Future of controversial $1B PennEast pipeline taken up by U.S. Supreme Court
Updated Feb 03, 2021;
Posted Feb 03, 2021
A sign June 29, 2016, on Hewitt Road in Hunterdon County show opposition to the proposed PennEast Pipeline.TT TT Michael Mancuso
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The nation’s highest court will decide the future of a controversial $1 billion pipeline planned in New Jersey, and set a precedent for pipeline construction across the country.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Wednesday that it would hear the appeal of the PennEast Pipeline Company, which plans to build a 120-mile natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region, across the Delaware River and into Hunterdon and Mercer counties.
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“The application was rejected after a peripheral inspection of the property by the municipal tax assessor determined it was not being used for farming or agricultural purposes,” reports the prosecutor’s office. But the landowner appealed, kicking off a subsequent, more detailed on-site inspection that, ultimately, revealed the illicit grow-op.
“We appreciate the tax assessor living up to the important motto, ‘If you see something, say something,’” Burlington County prosecutor Scott Coffina says in the statement. “His information directly led to the interdiction of this substantial illegal drug operation,” Coffina says.
Weiming Liu faces a first-degree charge of manufacturing 25 pounds (11.3 kilograms) or more of marijuana and a third-degree charge of possessing a controlled dangerous substance. Liu was taken into custody last week after a vehicle stop and has since been released, the prosecutor’s office reports.
Donald Trump left the White House last week without grabbing a get-out-of-jail-card for himself or his family, but he handed them out like confetti in New Jersey to those with political connections.
Call it justice for those with juice, prisoners or those with convictions who could appeal to someone or groups who could appeal directly to Trump.
The strategy paid off for a political power broker from Ocean County, a friend and former donor who stood trial with Sen. Bob Menendez and was convicted in a separate case, and a convicted Ponzi-scheme swindler from Lakewood.
Trump accelerated his brand of crony justice after the election, dispensing pardons to everyone from disgraced New Jersey developer Charles Kushner the father of Jared Kushner, Trump s top adviser and his son-in-law to a slew of former associates swept up in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Lakewood fraud convict thanks Trump for get-out-prison clemency
A notorious Ponzi schemer from Lakewood praised President Trump and his daughter Ivanka for springing him out of federal prison.
Several New Jerseyans who received pardons and a commutation in the final hours of Donald Trump s presidency expressed gratitude.
Trump granted 70 pardons with less than 11 hours to go in his term, four with New Jersey connections: former Ocean County GOP leader George Gilmore, Kenneth Kurson, Dr. Frederick Nahas.
One of his 73 sentencing commutations went to Eliyahu Weinstein, a Lakewood businessman convicted of defrauding real estate investors out of $200 million. For that, he was initially sentenced to 22 years in prison. But a federal judge later added 24 months after Weinstein, while under indictment for the real estate pyramid scheme, defrauded more victims who believed they were investing in Facebook stock.
This N.J. con man duped investors out of millions, feds say. Trump just released him from prison.
Updated Jan 20, 2021;
Posted Jan 20, 2021
Eliyahu Weinstein walks out of the federal courthouse in Trenton after giving a deposition in 2009.Frank Conlon | Star-Ledger file photo
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Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein, a 45-year-old former used car salesman from Lakewood, had a history of preying on others in his tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community, authorities said.
He ran a $200 million Ponzi scheme involving a virtual portfolio of fake real estate investments and land deals, authorities said. Then while awaiting trial in what was called one of the largest cases of fraud they’d encountered, he struck again with a new con game. He duped an investor in a $6.7 million scam involving claims he had an inside track on hard-to-get shares of the Facebook initial public offering, they said.