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Tag: attorney general

Miyares declares run for 2nd term as Va. AG

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares declared Monday he will run for a second term in 2025, leaving Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears a clear path to the Republican nomination for governor.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is prohibited by state law from serving consecutive terms as governor, endorsed both candidates following Miyares’ announcement. A former Virginia Beach delegate and son of a Cuban refugee, Miyares is the first Hispanic person elected to statewide office in Virginia. He defeated Democratic incumbent Mark Herring in 2021’s GOP sweep of Virginia’s top three statewide offices, along with Earle-Sears and Youngkin.

Miyares will likely face either former state Del. Jay Jones or Shannon Taylor, Henrico County’s commonwealth’s attorney, on the Democratic side.

Earle-Sears announced in September her candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor, following U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s declaration in November 2023 that she would seek the Democratic nomination. Miyares was also rumored to be considering a bid for governor, but his announcement Monday keeps Earle-Sears, the state’s first Black woman and immigrant to serve in a statewide office in Virginia, from having to run a potentially expensive primary campaign to win the GOP nomination. Spanberger is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

“In 2021 Winsome, Jason, and I ran as a team, and we have served Virginians as a team,” Youngkin said in a statement endorsing Earle-Sears and Miyares. “In 2025, Winsome and Jason will once again lead the Republican team as candidates for governor and attorney general. Both have been indispensable partners to advance our shared, commonsense conservative policies that have made Virginia the best state in America for business, backed the blue and cracked down on crime, stood strong for our military and veterans, and transformed education by raising teacher pay, re-establishing academic excellence, and empowering parents in their child’s education and life.”

 

Government | Politics 2023: JASON MIYARES

Miyares, whose mother fled communist Cuba in the 1960s for the United States, is the first Hispanic person elected to statewide office in Virginia. He became the state’s attorney general in 2022 after representing part of Virginia Beach in the House of Delegates for six years.

Since assuming office from a two-term Democratic AG, Republican Miyares has been repositioning the job as the state’s top cop, notably cracking down on the state Parole Board. In a report released in January, Miyares found “significant and repeated violations” of state law and board policies under its former chair. He and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are expected to battle for the 2025 GOP gubernatorial nomination.

MOST RECENT BOOK READ: Geopolitical forecaster Peter Zeihan’s “The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization” and re-read “The Abolition of Man,” by C.S. Lewis

SOMEWHERE I’D LIKE TO VISIT: Cuba. Given that I recently made Putin’s public enemies list, I won’t be visiting Russia anytime soon.

ONE THING I’D CHANGE ABOUT VIRGINIA: Bring an NBA team to Hampton Roads and finish the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel

Is ESG another CRT?

In January, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares joined a group of 24 other state attorneys general in challenging a U.S. Department of Labor rule allowing fiduciaries to consider environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria such as climate change in making investment decisions for retirement funds. The AGs argued that ESG practices work against investment companies’ fiduciary duties to maximize profits for their clients.

Of the 25 plaintiff states, 22 are solidly red states; all but two have Republican governors.

In March, congressional Republicans, with the help of two moderate Senate Democrats, passed legislation to undo the Labor ESG investing rule. President Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on March 20, preserving the ESG rule for now.

The attempts to overturn the Labor rule are part of ongoing GOP efforts to oppose corporate use of ESG standards in making financial decisions like loans and investments. This comes despite widespread ESG support from big business and arguments from some financial experts that anti-ESG stances could hurt state retirement funds.

In Republican-controlled Texas, for example, the legislature has prohibited most of its state agencies and local governments from entering into contracts with firms that “boycott” energy companies using fossil fuels. This led to Texas state worker pension funds pulling investments from big mainstream companies like BlackRock.

Eyeing a potential presidential run, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has fallen into line and spoken out against ESG, just as he’s taken predictable stances banning teaching “critical race theory” in state public schools (which, arguably, wasn’t happening anyway). Additionally, he mandated that public school students play on sports teams and use locker rooms matching their assigned-at-birth genders.

In January, the governor took credit for blocking a $3.5 billion Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle battery plant from bringing 2,500 jobs to Pittsylvania County over concerns the factory would be, in Youngkin’s words, “a front for the Chinese Communist Party.”

