Ah, the trials and tribulations of the well connected cronies....
From Watchdog:
"Judge Michael P. Mills said GreenTech Automotive failed to prove his Mississippi court had jurisdiction over Watchdog.org’s parent, Virginia-based Franklin Center, and Watchdog’s Virginia reporter, Kenric Ward.
The judge’s order noted that Watchdog’s “articles were not aimed at Mississippi” or even GreenTech itself.
“The articles were aimed at McAuliffe and his bid to become Governor of Virginia, and McAuliffe sustained the ‘brunt of the harm’ of the published articles while GreenTech allegedly suffered from the residuary effects of the articles,” Mills said.
“The subject and ‘intended harm’ of the articles at issue in this dispute was McAuliffe — not GreenTech or Mississippi,” Mills wrote.
“This lawsuit against our news organization was an act of intimidation from the beginning, and we simply refused to cave,” said Jason Stverak, president of Watchdog.org’s parent Franklin Center.
While campaigning for Virginia governor, McAuliffe claimed he founded GreenTech – evidence, he said, of his entrepreneurial skill and readiness to make Virginia a major player in the car business. But Watchdog investigations revealed that McAuliffe’s plan to build his plant in Virginia with government subsidies had been rebuffed by that state’s economic development officials, some of whom were concerned about GreenTech’s effort to raise cash through an unusual federal visa program. That process, called the EB-5 program, allows foreign nationals to obtain a U.S. visa in exchange for $500,000 investments in targeted U.S. businesses. GreenTech is one of those businesses.
On April 5, 2013, just days before GreenTech filed its libel suit against Watchdog, McAuliffe quietly disclosed that he had resigned four months before, on December 1, 2012. The retroactive resignation appeared to be an attempt to divorce McAuliffe from the company.
Many links on the subject are at the end of entire post
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