That Viral “Zoom Cat Lawyer” Has A Very Shady Past
February 10, 2021
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.
DRUG WAR
The Zoom Cat Lawyer Used Federal Agents To Torment a Former Lover With Drug Raids and Bogus Charges
In 2014, Reason reported on the misbehavior of Rod Ponton, who has suddenly risen to internet stardom after being unable to turn off an adorable filter during an online legal case.
BILLY BINION | 2.10.2021 9:54 AM
On Tuesday, the bulk of the Twittersphere came together, with partisan divisions falling to the wayside, if only for a few brief moments in time. The source: a Zoom video recording of trial proceedings in Texas's 394th Judicial District Court, in which Presidio County attorney Rod Ponton appeared on-screen in the form of a wide-eyed kitten. Someone, it seemed, had gotten ahold of the filter settings. ... "I'm here live," he said. "I'm not a cat." ... "I can…I can see that," replied Judge Roy Ferguson.
So far, the clip has racked up more than 3.6 million views on YouTube and over 26.9 million on Twitter. "If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these difficult times they're going through," he told
The New York Times in an interview, "I'm happy to let them do that at my expense."
Such a light moment is a nice reprieve in a bleak era. It can also make us forget the enormous power people like Ponton wield, and the capacity they have to use that power for very bad things.
For example, a
Reason investigation in 2014 and subsequent documentary reported that, as a prosecutor, 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.
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