He also supported state legislation to ban abortions after 15 weeks, although that effort was doomed to fail in the Democratic-held state Senate.

Politicians often propose such “brochure bills” that have a better chance of appearing on a campaign flyer than making it through a committee and being passed into law. They go through the motions to satisfy their party’s base and donors. Think of it as a process of checking off boxes for electoral reasons, not for governing or legislating.

Youngkin’s checked most of these boxes lightly and only once, just enough for a campaign ad. This is political gamesmanship that values talking points over policy and substance.

However, it’s doubtful whether this gambit will pay off for Youngkin, who lagged far behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a March poll by Roanoke College of Virginia Republicans’ choices for the 2024 GOP presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, the business community, once almost entirely aligned with Republican positions, has shown little interest in wading into such culture-war conflicts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $81 million on lobbying last year, has in recent years begun endorsing some Democrats. It’s also supported ESG and immigration labor reform and opposed the Trump administration’s trade war with China. Because of these evolving stances, House GOP leaders, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have refused to take meetings with the chamber and considered launching a House investigation into the chamber over its endorsements of ESG criteria.

Big corporations, which largely comprise the chamber’s membership, have gradually trended toward more progressive positions on social issues, including gender-based rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, and ESG policies. Some Republicans rail against this as “corporate wokeness” — whatever that means.

It’s time to get politicians out of our bedrooms, bathrooms, doctor’s offices and classrooms. And let’s also keep them out of our boardrooms and financial investment decisions. Fiduciary responsibility means considering all risks and opportunities, including those related to ESG.  

Richard Cullen to become Youngkin’s counselor

Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin has selected former Virginia Attorney General Richard Cullen as counselor to the governor.

A senior partner and former chairman of McGuireWoods, Cullen will leave Virginia’s largest firm on Jan. 14, the day before Youngkin is sworn in.

Cullen joined McGuireWoods in 1977. From 1991 to 1994, he served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and from 1997 to 1998, as Virginia attorney general.

“When I have felt the pull of public service, McGuireWoods encouraged me to answer that call, past and present,” Cullen said in a statement. “That is one of the reasons the firm has been my home for so many years. Although I am leaving, McGuireWoods and everyone here will always be family to me.”

In his tenure specializing in government investigations and white collar defense, Cullen has represented prominent figures, including former Vice President Mike Pence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Cullen also led a McGuireWoods team that sued North Korea, winning a $501 million judgment in December 2018 for the parents of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who died of injuries suffered in a North Korean prison.

Cullen was one of the attorneys advising Virginia Military Institute during a state-ordered investigation into systemic racism at the college, but VMI switched firms in early 2021. Cullen has also represented The Boeing Co. in connection with a federal investigation into crashes of two 737 Max airplanes.  Other high profile clients included former FIFA head Sepp Blatter and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, as well as BP America Chairman Lamar McKay, whom Cullen represented in litigation following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.

Cullen also served on President George W. Bush’s legal team during the 2000 Florida recount. During the Senate select committee’s investigation of the Iran-Contra affair, he served as special counsel to U.S. Sen. Paul Trible, R-Virginia, and during the Watergate investigation, Cullen was on the staff of U.S. Rep. M. Caldwell Butler, R-Virginia.

As chairman of McGuireWoods from 2006 to 2017, Cullen helped the firm grow from 750 lawyers in 15 offices to more than 1,000 lawyers in 21 offices, and helped open offices in Texas and California, establish McGuireWoods London and establish a presence in Shanghai. Cullen helped birth McGuireWoods Consulting, the firm’s public affairs arm, in 1998.

“Richard’s impact on this firm, the city of Richmond, the commonwealth of Virginia and the country is nothing short of remarkable. We will miss our friend and colleague, but our loss will be to the great benefit of the governor’s office and the people of Virginia,” McGuireWoods Chairman Jonathan Harmon said in a statement.

A graduate of Furman University and the University of Richmond School of Law, Cullen is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar.

