Affidavits

These are affidavits given by friends who have had personal experiences with Michael Mikkelsen and feel it is necessary to tell their stories.

 

 

As recounted by Catherine Bleish

1. I met Michael Mikkelsen in late 2007 while working on the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign.

2. I personally witnessed the fact that Mikkelsen had changed the background picture of his cell phone, his personal desktop computer, as well as the desktop computer at the Ron Paul office to pictures of me early in the campaign.

3. Mikkelsen would repeatedly touch me in the Ron Paul headquarters – after grabbing my ass one day I smacked him and told him not to touch me.  He later called and chastised me for “talking to him like that in front of other people”.

4. Mikkelsen was aware that I was living with my boyfriend at the time and had no interest in dating anyone else. Regardless, he frequently gave me gifts of diamonds, money, flowers, jewelry, etc. All were returned to him.  He gave me the same diamond necklace multiple times, once even attempting to open my car door to throw it in as I drove away from the Ron Paul head quarters.  To get the necklace giving to stop I told him I would let him know if I ever became interested by wearing it (I never did).  Eventually I mailed it back in an envelope w/o insurance or tracking.

5. In April of 2008 Michael Mikkelsen attended an after party that was held at my house following the Liberty Restoration Project kickoff—my boyfriend was at work. While at my house, he followed me from couch to chair to couch as I tried to get away from him. He physically touched me inappropriately repeatedly, and I asked repeatedly to be left alone and physically moved maybe a dozen times. Deborah Wells got frustrated and asked why none of the men there were standing up for me and grabbed Mikkelsen by the ear and walked him out the back door.

6. After being escorted out of my house by Deborah Wells, Mikkelsen stood there and cried. Deb told him to go sit in his car until someone was ready to leave and we’d drive him home or we would call a cab to take him home immediately, as he was clearly too drunk to drive.

7. Mikkelsen then proceeded walk around my house, looking in windows, calling people that he could see were in the living room and crying on the phone.

8. At some point he managed to sneak in the back door and tried to make his way into the basement, Deb caught him and again escorted him out. We locked all the doors and sat there trying to figure out what to do. Eventually Mikkelsen got quiet and seemed to leave peacefully.

9. The next day when I went outside to my car, I found that literally every item that had been inside my car had been stolen, including but not limited to: my work items, my school items, my megaphone, many Ron Paul 2008 yard signs, my road atlas, my ice scrapers, the coolers, the left over food, and a single shoe.

10. I called Mikkelsen to confront him and he admitted to taking my property.

11. Mikkelsen met me at a John McCain rally later that day with all of the property he had stolen stuffed into his car. He handed me only my megaphone and then drove away with his car busting at the seams with my property.

12. Mikkelsen finally returned all of my property, but only after weeks of demanding verbally that he return my property, after members of the KC Ron Paul 2008 movement demanded verbally that he return my property,  and after I wrote a Cease and Desist letter to him.

13. The day after he returned my property was the Congressional District Convention. At the convention, Mikkelsen introduced a slate of delegates that included himself and myself and I was forced to stand up and explain that I wanted nothing to do with him or his slate.  Days earlier at a meeting to discuss who would go on each slate, Deb Wells read aloud the Cease and Desist order to our core team.   This caused many to resent me, as many assumed that I was overreacting.

14. After the delegate process was over, I was able to get him to physically stay away from me for some months, except for when he showed up to our booth at the Revolution March in Washington D.C. and simply stood there for hours without saying anything. However, within these months he called and texted me hundreds of times. I blocked his phone calls, but was unable to block texts per T-Mobile.

15. Once the election got closer and new people started becoming involved in the Ron Paul movement—in September and October 2008—Mikkelsen began showing up to events again. My friends and I decided not to say anything publicly or make a scene, because of the rift that such activity had caused in the movement back during the delegate process.

16. After a day of canvassing, a bunch of people including Mikkelsen came over to my house for drinks. At some point late in the night, several of us fell asleep in my living room.  I was asleep on my couch. I awoke some time later to find Mikkelsen with his hand touching my genitals while I slept.  I was terrified and ran to my room and slammed the door.  He was gone in the morning.

