That Viral “Zoom Cat Lawyer” Has A Very Shady Past

Reason reports:

A Reason investigation in 2014 and subsequent documentary reported that, as a prosecutor, Rod Ponton leveraged the gears of the federal government in a yearslong effort to level bogus drug charges against a woman in Alpine, Texas, ultimately succeeding at destroying her business.

The target, Ilana Lipsen, was his alleged former lover; she says she had one sexual encounter with him when she was an 18-year-old college student in the early 2000s. (Ponton, who is now 69, would have been in his early 50s.)

Lipsen told Reason that, in the aftermath, she was “disgusted with herself,” and although she noticed odd behavior from Ponton afterward—she recounted him driving by her house, for example—she cut ties.

Read the full article. As you’ll see, Ponton repeatedly had the DEA raid Lipsen’s smoke shop on bogus charges she was selling synthetic weed. When lab tests proved that to be untrue, he continued his campaign, ultimately having Lipsen and her mother arrested. And that’s just for starters. What a story.

As Reason detailed in 2014, the Zoom cat lawyer is a drug warrior who used federal agents to raid a former lover’s business so he could level bogus charges against her.

No, really.https://t.co/cZv1LLyPiy

— reason (@reason) February 10, 2021