Va. GOP prepares for nomination convention on Saturday

On Saturday, roughly 54,000 Virginia Republican convention delegates will have the opportunity to choose their party’s 2021 nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Unlike the typical “firehouse convention,” currently prohibited due to COVID-19 precautions, the state GOP has opted for an “unassembled convention” with 39 voting locations open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and delegates will vote in ranked order — picking their top choice, followed by second, third and so on. This means the candidate with the lowest number of votes at the end of each round of counting will be dropped, and this will continue until one candidate has a majority (rather than a plurality) of votes.

About 54,000 people are signed up as delegates to choose the GOP candidates who will appear on November’s ballot.

Because the paper ballots must be counted by hand, it will likely take a while to get results. The party has reserved a ballroom at the Richmond Marriott through Thursday, May 13, where tabulators and party officials will gather, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Although the Virginia GOP has previously run unassembled conventions during the pandemic, this is the first of this size and scale, and the process getting there has been fraught with disagreement, with gubernatorial candidates pushing back on the type of ballot-counting software and state Sen. Amanda Chase’s filing a failed lawsuit against the party in an attempt to force a state-run primary election that could have drawn an expected electorate of 300,000. State Democrats have opted for a primary on June 8, and early voting started April 23.

Here are the candidates under consideration:

Governor

Seven candidates are in the race, but the race appears to favor a group of four:

  • State Sen. Amanda Chase, the pro-gun rights and strongly pro-Trump conservative, has been criticized by those in her own party and was censured by the state Senate earlier this year, in part for her participation at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Although she led in early polling and fundraising, Chase’s momentum appears to have slowed down since other candidates entered the race. However, polls are of less importance in a convention format than in primaries and general elections, and Chase has strong support among Virginia’s Trump fans.
  • Del. Kirk Cox, former House of Delegates speaker and a retired high school teacher, is considered a more moderate candidate compared to Chase, although he has nonetheless brought up conservative talking points such as “cancel culture.” Cox argues that he is the best prepared candidate to face off against former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has a wide lead in the Democratic field of candidates, and has openly courted convention delegates to mark him as their second choice, if not their first.
  • Pete Snyder, an entrepreneur from Charlottesville who made a splash last year by starting the Virginia 30 Day Fund to financially assist Virginia small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, is well-known among state Republicans. Although he previously ran an unsuccessful campaign for the state GOP’s nomination for attorney general, Snyder has cast himself as an outsider candidate and is focused on opening state schools for in-person learning.
  • Former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin, another Northern Virginia businessman, also claims the “outsider” title and is touting his business expertise and promises to create jobs. (Youngkin and Snyder have largely self-funded their campaigns, according to reports filed with the State Board of Elections in April.)
  • Other candidates include: Sergio de la Peña, a retired Army colonel and former Trump administration Pentagon official; Peter Doran, a former think tank head; and former Roanoke Sheriff Octavia Johnson.

Lieutenant governor

Six candidates are in the race, but two candidates have significant fundraising leads on the others, based on campaign filings for the first quarter:

  • Virginia Beach Del. Glenn Davis is a telecommunications entrepreneur and leads the field in fundraising. An unsuccessful candidate for the lieutenant governor nomination in 2017, Davis has filed a lawsuit to find out who sent out an anonymous text message to GOP voters calling him a “Gay Democrat,” although he is married to a woman.
  • Former Del. Tim Hugo was also named in the mysterious text message, which supported his candidacy as a “real conservative,” but Hugo’s team says it is not behind the message. Hugo previously represented Fairfax County in the House of Delegates, losing his seat in the 2019 election.
  • Other lieutenant governor candidates include: Puneet Ahluwalia, a political and business consultant; Lance Allen, a national security executive; Maeve Rigler, an attorney and financial consultant; and Winsome Sears, a former state delegate who represented Norfolk in the early 2000s.

Attorney general

There are four candidates running for the GOP attorney general nomination, and two have outpaced the others in fundraising:

  • Del. Jason Miyares of Virginia Beach leads the field in fundraising. The former Virginia Beach prosecutor says he would focus more attention on crime victims and would investigate the Virginia Parole Board, which has come under fire for releasing an inmate last year who killed a police officer in 1975.
  • Jack White, a partner at Tysons-based corporate law firm FH+H who has represented police officers. He is a former Trump administration appointee to an Army panel on sexual assault and sexual harassment and served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. An Army veteran, he also chaired the Foundation for Fairfax County Public Schools. He entered the race in March but raised close to $100,000 before March 31.
  • The other two candidates are Chesterfield County Supervisor Leslie Haley, a partner at the Park Haley firm and chair of the Greater Richmond Partnership; and Chuck Smith, a retired commander in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps and former Virginia Beach GOP chair.

