Who is Jim Falken?
The mystery surrounding that question took some mind-bending turns over the weekend, including an FBI report over a stolen pseudonym, and a threat by John R. Dalton Jr. to sue whoever is using his name to explain away the acts of Mr. Falken.
You may recall that on Friday, I reported on the appearance and disappearance of a news site calling itself the Arizona Daily Herald. The Herald first became widely known on Sunday, May 15, when a person calling himself Jim Falken sent emails to the Pima County supervisors and the candidates for supervisor, asking their opinion of the road-repair plan Supervisor Ally Miller had released the day before.
My reporting — and that of the Tucson Weekly and Tucson Sentinel — suggested that the Herald website may have been set up by a staff member in Miller’s office, Timothy DesJarlais. He had repeatedly used the pseudonym Jim Falken in an online role-playing game. He has also apparently set up online news sites before: The web sites Tucson Trumpet and NSNBC International list him as the contact or contributor.
On Friday, Miller had a choice of whether to cast her suspicions on DesJarlais, a 19-year-old staffer who works part-time for the office and is running for the Marana school board, or to defend him. In a decision that could determine her political future, she chose to back him, full force.
Miller and DesJarlais told KVOA-TV on Friday they were filing reports with the FBI’s cyber-crimes unit. Their complaint was that someone else had assumed DesJarlais’ online alter-ego, Jim Falken, in an effort to besmirch Miller’s office.
That complaint has two problems. One is that it’s unclear whether it would be a crime to use an online pseudonym used by someone else. Another is that the Arizona Daily Herald seemed to be trying to bolster Miller by asking candidates about her road-repair plan, not harm her.
Another potential problem: Filling a false report with the FBI is itself a crime.
Then came Saturday afternoon. DesJarlais and Miller had been claiming that a man named John Dalton was the one who used the Jim Falken name to start the Arizona Daily Herald. That afternoon, their claim seemed to come true. An email from Jim Falken, using the email address editor@azdailyherald.com, went out to news outlets and politicians around Pima County. Here are excerpts:
My name is John Dalton and I am currently a resident of central Tucson. I have gotten into blogging and I wanted to start up my own news platform but to both protect my identity and make me seem objective, I utilized the pseudonym, Jim Falken, which I happened to run across while observing some nation roleplaying and blogs by a Timothy DesJarlais. Although I did use the same pseudonym as Mr DesJarlais, under no circumstances did I ever intend to assume his identity...
Upon further research, there is another John Dalton out there who has come from Michigan and ran for Arizona delegate during this year’s state convention. It has come to my attention that Mr. DesJarlais has gotten me confused with this John Dalton, although we are two different people with different phone numbers. It also seems others have been confused and alleged that Mr DeJarlais is the owner of the Arizona Daily Herald...
The final paragraph:
I’d like to repeat that none of my emails or texts were ever intended to impersonate Mr Dalton or Mr DesJarlais and I would like to offer my sincere apology to both the media, Supervisor Miller, all the candidates, and both Mr. DesJarlais and Mr. Dalton. Because of the nature of confusion surrounding my site, I have already terminated it and I will soon be deactivating this email. I meant no ill will towards anybody and this is purely a news blogging attempt gone wrong. I hope all of you will understand and I wish all of you the best of luck moving forward into the summer.
The email is signed, “John R. Dalton Jr.”
This email seemed to solve the mystery, and I was preparing to write a mea culpa, explaining that DesJarlais and Miller were right and I had been wrong. Then two things happened — or didn’t happen.
The first was that the email writer calling himself John R. Dalton Jr. didn’t answer any phone calls I made to the number provided in the email or respond to any emails. I was prepared to believe him, but I wanted to meet him first to verify he was really John Dalton. He wouldn’t make any contact at all.
The second was that the real John R. Dalton Jr. called. You see, there is a John R. Dalton Jr. living in Tucson. He’s a 25-year-old who moved from Michigan last year and is preparing to attend the University of Arizona this fall. He’s a Republican who was a delegate to the state convention from Legislative District 9.
And he was wondering what on Earth was going on with people throwing his name into this political mystery.
He said he had nothing to do with it, had only once met DesJarlais and Miller, and was a bit upset they were using his name. A story on the Arizona Daily Independent website quoted Miller accusing a John Dalton of being behind the Arizona Daily Herald.
There may be other John Daltons around, but Saturday’s email writer, claiming to be from the person who started the Arizona Daily Herald, had signed off as “John R. Dalton Jr.”
The real Dalton, the one who was a delegate to the state convention, wrote this in an email to local Republicans on Sunday:
The e-mail sent to you using my name is fraudulent in its entirety. The person who wrote the e-mail obviously did so as an act of desperation and made some very big mistakes. The person says that he is not to be confused with the other ‘John Dalton out there who has come from Michigan and ran for Arizona delegate...’ In this section of the e-mail, it is apparent the person is referring to me, yet at the end of the e-mail he signs off using the full legal name of the only John Dalton, in the entire city of Tucson, who is from Michigan and was a state delegate, John R. Dalton Jr.
He went on to say that, once a criminal investigation identifies who was using his name, he plans to file a civil suit.
Separately this weekend, John Winchester, who is running against Miller in the Republican primary, uncovered a message sent to him April 24 via his campaign web page, from Jim Falken of the Arizona Daily Herald asking to be put on Winchester’s mailing list. It includes a phone number that, when called, says the voicemail is for Timothy DesJarlais. It’s the same phone number listed on the Tucson Trumpet website.
After the weekend’s uproar, Sharon Bronson, a Democrat and chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, on Monday asked the county administration to investigate the matter. County spokesman Mark Evans said the county administrator, Miller nemesis Chuck Huckelberry, is planning to request that Sheriff Chris Nanos look into it.
In short, Miller has gone all-in defending a questionable story by her young aide.
The investigations by law-enforcement officials and journalists will reveal if that was a good choice.
