Most recently, police were lured to the home of Virginia attorney Aaron Walker, a right-wing activist who used to guest-blog at Patterico.
In each instance, a nasally male voice falsely identified himself as Stack, Erickson, Walker or Frey — and declared that he had murdered his wife.
In Erickson's case, a caller added: "I'm going to shoot someone else soon."
Kolbye says a SWATting "uptick" in America has included crimes against several media personalities, and that the SWATters' "motivation is sometimes in bragging rights."
So far, nobody has been shot by cops. But not one of the four politically charged cases — all featuring a similar-sounding, nasally voice — has been solved.
Frey wonders why Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca's investigators passed his case on to the FBI after one month — and after that, why special agents in Santa Ana took seven months merely to obtain phone records of the faked call. Detective Todd Hoy, who led Baca's brief investigation, explains, "They're the feds. They're in charge."
According to Dallas FBI specialist Kolbye, every SWATter leaves "a trail. And it's a matter of expertise, which the FBI has done very well at."
Yet when Frey tried to connect the local FBI branch in Southern California with the experts in Dallas — who were "very knowledgeable and willing to help" — he says Santa Ana agents flatly turned down the idea of getting assistance from Dallas.
With FBI agents in other offices appearing to drag their feet, this summer 85 Republicans in Congress demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder investigate the politically motivated SWATs. According to Frey, soon after that, the Santa Ana FBI agents, who had closed his case, told him they'd keep trying. (Holder and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.)
In the meantime, some of Frey's most frequent online critics may be trying to quiet him through more legitimate means: the court system.
Attorney Jay Leiderman filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of a client who names Frey, his prosecutor wife, Christi, and DA Steve Cooley. It alleges that Patterico's Pontifications is blogged out on government time.
Leiderman tells L.A. Weekly that he was brought together with his client by Neal Rauhauser — a left blogger who tangles with Frey and once wrote that his Twitter war with Andrew Breitbart might have contributed to his heart failure.
The DA won't comment. Frey calls the lawsuit "completely, 100 percent frivolous."
Leiderman argues that as a DA, Frey should behave "not like some juvenile blogger but like an adult."
Walker, the Virginia SWATting victim, wants Democrats in Congress to join the GOP in pressing for an investigation into the four SWATs against conservative bloggers. "People of all political persuasions aren't cool with people calling up the police and falsely reporting a crime that could get someone killed," he says.
Conflicting theories abound in the highly partisan blogosphere about who is behind the SWATtings.
Frey, who has created a thick home file on his own case, believes he has evidence that could point to one political SWATter. However, he says that the supervisor of the FBI Santa Ana unit told him, " 'You can't just blame somebody on the Internet just because you had a fight with them online.' "
Adds Frey: "It's as if the whole matter is just being treated as a blogger war, as opposed to something that could have gotten multiple people killed."
Kolbye, the FBI point person, won't comment on how his agency is handling things. But if the phenomenon spreads, he says, "It's only a matter of time before we have a serious injury or loss of life."
Reach the writer at swilson@laweekly.com.
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