In scathing order, Uncle Nearest judge takes aim at Weavers’ tangled web

Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated periodically with new information. If you have tips about what’s going on at Uncle Nearest, please get in touch by emailing me ([email protected]) or texting me on Signal (dinfontay.11). Anonymity available.—Dave.

After weeks without a significant update, Tuesday brought a pair of big filings to the docket in Uncle Nearest’s sprawling receivership case in the Eastern District of Tennessee. Taken together, they raise serious questions about whether cofounding couple Keith and Fawn Weaver can regain control of the deeply troubled distillery and firewall their intertwined business empire from further scrutiny—and federal investigation.

First, Judge Charles Atchley released a 62-page order denying motions from Uncle Nearest cofounders Fawn and Keith Weaver aimed at dismissing the receiver, Philip Young, and partially approving a motion from Young aimed at expanding the receivership to include the Weavers’ nominally separate businesses. The document, which represents the biggest step forward in a case that turns on the distillery’s ~$108 million in defaulted loans, is unsparing in its assessment of the credibility of self-avowed #PeoplesCEO Fawn Weaver, about whom Hizzoner writes (emphasis mine throughout):

Neither Uncle Nearest nor Grant Sidney immediately responded to Fingers’ requests for comment from the firms themselves and from Fawn Weaver, who has interests in both.

For now, Grant Sidney—the firm that issued the press release announcing Weaver’s disastrous, quickly dismissed, now-appealed Chapter 11 gambit in March—is looped into the proceedings. Atchley tasked Young with producing an investigation into how much of that firm has been commingled with Uncle Nearest proper. Recall, Weaver herself freely admitted on the stand to moving $20 million lent by MP-Tenn, an investment vehicle affiliated with Jay Z’s MarcyPen Capital, to Uncle Nearest into a Grant Sidney account to prevent it from being “snatched” by Young.

But it may not end there, the judge warned: “For the avoidance of any doubt, this holding should not be construed as a finding that it would never be appropriate to expand the receivership to include one or more of the six remaining Additional Entities.”

Then, late Tuesday night, Young filed a brief notice to the court that signals the Weavers may soon be facing more scrutiny—and beyond the bounds of civil court, at that.

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