One hundred nine. That is how many articles on olympicherald.com, the website operated by Anthony Tomashefsky of Sequim, mention Clallam County Superior Court Judge W. Brent Basden, according to a name count across the site's archived posts. No other subject comes close.
The judge the blog describes bears little resemblance to the judge in the public record.
The pick of eight candidates
In November 2018, Gov. Jay Inslee selected Basden for the Superior Court bench from a field of eight candidates. He was the only candidate the governor interviewed personally. "It seems like he just stood out as the best one," the governor's spokeswoman, Tara Lee, told the Peninsula Daily News, citing Basden's legal experience, his work in Superior Court and his roots in the community.
The résumé behind that pick was built entirely in Clallam County. Basden, a 1984 Port Angeles High School graduate, practiced law in Port Angeles from 1994 to 2008. In 2008, three sitting judges. Ken Williams, Brooke Taylor and George L. Wood, appointed him court commissioner. For the next decade he presided over nearly all family-court and juvenile hearings in the county's Unified Family Court: divorces, paternity cases, domestic-violence incidents, protection orders, truancy and juvenile drug court.
For seven of those years he also presided over the county's National Adoption Day ceremony, finalizing adoptions in public, a duty the Peninsula Daily News reported "he has happily performed." "It's impossible to always get it right because you're choosing between almost impossible situations sometimes," Basden said at the 2018 ceremony. "The reason that's even possible is because of an absolute conviction that I have that without fail social workers, [CASA] volunteers, attorneys, administrators and service providers [are] doing their best."
Voters ratified the appointment twice: Basden ran unopposed in 2020 and again in 2024. The state's official 2024 voters' pamphlet lists him as the court's presiding judge, a role he held from 2020 until the court's 2025 transition.
A record of protecting victims
On Nov. 18, 2025, Basden sentenced a Sequim man convicted of harassment, threats to kill four children, to 77 months in prison, rejecting a mental-health sentencing alternative as inadequate. "The plan is simply insufficient," he said, according to the Peninsula Daily News. "I don't think it would benefit the community to have him be back out on the street." To the children's mothers, he described their kids as "some of the brightest America has to offer."
Even the Olympic Herald's own pages document the same pattern. When a man was arrested at a Sequim hotel after a domestic-violence call in late August 2026, the site reported that Basden set $10,000 bail, ordered an alcohol prohibition, barred weapons possession and signed a no-contact order protecting the woman and her daughter, going well beyond the defense's request for release on personal recognizance.
The ruling that started it
Court records show what triggered the campaign.
On Aug. 7, 2025, Benjamin Mavy petitioned for a stalking and anti-harassment protection order against Tomashefsky; the matter moved to Superior Court the next day. A temporary order issued Aug. 12, and a court commissioner held the full hearing on Aug. 26. "Petitioner appeared for that hearing, but Respondent did not," Basden later wrote. The commissioner granted the protection order.
Tomashefsky asked the Superior Court to revise that ruling. On Oct. 21, 2025, Basden denied the motion in a five-page memorandum opinion.
"Respondent alleges that the record does not support the finding of harassment and stalking," the opinion states. "On the contrary, the record amply supports the conclusion that Respondent has engaged in this behavior."
To the argument that reports to Wyoming authorities served a legitimate purpose, the opinion answers: "The protection order does not limit speech, it limits conduct." And: "Under Respondent's theory of this case, an individual could engage in any stalking or harassing behavior, and then 'legitimize' or 'protect' that behavior if it happened to uncover wrongdoing by the individual harassed or stalked."
The court found "no evidence that the court commissioner violated any judicial canon by hearing this matter," and closed: "The court denies the motion for revision and the protection order remains in place."
Two months later, on Dec. 26, 2025, the olympicherald.com domain was registered, domain records show. The first attack pieces appeared in January 2026.
A judge who cannot answer
Washington's Code of Judicial Conduct restricts what judges may say publicly about proceedings and parties. Basden's only permitted answer to 109 articles is the written record. According to the site's own reporting, he filed a formal notice of recusal on Feb. 23, 2026, rather than continue engaging with the publication's disputes.
The blog has also reported that a complaint naming Basden was filed with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. A complaint is an allegation, not a finding; no adjudicated finding against the judge has been reported by the region's established press.
What the record shows instead is a judge who gave a child-threats defendant 77 months, who protected a domestic-violence victim over the defense's objection, who spent ten years in family court, and who, when a litigant asked him to undo a stalking protection order, reviewed the record and declined.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.