A self-described independent investigative journalist admitted Tuesday to falsely accusing a pro-Trump activist of providing drugs and alcohol to a minor as part of a ruse to get the activist fired from his job.
The alleged journalist — Chris J. Barry, 56, a.k.a. Crash Barry — confessed to leveling the false allegations against an activist he’s been targeting for several years with similar tactics, but he explained that he was driven to make the phone call by the inauguration of President Donald Trump and some unusually potent cannabis oil.
In an expletive-ridden, 2,600-word self-aggrandizing blog post entitled “Mea Culpa,” Barry bragged to his 1,000+ subscribers that his latest spree of workplace harassment was part of his long-running campaign to stalk and harass conservatives, Republicans, Trump voters, and basically anyone who disagrees with him about politics.
In this case, Barry’s victim was 35-year-old Nick Blanchard.
What made Blanchard a target for harassment, in Barry’s view, was his support for broadly popular policies, such as keeping biological males out of women’s sports and women’s bathrooms, as well as his outspoken support for President Trump.
Barry was particularly irked by Blanchard’s posts on social media expressing happiness over Trump’s inauguration, as well as his participation in an effort to protest left-wing bathroom policies in the Augusta public schools.
Although Barry has previously harassed Maine Wire reporters, Republican legislative candidates, and other parental rights activists in Maine — often leveling similarly false allegations rooted in shoddy research — Blanchard has been a frequent target for the unemployed author.
In the bizarre, drug-fueled rant, Barry first confessed to having previously called a Dunkin’ Donuts where Blanchard had recently been hired to ask if he was working, resulting in Blanchard eventually losing the job offer.
Offering readers a tantalizing view into how a master investigator like “Crash” toys with his victims, Barry wrote that in a recent podcast appearance, Blanchard had said that “someone—ANTIFA, he guessed—had called his new job, asking if he was working there.”
“NOBODY knew where he worked, he insisted, because he was intentionally keeping it a secret. Probably because he’d recently posted how he was getting hired as a manager at a local Dunkin,” the master investigator gloated.
“Then, according to my source, the owner ran a background check on him and the job offer was subsequently withdrawn,” Barry wrote, before admitting that he was the caller.
Barry’s obsessive stalking had paid off — in the form of denying Blanchard a job at Dunkin’ Donuts because he supports the 2024 presidential popular vote winner.
But the Maine marijuana enthusiast wasn’t finished.
Barry took his obsessive campaign against Blanchard further by finding his next place of employment and escalating his tactics, this time falsely telling one of Blanchard’s colleagues that he provided alcohol and THC products to a 16-year-old girl, Class D misdemeanors.
Based on information Barry purportedly received from an anonymous source he referred to only as “Blanchard’s friend,” Barry called Blanchard’s new employer to “teach the a–hole a lesson.”
Barry said he left the following message for Blanchard’s employer:
“You tell Nick Blanchard to stay away from my underage daughter. He’s been feeding her Fireball shots and beer and gives her dabs. If I hear of him doing that again, I’ll send the Augusta cops to his work to take care of this.”(Fireball shots refers to the popular cinnamon whiskey, while “dabs” refers to a method for smoking high-potency cannabis oil.)
“I wanted to teach the son-of-a-b-tch a lesson,” Barry wrote. “Give ‘em a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.”
Although Barry stylized the op-ed as a mea culpa, he’s far from apologetic and spends the turgid blog post mostly defending his unhinged behavior. In his view, society has driven him to take these extreme — yet heroic — actions by failing to hold people like Blanchard accountable for expressing political views he doesn’t like.
“Seemed like society was unable to hold these chuds accountable. And Trump’s election further empowered Blanchard,” Barry wrote. He said what finally pushed him over the edge to again call Blanchard’s place of work was a post he made to social media celebrating Trump’s inauguration.
“Chud,” a word used constantly in Barry’s writing, is a derogatory internet slang term used by older Democrats to describe someone who is on the right side of the political spectrum.
Alas, in his zeal to visit vigilante justice upon the young Trump supporter, the seasoned journalist made the elementary mistake of leaving behind digital fingerprints connecting him to his defamatory smears.
According to Barry, Blanchard was able to identify him by his new employers Caller ID, whereupon he called Barry Tuesday morning — apparently after arriving at work and receiving the message that Barry left for him.
“Next, he called my number (which I had thought I’d blocked…oops) in tears and left a voicemail about how he was calling the Augusta cops and filing charges against me. Although, at that moment, he didn’t know it was me,” Barry wrote.
Barry says that Blanchard posted the phone number that made the call to his work on Facebook, which resulted in “several of his pals” linking the phone number to Barry.
Although he said he shouldn’t have made the call to Blanchard’s place of work, Barry said the only reasons for his “mea culpa” is that the call “ruined a perfectly good burner phone number” and that he “had better things to do” than to write another blog post about Blanchard.
That appears to be dissembling on Barry’s part. Not only because he quite obviously had nothing better to do with his time if he wrote 2,600 words confessing to a strange and troubling pattern of behavior, but also because the phone number he used to harass Blanchard has belonged to his partner, Shana M. Barry, since 2008, according to publicly available records.
“That being said, I don’t regret my actions. I wanted Blanchard to know what it feels like when a stranger comes to your workplace and says mean stuff about you,” he wrote.
Barry attributed his erratic behavior to a hernia that he suffered while splitting firewood, as well as his decision to switch from smoking weed to “vaping pure hashish” on the recommendation of his doctors.
In addition to his Substack, Barry sometimes publishes podcasts along with Maine AFL-CIO Communications Director Andy O’Brien and progressive writer and free speech activist Nathan Bernard in which the trio purport to expose other Mainers for the sinister crime of supporting Trump.
Explaining his vitriol towards Blanchard in particular, Barry listed a series of grievances with the conservative activist’s aggressive tactics.
“After all, I’ve been monitoring this a–hole’s bad public behavior for YEARS,” Barry wrote.
“I’ve watched videos of him harassing LGBTQ students at Deering High in Portland. I’ve collected countless photos of him holding ‘White Lives Matters’ signs in various locations around the state,” he wrote. “I’ve viewed many livestreams of him harassing public officials at multiple Maine communities (Skowhegan, Waterville, Augusta and more) ever since the pandemic. He’s called countless Mainers “pedos, molesters and groomers” on-line and IRL.”
Blanchard told the Maine Wire via text that, in light his Barry’s public confession, he’s looking into getting a protection from harassment order.
