERO cops were near him ...and when he refused to move so police could do their job he refused and was subsequently arrested? Forgive if at times I'm suspicious.

This claim, also, was in the police report. And again, available video shows that the police report is false. I previously documented the problems with the police report on Matthews:

There are several problems with the case against Matthews that can be observed by comparing the police report to the video of the arrest.

First, Matthews is charged with "interfering with the duties of a police officer" (p. 11). However, in the video, it's clear that Matthews (dark blue shirt and long ponytail) is actually trying to lead Javonne away from the scene.

Second, the police report (p. 11) claims that "As Captain Monteleone was assisting us with crowd control a subject, later identified as Brian Matthews, walked up to him and purposely fell onto the sidewalk in front of him." But you can see from the video (1:42) that Matthews was walking in front of the officer away from the scene when he fell.

Finally, the report claims that Matthews was "on the ground yelling that he was being beaten by the police, trying to draw attention to himself." However, in the video you can very clearly hear Javonne speaking as she is arrested. Matthews is right next to her. If he was "yelling" it would have been picked up on the video.

Matthews presented a similar case to the prosecutor, who decided to drop the charges. I'm pretty confident that if Matthews had actually been screaming about "police brutality," law enforcement would not decide to be merciful with him. So far, two major strikes against the police report.

Strike three and the out for the police report comes from an interview of Harris Himes conducted by Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft. Himes and his wife were two of the three witnesses cited in the original police report. In his interview with Hoft, Himes managed to contradict both his own and his wife's statements from the police report:

So, the police report describes Himes testimony as follows:

Witness H. Himes stated that as he was leaving the school gymnasium, he saw Suspect McCowan talking to Victim Gladney. He stated he saw Suspect McCowan reach over the table and punch Victim Gladney in the face. This assault knocked the victim off balance. Suspect Molens then went around the table and pulled Victim Gladney over the table backwards by the back of his shirt collar. He began to punch and kick Victim Gladney. Witness H. Himes added that while Suspect Molens was kicking and punching Victim Gladney, Suspect McCowan then joined in on the assault.

However, in the new video Himes said (0:29):

And so I looked back because I heard a noise behind. And, it was my wife however, who could corroborate the fact that it was really a hate crime because she heard the black man who claims he's a minister also said "what's a ..... doing here" ... that was essentially what she heard. And I looked back and then I saw this guy slap Gladney...slap his hand away and start striking him but the other big white guy grabbed him and threw him down to the ground. So I came back, and I was trying to get them off Gladney, and my wife was circling to keep any of the others from jumping me. And so then we got them off and broke it up once and then they attacked him again. "

This is radically different than the initial story. First of all, Himes admits that he did not see how the fight started, even though the original police report suggests that he did. Second, he now claims that he first saw McCowan "slap Gladney's hand." In the original police report, he claimed that McCowan had reached "over the table" and punched Gladney. The fact that he said he saw him slapping Gladney's hand is especially significant since one of the original questions I raised was why Gladney says, at 0:43 of the original video of the altercation, "why'd you hit my hands?" If Gladney had just been beaten up, why would he ask about his hands? Likewise, if Himes had witnessed Gladney being severely beaten, why would he talk about his hands getting slapped? This of course dovetails with the with strangeness of the fact that Gladney was clearly walking around and looked uninjured in the original video, but then showed up in a wheelchair purportedly unable to walk or talk a few days later.

Furthermore, Himes then says that he he saw Molens come over and throw Gladney, "to the ground." But of course, this is the part we already saw in the video (when Molens is pulling Gladney, who looks like he's about to throw a punch, away from McCowan who's laying on the ground) , while the official right-wing story is that the alleged assault happened before the video. In other words, from what I can tell, basically all Himes witnessed other than a "hand slap" is the same thing that we saw on the video!

And what about his wife? In the police report, it says:

Witness #2, Sandra Himes', statement of the incident concurred with Harris' account of the incident. She did add that Victim Gladney did nothing to provoke this assualt.

But in the interview with Gateway Pundit, Harris has this to say (0:22):

Well, actually my wife had stopped to look at the buttons and the flags he was handing out, and just as she turned away, that's when he was attacked by the two SEIU guys..."

In other words, she did not see how the fight started either, because she had "just" turned away! But, again, this is in direct contradiction to the police report, which implied that she was a witness to the actual events. Furthermore, his story doesn't say anything about the two other people who Gladney and David Brown claimed also attacked Gladney.

In other words, Harris Himes has just told a story that contradicts the testimony of two of the three witnesses who claimed that Gladney was brutally beaten.

Returning to the above point that a police report is only as good as the witnesses it includes, we now have evidence that two of the witnesses' testimony was contradicted by Himes. Harris Himes is also a well-known right-wing activist in Montana who leaked his story to Big Government, so he clearly has a political agenda. And the only other witness in the police report is also a tea partier who can be seen on video earlier in the day being held back from attacking an SEIU member.

