The U.S. Department of Justice’s duplicity knows no bounds when it comes to the prosecution of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin under the U.S. Travel Act, a Kennedy-era law intended to target organized crime. Case in point: the…
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut combines the worst characteristics of Cotton Mather, Girolamo Savonarola and the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Senior, not Junior. The 76-year-old Democrat’s persistent, self-righteous efforts to censor the internet, using “the kids” as his rallying…
Granted, the Jonestown Massacre may not be the perfect metaphor for Washington Post scribe E.J. Graff’s recent review of California prosecutor Maggy Krell’s book, Taking Down Backpage. Still, the way Graff blindly glugs down Krell’s self-serving account of the latter’s…
Defense attorneys in the Lacey/Larkin trial fought like feral bobcats on Friday to block inflammatory testimony from a woman trafficked as a teen and advertised in adult ads posted by herself and pimps to the now-defunct classified-listings site, Backpage.com. Federal…
MAJOR POINTS Michael Lacey, Jim Larkin and four codefendants currently face 100 counts including the following: facilitating misdemeanor state prostitution offenses in violation of the U.S. Travel Act; money laundering; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and conspiracy to facilitate misdemeanor…
In a motion filed Tuesday in federal court in Phoenix, the government asserts that attorneys for Village Voice Media (VVM), the 17-paper alt-media chain once co-owned by veteran newsmen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, advised VVM that the Craigslist-inspired classified…
Federal prosecutors have failed, for now, in their most repugnant smear tactic to date in the case involving veteran journalists and onetime Backpage.com owners, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. In a ruling issued May 7 from Phoenix’s federal court, Judge…
The Federal Government Has Been Waging a Trojan-Horse Assault on Sex Workers U.S. officials couched the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in March 2018, coupled with the FBI’s takedown of the online listings giant Backpage.com weeks later,…
Critics of H.R. 1865, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which passed the U.S. Senate 97 to 2 on March 21, warned that the bill’s broad language targeting online adult ads would have a devastating effect on freedom of…
