Who Is "Eric B. Bailey"?

Yesterday, I wrote of the reported dismissal of ethics charges filed against Steve Chapman's attorneys, Faisal M. Gill and Jad Sarsour. Shortly after posting my discussion, I received a telephone call from a young man (or so he sounded) representing himself to be "Eric B. Bailey," whose signature appeared on the letter sent to the Virginia Bar, which was provided to Steve's attorneys as part of the investigation.

I had a very interesting conversation with young Mr. Bailey. I was particularly interested in what provoked him --- a stranger to the dispute --- to file his charges. He didn't challenge anything that I said in the post, but merely asked that I remove a number of links that indicated his address, which I was pleased to do, and he was kind enough to acknowledge in a comment he made. It is worth reprinting here in full, as he answers a number of questions raised in my post:

To recap our phone conversation I am not a lawyer and I am not Jaded JD. I don't know Greg Letiecq or Black Velvet Bruce Lee or Steve Chapman or Faisal Gill. I've never had any communication with any of them about this or anything else.

I filed the complaint because it looked like Gill wasn't even a lawyer and it looked like Chapman was trying to use a friend to intimidate Greg Letiecq. I don't know if Greg slandered Steve Chapman or not. If he did then that's his responsibility.

No one asked me to file the complaint and I didn't do it as anyone's agent. I did send a copy to JD after I put it together to see what he thought. I didn't send it to Greg Letiecq or anyone else. Any information they got about the complaint came from JD or someone JD sent it to.

Thanks for taking my address out of the links.

In our conversation, he represented himself as someone who is a member of his local party committee --- I don't recall if he said Republican --- and that he as been involved in a number of campaigns. I think he said he was not a lawyer, which he confirms in his comment.

"Eric's" comment to the contrary notwithstanding, one still has to wonder why a non-attorney blog-reader from Richmond would bother to file ethics charges with the Virginia Bar regarding people whom he does not know. One also has to wonder why he would provide a copy of that charge --- ethics charges are supposed to be confidential, until adjudicated --- to a pseudonymous blogger, even one who discussed possible ethical implications of the issue.

So much of what we do is based upon who we are. So the question remains, who is "Eric B. Bailey"?

As I detailed in the original post, an Internet search was quite unsatisfying. Few if any links to "Eric B. Bailey" have anything to do with Richmond. A search of "Eric Bailey" returns more, including many to"Australia's Number One motivational speaker," and others to someone who appears to be a reporter for a California newspaper.

So, I then went to the website for the Virginia Public Access Project. But I broadened my search to just "Bailey," under donors, and suddenly, there was a possibility. Except this was for "E. Brandon Bailey." Right initials, anyway. Same guy? Who knows? It lists a Glen Allen address, which is at least in the right area code. Maybe I was on to something. After all, there is that great Southern tradition of going by one's middle name (while a Yankee, my first initial is "W.")

So I went back to Google, and searched "E. Brandon Bailey." My results are here.

Was this the same guy? I responded to "Eric's" comment with one of my own. Here it is:

Thanks for the comment.

I am a little curious, though, "Eric." Is it "Eric B. Bailey," or "E. Brandon Bailey," or simply "Brandon Bailey," when you're not trying to make mischief for Conservatives? Because if it is, that, too, would explain a lot.

That was just before 4:00 p.m., yesterday. And as of yet, no response.

But back to the results of my Google search. It returned two hits. One was apparently part of a legal brief published in Summer 2004, by "a rising second-year law student at the University of Richmond T.C. Williams School of Law, Richmond, Virginia; B.A. International Studies, University of Richmond 1998." While conceding that homosexual "marriage" can be unlawful, the brief argues that "the explicit denial of those [marital ] benefits to [homosexual couples] constitutes a violation of the Equal Protection Clause." Interesting.

Then there's the second link, apparently related to the same person. "E. Brandon Bailey" is identified in as the Chairman of the By-Laws Committee for the Equality Alliance, under the general address "http://law.richmond.edu/glsa." What is the "Equality Alliance"? Following the links back, one finds that it is a group whose purposes are:

The purpose of the Alliance is to—

(a) provide academic and social support for members of sexual minorities and their allies enrolled in the law school.

(b) heighten awareness of legal issues facing sexual minorities by educating the law school and community.

(c) advocate social equality and universal civil rights.

Also interesting.

So what do we now know? We know, according to Bailey, that he sent a copy of his ethics charge to "Jaded JD," who identified himself as an attorney and a homosexual in his blog. We have someone with the same initials, in the same area, who is apparently involved with a homosexual advocacy group at the law school and who has written in support of homosexual "rights," but who has not responded to an inquiry as to whether he is "E. Brandon Bailey." We have "E. Brandon Bailey" who, if I read the bio on the brief correctly, was scheduled to graduate from U of R's law school in 2006, and probably sat for the Bar in July 2006. And we have the ethics charge itself, which one can surmise was written by one schooled in the law.

So what can we surmise? Assuming that Bailey was truthful in his statements to me, we can surmise that it was "Jaded JD" who sent the ethic charge to Greg Letiecq. We know that only Bailey, the Bar, and "Jaded JD" had a copy of it. And we can surmise that "Eric B. Bailey" is "E. Brandon Bailey," as they are in the same area, and the former appears schooled in the law, while the latter is (or was) a law student.

What is not clear is why he would attempt to distance himself from since-dismissed Bar charges by using a variation of his name. Given that he apparently reads this blog, one hopes that he would provide some insight and/or some corrections to these surmises.

If it is the case that "Eric B. Bailey" is the aforementioned "E. Brandon Bailey," one certainly could legitimately question his ethics in involving himself in the controversy surrounding the "ethics" of lawyers with whom he has no relationship.

The term "officious intermeddler" comes to mind.

UPDATE: Greg offers his spin on the motives of Mr. Bailey here. He does not identify the source of his information on the ethics charge.