July 1 marks the start of a new fiscal year for Virginia, which means many bills passed during the legislative session take effect today. Here are some new laws in the commonwealth.
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Tag: Extortion
Southeastern Legal Foundation’s Attorney Braden Boucek Explains Nashville Sidewalk War Victory
Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed attorney Braden Boucek with the Southeastern Legal Foundation to the newsmaker line to give details in the Nashville sidewalk war victory.
Read the full storyCommentary: Is the Justice Department Blackmailing President Joe Biden?
by Robert Romano In 2016, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, had an FBI investigation because she was storing classified information on her private server for the convenience of reading her classified emails on a smartphone. Details of the investigation came out throughout the campaign, resulting in former FBI Director James Comey’s July 2016 determination not to pursue charges and then an Oct. 2016 surprise that he was reopening the matter. Determined to ensure that her opponent, then candidate Donald Trump, would not be without an investigation of his own, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee sought to frame him as a Russian agent who had helped Moscow hack the DNC and put the emails onto Wikileaks. It resulted in a top secret FBI investigation and FISA warrants that all carried over after the 2016 election when Trump won and into his administration, ultimately resulting in Special Counsel Robert Mueller being appointed to investigate—severely hampering the Trump presidency. Mueller found there was no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia to hack the DNC and give the emails to Wikileaks. According to Mueller’s final report to the Attorney General, “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign…
Read the full storyMcMinn County Sheriff Warns Residents of New Phone Scam Circulating
McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy is warning residents of a scam call that was recently reported to the sheriff’s office. The caller targeting McMinn County residents alleges he or she is from the McMinn County Sheriff’s Office Warrant Department and demands money in order to “avoid jail time.”
Scammers use this type of technique to target local residents as a phishing scam to extort money.
Read the full storySoutheastern Legal Foundation’s Director of Litigation Braden Boucek Explains Nashville’s Sidewalk Extortion
Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed The Southeastern Legal Foundation’s Braden Boucek to talk about Metro Nashville’s sidewalk extortion.
Read the full storyFinancial Expert Liz Peek Explains the Many Reasons Joe Biden Will Not Stand up to Ruthless China
Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, guest host Christina Botteri welcomed Fox News contributor and financial expert Liz Peek to the newsmakers line to discuss the many reasons that Joe Biden will not investigate China and the Wuhan Lab and how he is compromised.
Read the full storyCommentary: The Bribery Bait-and-Switch, Explained
The president’s enemies remain unable to find any “smoking gun” – any clear, irrefutable and publicly compelling proof of “Treason, Bribery [or] other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Ordinary, decent folk in search of actual crimes, having not found any, would have backed off long ago. But our Javert-Democrats are having none of that. Well aware that the public wasn’t buying the product they’re selling, they’ve kept the product – there’s nothing wrong with New Coke! – and changed the marketing.
Read the full storyUS Charges Two Iranian Cyber Criminals in Ransomware Scheme
by Masood Farivar In the first case of its kind, the U.S. Justice Department announced charges Wednesday against two alleged Iranian cybercriminals who used malware to infect the computer networks of U.S. municipalities, hospitals and other organizations in a scheme to extort millions of dollars from the victims. Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri, 27, are accused of creating and deploying a sophisticated malware known as SamSam Ransomware to forcibly encrypt data on the computer networks of more than 200 organizations and other victims in the United States and Canada. Savandi and Mansouri would then demand a ransom payment in the form of the virtual currency known as bitcoin in exchange for decryption keys for the encrypted data. In all, the two allegedly received more than $6 million in extortion payments. Officials did not name the victims that made the payments. Other victims that refused to pay ransom suffered more than $30 million in lost data. The victims included state agencies, city governments and hospitals, including the City of Atlanta, the City of Newark, the Port of San Diego, the Colorado Department of Transportation, the University of Calgary in Calgary, Canada, and six U.S. public health…
Read the full storyCourts Suspend Trial Lawyer’s License Trying to Extort Billions From Chevron
by Tim Pearce The D.C. Court of Appeals stripped Steven R. Donziger of his license to practice law in D.C. Sept. 14, leaving him unable to practice law anywhere in the U.S., Legal News Line reports. Donziger led a lawsuit against the oil and gas company Chevron for allegedly causing environmental and social harm to the Amazon region of Ecuador. Donziger previously lost his license to practice law in New York after the New York Supreme Court suspended it in July. He had only been licensed to practice law in New York and Washington, D.C., so he has effectively been banned from practicing law in the U.S., according to Legal News Line. “Because Judge [Lewis A. Kaplan’s] findings constitute uncontroverted evidence of serious professional misconduct which immediately threatens the public interest, respondent should be immediately suspended,” the New York Appellate Division of the Supreme Court wrote in its decision to suspend Donziger, Legal News Line reported. After an Ecuador court issued an $18 billion judgement against Chevron in February 2011, Donziger appeared that he would win the case. The judgement was later reduced to $9.5 billion, then a U.S. district court in New York nullified the judgement due to fraudulent and illegal activities by Donziger, according to…
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