17. Mikkelsen began consistently mailing me gifts, stopping by my house uninvited and unannounced, and generally harassing me (including texts at 3am to let me know that he just drove by and could tell I was home alone) to the point where I felt compelled to move.

18. At some point, Mikkelsen’s mother and brother asked for my help in convincing him to attend court-ordered therapy for issues involving the physical molestation of women at a bar in downtown Kansas City.  This was late 2008/early 2009.

19. I was unsuccessful in convincing Mikkelsen to attend therapy, and later, when he discovered my new address despite considerable effort on my part to keep it secret, he resumed mailing gifts to me.

20. In Spring of 2009, Mikkelsen starting soliciting donations in the name of the organization I was executive director of—the Liberty Restoration Project(LRP)—to his home address. At this point, for my own safety as well as the insistence of my friends in LRP I decided to attempt to acquire an order of protection against him. Unfortunately, the Sheriff’s department was not able to serve him the papers due to his living arrangements. After each order expired, I re-filed the paperwork 4 times, each time he was not served. I went so far as to try to have him served at his work, also unsuccessfully.

21. After I filed the first order of protection, his family discontinued communicating with me, and he only sent more and more gifts.

22. Three days after the last temporary order of protection expired, I attended Porcfest in New Hampshire. Mikkelsen also attended, and abruptly approached me at my campsite while I was alone. I was terrified. My friend Tracy Ward was camping with me, but we were both terrified and didn’t know who to turn to for any measure of protection from Mikkelsen. Eventually, after Mikkelsen approached me multiple times and refused to leave when asked, some men camping nearby ran him off.

23. Soon after Porcfest, I decided to move to St. Louis. The decision to do so was heavily influenced by my fear of Mikkelsen. After I moved, Mikkelsen showed up to a Tea Party event in St. Charles, Missouri, that I was speaking at.

24. In December 2009, I flew to Pheonix for the Freedom Summit. When I landed in Phoenix, Mikkelsen was waiting for me outside my airport gate and had secured the exact same person to give him a ride into town as I – the people who had come to pick me up thought I was crazy when I refused to get in the car with him and they had to send Kokesh and Hancock to pick him up.

25. I moved to Texas in early 2010 and Mikkelsen did not appear at any events I was at until the “Nullify Now” event mid 2011.

26. Mikkelsen came to my work while I was working alone but left when asked to do so, which is was the first time he had respected such a request.

27. After molested women and got violent with men at Porcfest 2011, a working group was put together to talk about how to deal with him.  At this time I checked my google voicemail that is attached to the number he calls and texts constantly – there were multiple voice mails during and after Porcfest 2011 of him simply breathing into the phone.

28. Also, one of the LRP webmasters in late 2009 found that he had set up an email forward that would send a copy of every single email sent to any @libertyrestorationproject.org email address to his personal email.  He had access to every correspondence for months if not years before the hack was found.

 

As recounted by John Bush

While at the dance party on the final night of PorcFest I noticed Michael Mikkelsen harassing Shaun Lee.  When she separated from him I moved to stand in between them so as to deter him from harassing Shaun.  At this point Michael began dancing extremely close to me in a manner so as to provoke a response from me.  I told him he was in my space and to step away and he refused and continued to dance extremely close to me.  In order to avoid further conflict I left the room.  Later that evening Michael continued to approach me stating he had been hit by someone and NAP was violated.  I told him to leave me alone and that I wanted to have nothing to do with him.  He continued to come at me and get in my face so I shoved him away.  After this he continued to come at me yelling and freaking out.  At this point people got in the middle of us and he was escorted back and asked to cool down.  He continued to harass people throughout the evening.

 

As recounted by  Jena Bobena

I attended the electronic dance party at the porcupine festival in june of 2011.  although I’ve only danced in public twice in my adult life, i went to the dance just to check it out, and to see if anyone I knew was in attendance.  As I was walking through the crowd, a clearly inebriated Mikkelsen tried to physically force me to dance with him despite my repeated insistence that i did not want to dance.

