In the Defendants’ opposition to our motion to recuse Judge Kevin Miller, they didn’t just argue law. They took aim at the act of looking—at what any ordinary person would think is the most basic right a litigant has: to read the orders that decide their case, compare them to the governing law, and verify whether the court’s reasoning matches the record.
They called it “irrational and troubling.” They described my review of Judge Miller’s work as “extraordinary,” “obsess[ive],” and akin to “surveillance.” And then came the word that says the quiet part out loud:
“The lengths to which Craig has gone are alarming and exceed what is reasonable or appropriate of a litigant appearing before the Court. Such conduct should be viewed with caution.”
That sentence is worth pausing over, because it reveals something larger than this case: a reflex inside the system that treats informed citizens as a threat.
When research becomes “misconduct”
What did Defendants say was “alarming”?
Not a threat. Not harassment. Not tampering with evidence. Not contacting jurors. Not violating a protective order.
They complained that I:
- compared Judge Miller’s orders to other cases, and to what the cited authorities actually say
- reviewed orders in unrelated cases to test for patterns
- used public sources (including MCRO) to understand the context of the court’s work and the litigation actors around it
Then they tried to turn that into a character indictment—suggesting the very act of careful scrutiny “go[es] beyond the boundaries of appropriate conduct for a litigant.”
But notice what’s missing: Defendants did not identify factual errors in the research itself as the basis for their “alarmed” narrative. That gap matters, because the easiest way to discredit inconvenient analysis is not to refute it—it’s to pathologize the person doing it.
“Cast aspersions… rather than challenging the actual results”
In my supplemental declaration, I responded directly: Defendants “expend considerable resources to cast aspersions on me, rather than challenging the actual results of my research and analyses.”
That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s the core issue.
When a party can’t comfortably engage the substance—when the citations, quotations, timelines, and record comparisons are too awkward to address head-on—the fallback is to attack “qualifications,” “tone,” “motive,” and “obsession.” That’s precisely what happened here.
And my answer remains simple:
“The quest for truth should alarm no one.”
The system built tools for public access—until people use them
Here’s where Defendants’ posture becomes especially revealing.
Minnesota’s Judicial Branch has publicly celebrated remote access to court records through MCRO as a transparency initiative—“increase access, transparency, and convenience”—with millions of documents downloaded.
In other words: the court system tells the public “we built this for you.” And then, when a litigant uses it to verify what the system is doing in his own case, the other side says it’s “alarming” and should be “viewed with caution.”
That contradiction is not accidental. It points to a deeper reality:
Transparency is celebrated as an ideal—until it produces accountability.
Why would anyone be threatened by a litigant reading the record?
In a healthy system, a litigant who reads orders carefully is not a problem. It is the opposite of a problem. It is civic engagement at the point where it matters most: where government power is being exercised against real people, in real time, with real consequences.
So why the hostility?
Because research changes the balance of power.
A modern litigant can:
- pull the entire docket and compare what happened then to what is being argued now
- verify whether quotations are accurate, and whether omissions change meaning
- check whether authority is current, overruled, limited, or misused
- test whether “facts” in an order were actually proved, or merely asserted
When a citizen does that work, the legal system loses something it has long depended on: informational asymmetry.
For decades, the working assumption has been: the professionals will handle it; the judge wrote it; the order says what it says; move on. That culture rewards deference and punishes scrutiny.
But scrutiny is how truth survives.
“Qualifications” as a gatekeeping weapon
Defendants also tried to disqualify my analysis by attacking my “qualifications.”
I responded with the truth: I have decades of technical, business, and analytical experience—exactly the kind of background that teaches you how to test inputs, validate outputs, and catch inconsistencies.
More importantly, I didn’t rely on “trust me.” I used Westlaw’s tools—the same ecosystem used by courts and lawyers—to validate what I was seeing, and I documented that Westlaw flagged many of the same irregularities.
And the key point remains:
“Westlaw corroborates my findings and Defendants have not yet identified any factual errors in my declarations.”
If the analysis is wrong, rebut it. If the citations are wrong, show it. If the quotations are wrong, correct them.
But “you aren’t qualified to read what the court wrote” is not an argument. It’s an attempt to reserve reality for insiders.
From “alarming” to “caution” to insinuation
The “alarmed” narrative didn’t stop at criticizing research. It pivoted into insinuation—suggesting my conduct should be treated as suspicious, even dangerous.
Then, in a footnote, Defendants invoked a confidential photograph of a firearm—framing it as “troubling” while omitting the context: it was evidence tied to Marie’s long-standing fear of her father and my efforts to protect her after a potential threat.
They also omitted a key detail: they were the first to insert the gun into the public record by describing that confidential photo in a public document.
This is another pattern worth naming: when a party cannot win the fight on substance, it becomes tempting to win by atmosphere—by painting the other side as unstable, unreasonable, or alarming, so the court feels safer dismissing what they’re saying without engaging it.
That is not justice. It is narrative management.
The real question: what kind of judiciary do we want?
One reason this matters is bigger than our case.
Courts do not run on force. Courts run on legitimacy—on the public’s willingness to accept rulings even when they disagree.
That legitimacy depends not just on justice being done, but on justice appearing to be done—a principle Minnesota courts have repeatedly recognized.
So here is the uncomfortable truth:
When a litigant’s careful review of the record is treated as “alarming,” the message to the public is clear:
Don’t look too closely. Don’t ask hard questions. Don’t test what you’re told.
That message undermines legitimacy far more than any citizen’s research ever could.
If your case is solid, scrutiny is not a threat
Research is not misconduct. It is not intimidation. It is not “surveillance.” It is not a personality flaw.
It is what people do when the stakes are high and the system is not behaving the way it promises.
And if a ruling is sound—if the citations are accurate, the reasoning is faithful to precedent, and the facts are drawn from the record—then scrutiny is not dangerous.
It is affirming.
But if the system is “alarmed” when citizens verify what is happening in their own case, the question becomes unavoidable:
What, exactly, is the system afraid we will find?
🔗 For more on judicial ethics and court reform in Minnesota, visit https://justice-denied.org.
