Across Virginia
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia political consultant has been sentenced to a year in prison for diverting tens of thousands of dollars from conservative political action committees and filing false reports to cover it up.
Sixty-six-year-old Scott Mackenzie of Arlington was treasurer of multiple PACs, including Conservative StrikeForce and Conservative Majority Fund.
Conservative StrikeForce has been under scrutiny since 2014 when Republican Ken Cuccinelli sued the PAC after his losing 2013 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia. Cuccinelli said the group pulled in more than $2 million invoking his name and campaign in fundraising solicitations, but his campaign only received $10,000.
Mackenzie admitted directing $32,500 from the PACs to a Winchester woman with whom he had a relationship. Election reports falsely claimed she earned the money doing political work.
Prosecutors had sought a term of 2.5 years at Friday’s sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. They said in a sentencing memorandum that when the FBI searched his home in 2017 they found a basement office with “blue bins stuffed full of cash, stacks of checks dating back to 2011, 2013 and 2014, bank statements and correspondence from donors who identified themselves as elderly, sick and on fixed incomes.” They say there is a three-decade history of complaints against Mackenzie with the Federal Election Commission.
Mackenzie sought probation.
A white man charged with cyberstalking and making racist online threats against a black activist in Virginia is expected to plead guilty next month, according to court records and a spokesman for federal prosecutors.
Brian McGinn, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Western District of Virginia, confirmed that Daniel McMahon is expected to enter a guilty plea during a hearing set for March 16. However, McGinn said in an email Friday that he couldn’t discuss the details of any potential guilty plea until after McMahon appears at the hearing before U.S. Judge Norman Moon in Charlottesville.
A docket entry on Friday says only that Mahon has a change-of-plea hearing set for March 16. Jessica Phillips, an attorney for McMahon, didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.
McMahon, of Brandon, Florida, had a trial scheduled to start June 15 at the federal courthouse in Charlottesville.
McMahon was charged last August with posting social media messages intended to intimidate activist Don Gathers and interfere with Gathers’ plans to run for a seat on Charlottesville’s city council. An indictment says McMahon, who was 31 at the time of his arrest, expressed white supremacist views on his social media accounts.
McMahon, who remains in federal custody, pleaded not guilty to charges including bias-motivated interference with a candidate for elective office.
During a hearing in Florida last year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Wilson said McMahon’s mental instability, ability to obtain firearms and praise of mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Charleston, South Carolina, through his online communications raised concerns he posed a threat to the community.
“He is cheering on mass shooters. That is what really bothers me,” Wilson said.
Nicholas Matassini, an attorney who represented McMahon at that hearing, argued his client’s diatribes were protected political speech.
“I don’t think it exhibits any manifest danger to the community,” Matassini said.
A prosecutor, Carlton Gammons, told the magistrate that violent threats aren’t free speech. One of the comments McMahon made on social media said Gathers needed to be stopped through “a diversity of tactics,” according to Gammons, who said that term meant physical violence.
McMahon’s mother told detectives that her son didn’t like African Americans, Jews or gay people and that she worried her son exhibited some of the characteristics of mass shooters, said Siobhan Maseda, a detective for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, who assisted in McMahon’s arrest.
Others have accused McMahon of bombarding them with hateful, threatening messages through online aliases.
Lindsay Ayling, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, told The Associated Press last year that McMahon used an account on Gab under the pseudonym “Jack Corbin” and anonymous accounts on other social media platforms to repeatedly harass her. The messages included sexually violent threats and a post mocking her brother’s death.
Ayling said the harassment began after she became an outspoken advocate for taking down Silent Sam, a Confederate statue that protesters toppled on the university’s campus in 2018.
NEWS RELEASE: On February 17, 2020 at approximately 4:00 pm, National Park Service dispatchers received a report of a vehicle off the roadway and down an embankment near parkway milepost 23. Reports came from pedestrians near milepost 23 who spotted the pickup truck while jogging along the parkway. Rangers responded and found the operator, James Jenkins, 84 years old, of Brightwood VA, deceased in his crashed vehicle. The accident and cause of death are currently under investigation.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – The Catholic Diocese of Richmond says it will offer monetary settlements to sexual abuse victims if they give up the right to sue. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the diocese announced the offer on Monday. Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout said in a press release that the offer is “the best course for our diocese to reach a just reconciliation with our victim survivors.” The diocese said it does not know how much money will be needed for such settlements. Victims who want to participate must initiate a claim by April 3 and file the claim by May 15.
The General Assembly is now into the second half of considering new legislation, and among some of the proposals not yet receiving much public attention is one that would impact many trips you take to the supermarket or drug store. It would impose a 5-cent fee for any plastic bag you use for the first time for most grocery and drug store items. The measure has passed the House and awaits Senate action. WFIR’s Evan Jones has both sides of the debate:
(From Governor’s office) RICHMOND—The 13th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station successfully launched today at 3:21 p.m. from Wallops Island. The mission will deliver 8,009 pounds of cargo to the space station. The “NG-13” mission is a partnership of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (Virginia Space), NASA Wallops Flight Facility, and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. The spacecraft launched from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad 0A. Northrop Grumman named the NG-13 spacecraft after former astronaut Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He became the first African American astronaut in 1967.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg is set to address Virginia Democrats at their biggest fundraising event of the year.