After physically grabbing at my body two or three times in quick succession despite my repeated requests to be left alone, shaun pulled me away from mikkelsen, and sternly told him that I did not want to dance with him.

However, I do remember seeing him blacked out on a beanbag chair the morning after the party. I do not know this for a fact, but when i asked why he was sleeping there, it was alleged that he had to be physically removed from a woman’s camp site. This is second- or third-hand information; it would be great if we could find or speak with any other people at porcfest 2011 who were privy to mikkelsen’s behavior; as i understand it, he was aggressive with women throughout that night.

 

As recounted by Josh Carter

While attending MOGOP Lincoln Days in Kansas City in early 2009, I stayed at Catherine Bleish’s house. While Catherine and I were at her house, she received a text message from Michael Mikkelsen. Catherine immediately became visibly disturbed and went on to explain how Mikkelsen had been harassing her over the past year, and showed me numerous text messages as well as e-mails that Mikkelsen had sent her, all evidently attempting to convince Catherine to have a romantic relationship with him, despite her repeated refusals.

In Spring of 2009, Catherine asked for my help in getting Mikkelsen served with paperwork for an order of protection, so I went with her up to his place of employment, called the local police department, and attempted to have him served at work. The officers that showed up were unable to do so, reportedly due to the fact that Mikkelsen was out of the office at that time.

While Catherine was at Porcfest 2009, she called me to tell me that Mikkelsen had shown up to Porcfest and was continuing his harassment of her there. After Porcfest, Mikkelsen called me to ask me to ask Catherine to “stop flipping out” on him, as he was planning on attending an upcoming event in Las Vegas, Nevada that Catherine was scheduled to speak at. I responded to him that I felt like Catherine had every right to protect herself from his unwanted advances and that I would encourage her to enforce her boundaries with all necessary force. Mikkelsen then claimed that he and Catherine had been a couple at one point. I told him in no uncertain terms that in my opinion, it would be irrelevant even if he and Catherine had children together; if she explicitly requested that he not contact her, he should immediately cease and desist any attempts at communication with her whatsoever.

Mikkelsen and I continued our conversation, and talked for over an hour. He admitted to me that he had touched Catherine’s body in inappropriate ways on multiple occasions, at times while she was sleeping and others when she was awake. Mikkelsen expressed no remorse nor any indication that he felt like such behavior was unacceptable. He admitted to other incidents where he had been acting in what I considered an overly aggressive and disrespectful manner towards women, including but not limited to an incident at his brother’s wedding in which Mikkelsen repeatedly harrassed the same woman, even after being taken outside and punched in the face by the woman’s boyfriend.

I made a sincere effort to talk reasonably with Mikkelsen about the disparity between his stated goals(any sort of healthy friendship much less relationship with Catherine) and the course of action that he was taking. At Porcfest 2011, I was dancing with my friend Shaun Lee at the electronic dance party on the night of Saturday, June 25. Mikkelsen came up behind her, grabbed her aggressively across her chest, and began dancing in a wildly lewd manner–it was so outrageous that before she saw who it was, she thought it was a girlfriend of hers and she started laughing. Once she saw who it was and a disgusted look crossed her face, I pulled her from his clutches to me, while pushing him back away. he backed off momentarily, but as soon as she returned to dancing an arms length away, he grabbed her in the same inappropriate manner. I again pulled her to me and pushed him back off of her.

At this point, another guy, who I was never introduced by name to, walked up in an attempt to arbitrate. after talking to Michael for a few seconds, he walks over to Shaun and says “this guy says you’re his girl”. Shaun made it clear that this was not at the time nor had ever been the case(if you ask around, you’ll find that Mikkelsen often claims women to be “his” without notifying them, much less their consent). our impromptu arbitrator then went back to Mikkelsen, said some words I could not hear, and then Mikkelsen shoved him. So I talked Mikkelsen to the ground and punched him repeatedly until some people grabbed me.

