“VIRGINIA” MAGISTRATE JUDGE JOEL HOPPE TERMINATES CASE, ‘MERGES’ WITH ANOTHER CASE
LIT was looking to update this COVID delayed criminal case and what they found is that the judge obviously doesn’t like transparency and/or LIT watching the case.
He closed the case, with a comment it was ‘merged with MJ’. No case reference shown, so we had to go onto PACER to try and find it, which we did. So we meander over to the new case and the first docket entry glaring at us is MOTION TO SEAL…
Ahhhh…this looks like a cover up. So we slide down to the bottom of the page and see there’s a guilty plea and plea agreement.
We go to pacer to purchase and it numbers the docs and pages but when we click through, we are presented with ‘cannot locate the case with caseid 119229’ – no matter the doc. we try to pull.
It’s sealed from public eyes. Not good.
So next, we went to Reuters, and noted it’s an Alison Frankel piece. We’ll hit her up on Twitter and see if she’s willing to investigate.
It’s interesting that it’s a Virginia case. The Burkes are having a terrible time getting an honest answer out of the Virginia State Bar about their complaints against Tom Hefferon and Matt Sheldon of Goodwin Law.