Texas conservative activist charged after contractor allegedly assaulted repairman over voter fraud claims

His attorneys said Wednesday a prominent Houston conservative activist has been charged with unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in an related October incident. to a contractor the activist has hired.

Jared Woodfill and Gary Polland, attorneys for Dr. Steven Hotze, said the Harris County District Attorney’s Office told them Wednesday that Hotze was indicted on charges against a former police officer, Mark Aguirre, who worked for the agency. Hotze.

Aguirre has been retained to pursue a voter fraud investigation on behalf of Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, a nonprofit run by Hotze.

Woodfill and Polland said they have not seen the indictment and it has not been uploaded to the Harris County judicial database as of Wednesday afternoon, but both assert that Hotze is innocent of any crime.

“He’s not going to plead guilty, he’s going to be exonerated, and we’re going to ask the district attorney to apologize,” Woodfill told the Associated Press in an interview.

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“He’s not guilty unless they’ve criminalized political activism,” Polland said in a separate interview.

A spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s office declined to comment.

Aguirre was charged on December 14 with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after a man accused him of leaving him on the street and holding him with a gun in an attempt to prove what authorities called a voter fraud conspiracy real.

Aguirre believes the air conditioner repairman is the mastermind. He said the man’s truck was filled with fraudulent ballots when he drove his SUV into it on October 19, according to authorities.

Aguirre told police that he and some friends had set up a “command station” at a Marriott hotel in suburbs of Houston, which conducted 24-hour surveillance of the repairman for four days, according to reports. police statement.

Lieutenant Wayne Rubio at the Texas Attorney General’s Office later told police that Aguirre had asked his office to conduct a traffic stop to facilitate the investigation. When Rubio said he couldn’t do it, Aguirre said he would do it himself and “arrest a citizen,” according to the affidavit.

Aguirre said he drove the man’s truck on the street, pointed a gun at him, pressed him to the ground and put his knee on his back, the affidavit affidavit.

Police responding to the incident searched the truck and found only air conditioning parts and tools, authorities said.

“A protracted investigation…allegations of voter fraud were determined to be baseless and found no evidence of illegal voting,” Houston police said.

Aguirre was set free with a $30,000 bounty. A message to his attorney, Terry W. Yates, was not immediately returned.

According to police, Aguirre was paid $266,400 by the Liberty Center for God and Country.

A conservative power broker, Hotze unsuccessfully sued to block an extension of early voting in Texas for this year’s election. He also sued officials in Harris County to restrict in-person and absentee voting, alleging without evidence that Democrats engaged in “vote harvesting” by collecting votes. from the homeless or the elderly.

Allegations of former President Donald Trump and other major voter fraud cases have been dismissed by several judges, state elections officials, an affiliate of the Department of Homeland Security and former Attorney General William Barr.

Hotze is also part of a group of individuals who have unsuccessfully tried to challenge the legality of driver’s license voting in Harris County.

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here