 

As recounted by Connor P: 

Connor P:

“Well, in short: Michael had trespassed on John Patrick Colon’s campground, and after he became explicitly belligerent to our mutual friend Mollie–John asked him to the count of 10 to leave, and if he didn’t, he would have to escalate. Well Michael didn’t [leave] and at around the count of 3, tried to force Mollie to go with him to this bar on the Porcfest campgrounds that is when [Patrick] decide to escalate things by shoving Michael to physically–but not viciciously–deter him and coax him off the property.
Michael did not comply and proceeded to get into Patrick’s face, and that’s when Patrick had to escalate a little bit further by pushing a little harder and towards the edge of his campground
as he was doing this, I was following the two towards the edge of the campground–safety and intimidation in numbers–that is when Michael threw a punch at Patrick. I did not want the violence to cause incredible harm to either party–as that would certainly ruin the night for both parties–so I decide to try to separate the two
and that’s when Michael started to scramble and flail at me. I tried to wrestle him to the ground with a common pinning move that cops do to restrain/detain an assailant–a knee to the jaw, pinning his face on the ground. He started to get free, so I wrestled with him further and put him in a standard “rear-naked-choke.” (a sleeper hold) .
I then gave him an ultimatum: 1. To allow me to let up him nicely, so he can peacefully gather his things and walk away or 2. I could choke him out and then he could wake up on his own a few minutes later and then gather his things peacefully and walk away
after a bit more flailing, he chose the former and as he and I were getting up, I decided to add a bit more compliant coercion by suggesting to him that if he tried to assault me that I wouldn’t hesitate to smash his face in. He did so, but as he was doing so, an elderly woman came over with a man who looked to be about 30
they were investigating the situation and we told them what had transpired.
She then proceeded to behave as if she knew Michael–and particularly in a matriarchal way. When she was doing this, Michael started to cry and become pitiful. My friends and I decided it was best to just leave the scene to let everything cool down.
and that’s the jist of it…
I suppose that wasn’t too short, but it’s as detailed and succinct as I could get it without adding the dialogue that occurred.”

 

 

Cease and Desist letter from Catherine Bleish to Michael Mikkelson:

April 25, 2008

Michael Mikkelsen

[ADDRESS REDACTED]

RE:  Cease and Desist, Return of Personal Property

Mr. Mikkelsen:

This communication acts as official, final written notice to cease and desist further contact with me.  This notice follows my repeated requests to you to refrain from touching me inappropriately, contacting me on my personal cell phone, emailing me, and sending me inappropriate cell phone text messages.  I have indicated to you, in no uncertain terms, that I am uncomfortable with your contact and your continued personal communication.

On Tuesday April 22, 2008 I asked you to stop text messaging me and told you I was not comfortable with you being at the meeting on Wednesday.  Not only have you text messaged me since, but you have RSVPed to attend a meeting I am conducting on Sunday.

I am aware of having in my possession one box of beer and four bottles of liquor that I believe to belong to you and a small diamond necklace, which you left at my home during a political business meeting on April 4, 2008.  Following that meeting, I am aware that you entered my car without my knowledge or consent and removed several items of my personal property, including:

• Work materials
• School papers
• Political signs and literature
• $280 from a fundraiser held that day
• Large cooler full of food
• A scarf
• A hooded sweat shirt
• One shoe
• Three ice scrapers
• Megaphone belonging to Alex Miller
• Three blankets
• Mail belonging to myself and Alex Miller

At this time I believe you have returned all of my personal property and request that anything remaining in your possession without my knowledge be returned.  I will return the above stated items that I have in my possession via a third party along with a copy of this message as a written notice. This third party will contact you directly to transact the return of personal property.

Additionally, I have retained the services of persons who are responsible for securing my personal safety from any retaliation.

Catherine Bleish

 

 

 

===================================================================================

More on Michael Mikkelsen

 

In August of this year criminal charges were filed against Michael Mikkelsen for sexual assault

Mainstream media article about the incident here

Screenshot of his pages from the above case found at Missouri Case Net