So, just to review:

We have at least three central claims in the police report being directly contradicted by video evidence from the scene or later interviews with the same witnesses.

We also have only three "witnesses" who didn't actually witness the fight starting and who all happen to be tea partiers with clear ideological agendas.

And finally we have a ridiculous arrest of Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman by the same police during the same events.

The combined force of all of these flaws in the police report strongly suggests that it would be a huge mistake to take the police report from that night as the gospel truth.

BREAKING: Harris Himes Changes Story! Big Time!

Right wing blogger Gateway Pundit interviewed Harris Himes, who was one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen Elston McCowan and Perry Molens's "assault' of Kenneth Gladney outside of Russ Carnahan's townhall on August 6. And let me tell you, if you've been following this story, the interview was a doozy!

Here's the problem for the official tea party story. In the original police report, both Harris Himes and his wife claimed to have seen McCowan and Molens punching Gladney. However, in his new version, Himes claims that he wasn't looking when the fight started, and that his wife turned away right when it started! In other words, he admits that he did not see the part of the altercation that the right-wingers say was the horrible beating! This is especially interesting in light of the questions I've raised previously about Himes's credibility. Here's the interview from Gateway Pundit, and I'll go into more detail below:

So, the police report describes Himes testimony as follows:

Witness H. Himes stated that as he was leaving the school gymnasium, he saw Suspect McCowan talking to Victim Gladney. He stated he saw Suspect McCowan reach over the table and punch Victim Gladney in the face. This assault knocked the victim off balance. Suspect Molens then went around the table and pulled Victim Gladney over the table backwards by the back of his shirt collar. He began to punch and kick Victim Gladney. Witness H. Himes added that while Suspect Molens was kicking and punching Victim Gladney, Suspect McCowan then joined in on the assault.

However, in the new video Himes said (0:29):

And so I looked back because I heard a noise behind. And, it was my wife however, who could corroborate the fact that it was really a hate crime because she heard the black man who claims he's a minister also said "what's a ..... doing here" ... that was essentially what she heard. And I looked back and then I saw this guy slap Gladney...slap his hand away and start striking him but the other big white guy grabbed him and threw him down to the ground. So I came back, and I was trying to get them off Gladney, and my wife was circling to keep any of the others from jumping me. And so then we got them off and broke it up once and then they attacked him again. "

This is radically different than the initial story. First of all, Himes admits that he did not see how the fight started, even though the original police report suggests that he did. Second, he now claims that he first saw McCowan "slap Gladney's hand." In the original police report, he claimed that McCowan had reached "over the table" and punched Gladney. The fact that he said he saw him slapping Gladney's hand is especially significant since one of the original questions I raised was why Gladney says, at 0:43 of the original video of the altercation, "why'd you hit my hands?" If Gladney had just been beaten up, why would he ask about his hands? Likewise, if Himes had witnessed Gladney being severely beaten, why would he talk about his hands getting slapped? This of course dovetails with the with strangeness of the fact that Gladney was clearly walking around and looked uninjured in the original video, but then showed up in a wheelchair purportedly unable to walk or talk a few days later.

Furthermore, Himes then says that he he saw Molens come over and throw Gladney, "to the ground." But of course, this is the part we already saw in the video (when Molens is pulling Gladney, who looks like he's about to throw a punch, away from McCowan who's laying on the ground) , while the official right-wing story is that the alleged assault happened before the video. In other words, from what I can tell, basically all Himes witnessed other than a "hand slap" is the same thing that we saw on the video!

And what about his wife? In the police report, it says:

Witness #2, Sandra Himes', statement of the incident concurred with Harris' account of the incident. She did add that Victim Gladney did nothing to provoke this assualt.

But in the interview with Gateway Pundit, Harris has this to say (0:22):

Well, actually my wife had stopped to look at the buttons and the flags he was handing out, and just as she turned away, that's when he was attacked by the two SEIU guys..."

In other words, she did not see how the fight started either, because she had "just" turned away! But, again, this is in direct contradiction to the police report, which implied that she was a witness to the actual events. Furthermore, his story doesn't say anything about the two other people who Gladney and David Brown claimed also attacked Gladney.

In other words, Harris Himes has just told a story that contradicts the testimony of two of the three witnesses who claimed that Gladney was brutally beaten. I really hope the county prosecutors had some better evidence than what was presented in the initial police report when they decided to file charges, because so far I don't see how Elston McCowan could be charged with anything.

Bonus Link: While I was digging around for this story, I found a couple more falsehoods from Brown and Gladney. First, David Brown claims in an interview with Faux News that he witnessed the entire event (3:34), despite the fact that you can see that he walked over to the scene during the video, only after picking up his stuff and putting it in the car. And (3:23) Gladney claims that "i got up, kinda dazed, looking for my glasses, and then one guy was coming at me again and that's when the police came in" when the video clearly shows this to be false. No one was "coming after' Gladney when he was looking for his glasses. This story is so ridiculously full of holes!