The billionaire former New York City mayor is set to be a featured speaker at the Democratic Party of Virginia’s annual gala Saturday. His campaign is also listed as a top donor to the event on the party’s website.
Bloomberg had made multiple visits to Virginia, which is part of a group of Super Tuesday states that will hold their primary elections on March 3. Bloomberg is skipping the early voting states and focusing on later delegate-rich contests like Virginia, California and Texas in his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Gun control and clean-energy groups affiliated with Bloomberg spent several million dollars last year helping Virginia Democrats win full control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than two decades.
Other presidential candidates are sending surrogate speakers, according to a published list of speakers. That includes Valerie Biden Owen, the sister of former Vice President Joe Biden.
Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are set to speak as well. The Democratic Party of Virginia called on both men to resign last year after a racist picture surfaced in Northam’s medical school yearbook and two women accused Fairfax of sexual assault, which he denies.
Amtrak’s Roanoke service appears to be a success by almost any measure in its first 21 months, but another state-sponsored public transportation project is also doing well — so much so that new routes are coming this year. It’s the Virginia Breeze bus service, a daily round-trip between Blacksburg and Washington, with an additional run on weekends. The response is leading the state to adding routes from Southside Virginia to Richmond, and from Danville to Washington. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
Wildlife Center of Va. via AP
BRISTOL, Va. (AP) — An orphaned black bear cub has been placed with a substitute mother this week after being saved by a dog and brought to safety.
The rescue effort unfolded after the dog turned up at its owner’s home in Washington County with a cub in its mouth on Feb. 5, Bill Bassinger, wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, told news outlets. The male cub wasn’t hurt by the dog, he added.
The cub, estimated to be two to three weeks old, was taken to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro for treatment and eventual resettlement with his own species. The center keeps female bears with monitoring collars on for this purpose, according to Bassinger. Conservation officers use the collars to locate the bears, then track them and listen for cubs making sounds in their dens, the center’s website says. If they find a good match, staff members place orphaned cubs outside the dens, and mother bears usually adopt them as their own, Bassinger and experts said.
“The mothering instinct is just very strong in most animals,” Bassinger told the Wytheville Enterprise. “Generally, most females will take the young back, even after it has been handled by humans.”
The male cub was settled into an incubator earlier this week where he received constant care and feeding, an update on the wildlife center’s website said. He was described as bright, alert and “vocalizing readily.” The center said the cub was placed with a new mother who was nursing three cubs of her own on Wednesday.
MGN
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — More than 1,000 people rallied at the Virginia Capitol on Thursday, protesting legislation advancing in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly that would ease restrictions on abortion access.
Speakers urged the crowd that gathered in a steady rain to pressure lawmakers to vote against bills that they say would undo regulations that protect pregnant women. They encouraged attendees to join anti-abortion advocacy groups to push back against Democrats who retook control of the General Assembly in November, and they vowed to unseat members of the new majority.
“Virginia has taken a wrong left turn. But we’re here today to let all inside this Capitol know that we will never rest and we will never relent in our commitment to putting this Commonwealth back on the right course,” said Republican Del. Kathy Byron.
Both the House and Senate have passed bills to undo restrictions on abortion access that were enacted when the legislature was under GOP control, including a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and a requirement that women seeking an abortion undergo an ultrasound and counseling.
The bills, which Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam supports, would also roll back the requirement that an abortion be provided by a physician and undo strict building code requirements on facilities where abortions are performed. Each chamber must pass the other’s before they could be sent to Northam for his signature.
Abortion-rights advocates say the restrictions injected politics into a health care decision and made obtaining an abortion overly burdensome.
“Medical decisions should be between a woman and her health care providers. Medical professionals know the proper protocol for each individual patient, not politicians,” said House Democratic Majority Leader Charniele Herring, who is sponsoring that chamber’s bill.
Democrats have also defeated some Republican-sponsored bills this session that would have enacted abortion restrictions.
Abortion opponents say the existing restrictions protect pregnant women’s health and safety and are prudent, given the gravity of the decision to obtain an abortion.
Attendee Patty Raehn, from Colonial Beach, said the issue became critically important to her when she became pregnant at a young age and was encouraged to have an abortion. She said she went on to give birth to a son, now 27, whom she called her “saving grace.”
Raehn said she opposes the Democrats’ legislation and that abortion is her No. 1 issue when deciding how to vote.
“I will not look at other issues. If you don’t stand for life, I can’t vote for you,” she said.
Speakers at the rally included leaders of conservative and anti-abortion advocacy groups, including March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, and women who said they had obtained abortions they later regretted.
After the rally concluded, attendees marched through downtown streets. Some carried signs that said “unborn lives matter” and “abortion is murder.”
Capitol police spokesman Joe Macenka said the crowd numbered over 1,000, though he said the department could not provide an exact count.