Nexus Services CEO calls state AGs’ lawsuit ‘a form of retaliation’

Nexus Services Inc., the bonding company being sued by the states of Virginia, Massachusetts and New York, responded Friday with accusations of its own. In a statement, Nexus CEO and President Mike Donovan said that the state attorney generals’ allegations that the company financially preyed on immigrants held in federal detention are “offensive, 100% false and detrimental.”

Donovan said in the statement that he believes that the three attorneys general and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which filed the civil suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia last month, sued the company “as a form of retaliation” after Nexus subsidiary Libre by Nexus filed suits against Virginia, New York and Massachusetts “to ensure the rights of prisoners.” Libre by Nexus also successfully sued CFPB in 2017 to suspend its investigation of Nexus.

Nexus, founded in Augusta County in 2013, is now legally based in Atlanta but its founders are residents of Fishersville and its principal place of business is in Verona, according to the complaint.

Donovan said in a statement released in February that “while the federal government continues to detain scores of immigrants, the AGs have ignored the fact that these detention centers operate within their own borders. From Buffalo, [New York], to Farmville to Suffolk, [Massachusetts], immigrants are tortured while Herring, [New York Attorney General Letitia] James and others conduct a shadowy investigation into the only company helping the immigrants they claim to be protecting.”

The company seeks to have the federal suit dismissed, according to documents filed with the court.

Libre by Nexus also announced Friday it has set up toll-free hotlines in the three states so callers can report “abusive government agents and policies” and have their claims reviewed by legal counsel.

On Feb. 22, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring joined the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts and the CFPB in suing Nexus and its Libre subsidiary, along with its co-owners, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Richard Moore, Nexus Services Director Evan Ajin and Donovan. The suit alleges they violated the federal Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 and “engaged in deceptive and abusive acts or practices in connection with Libre’s offer of credit to consumers for their immigration bonds,” and that Nexus and the three individual defendants “knowingly or recklessly provided substantial assistance to Libre in its deceptive and abusive acts or practices.”

Libre by Nexus offers to pay for customers’ immigration bonds to secure their release from government detention centers while they are being held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement system. The attorney generals’ lawsuit allegations include that Nexus charged “large upfront fees and hefty monthly payments while concealing or misrepresenting the true costs of its services,” including $420 monthly payments for GPS ankle monitors that didn’t work since February 2018. According to the company, the GPS monitors were phased out in 2020, and instead customers are tracked with the use of an app downloaded to their smartphones.

Also, according to the suit, “from at least 2014 until at least late 2017, Libre used a multipart, written client agreement of over 20 pages, all written in English except for a single page written in Spanish,” although “the vast majority of Libre’s clients and their co-signers are Spanish speakers, most of whom do not read or write English and many of whom cannot read or write in any language.”

The states and CFPB filed 17 counts against the company in the February suit and asked the court to award Virginia up to $2,500 per violation, as well as $1,000 per violation in legal fees, along with other damages and restitution.

Libre, in a response to the suit filed earlier in March, argues that in earlier suits filed by Libre customers, “every time a Libre program participant has testified under oath regarding allegations of consumer fraud, three different, well-respected arbitrators (one a former judge) concluded that zero fraud took place.”

In December, the Virginia State Corporation Commission ordered that Libre by Nexus pay $425,000 to settle the state’s Bureau of Insurance’s investigation into the company, which was accused of acting as an unlicensed insurance agent. Libre is under investigation by at least nine other state or federal agencies, including the U.S. Justice Department.

“Libre by Nexus is hopeful that this baseless lawsuit will bring the real issues of detaining immigrants into the light and pledges to keep helping those who are being unfairly and egregiously detained, tortured and separated from their families,” the statement said. A hearing date has not yet been set.

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Shenandoah County distillery faces environmental violation charges

Maurertown-based Filibuster Distillery LLC and its co-founder, Sid Dilawri, have been indicted on 115 counts of violating State Water Control laws by allegedly dumping more than 40,000 gallons of industrial waste into a Shenandoah County stream, according to the Virginia Office of the Attorney General.

The Shenandoah County distillery, Filibuster Barrels LLC and Dilawri were indicted following a two-year investigation by the Shenandoah County Fire Marshal and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). 

“Not only did this distillery allegedly dump tens of thousands of gallons of industrial waste into a stream, Dilawri also allegedly lied about it to investigators and that will not be tolerated in Virginia,” Attorney General Mark Herring said in a statement. “I want to thank our partners at DEQ and the Shenandoah County Fire Marshal for their help and coordination on this case. I hope these charges will send a message to other businesses that Virginia takes protecting our environment very seriously.”

Neither Filibuster Distillery nor Dilawri could be reached for comment.

Waste dumping primarily occurred during November 2018, according to indictments, but Filibuster continued to dump industrial water with high zinc and copper levels until at least September 2020. According to the Attorney General’s Office, Dilawri initially denied the actions, but then said that there had been a one-time accident at the distillery. Dilawri later admitted he had provided false information to law enforcement and had known about the dumping, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

“DEQ unequivocally values Virginia’s waterways and works with vigor to protect them every day,” DEQ Director David Paylor said in a statement. “Today, DEQ took necessary steps to carry out our mission to protect and improve the environment for the health, well-being and quality of life of all Virginians. With cooperation and support from the Office of the Attorney General, DEQ will continue to hold violators accountable.”

Senior Assistant Attorney General Paul Kugelman and Assistant Attorneys General Chris Bergin and Jerald Hess are handling the case as well as Phillip O. Figura, major crimes and emerging threats chief prosecutor.

Filibuster Distillery was founded in 2013 and distills and sells bourbon, whiskey and gin.

 

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Va. attorney general secures $15.3M settlement for former ITT Tech students

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring secured an agreement to obtain $15.3 million in debt relief for at least 1,840 former ITT Tech students in Virginia as part of a settlement including 47 additional attorneys general and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his office announced Tuesday. The entire settlement is approximately $330 million for 35,000 borrowers who have outstanding balances.

ITT Tech (a for-profit technical institute) filed for bankruptcy in 2016 amid investigations by state attorneys general and action from the U.S. Department of Education to restrict ITT’s access to federal financial aid. Before it closed in 2016, it was one of the largest for-profit educational institutions in the U.S., with 130 campuses.

The settlement is with private loan program PEAKS Trust, which was run by the college and affiliated with Deutsche Bank entities. It was formed following the 2008 financial crisis as private lending sources for for-profit colleges dried up. ITT developed a plan with PEAKS to offer students temporary credit to fill the tuition gap between federal student aid and the full education cost. The groups knew or should have known students would not be able to pay for the temporary credit when it became due nine months later, according to the settlement. Students thought that the temporary credit was similar to a federal loan in that it wouldn’t be due until six months after graduation, according to the settlement.

“Student loan debt continues to be a significant burden to Virginians and their families across the commonwealth,” Herring said in a statement. “As attorney general, I am committed to protecting Virginians from unscrupulous for-profit schools and shady lenders who try to pressure, abuse and exploit student loan borrowers. I am glad we were able to reach this agreement that I hope will alleviate some of the financial pressure on Virginians who were taken advantage of by this scheme.”

Students were expected to accept loans from PEAKS, which loaned money at high interest rates to many students, when the temporary credit was due, according to the settlement agreement. The settlement says that ITT would pull students from classes and threaten to expel them if they did not accept the loans. It’s expected that the default rate on the PEAKS loans will exceed 80% due to the cost of the loans and graduates not being able to repay them.

PEAKS agreed under the settlement to forgo collection of the outstanding loans and cease business operations. It will send notices to borrowers about the canceled debt and cancel automatic payments. PEAKS also must give updated credit information for affected borrowers to credit reporting agencies.

Affected students do not need to do anything to receive the debt relief. They will receive notices that explain their rights under the settlement. Students can contact PEAKS or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with questions.

 

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