Indictment of a Prominent GOP Donor on Felony Charges Highlights the Depravity of the 2020 Election in Texas

     Between Texas and Florida, it's a tight race for which one has more of a zeal for anti-business authoritarianism. Greg Abbott cost the nation billions of dollars, much of which will be felt by Texas taxpayers directly, with an expensive border inspection stunt that turned up zero illegal immigrants and not even an ounce of any illegal substance; Ron DeSantis gave the state of Florida a $1.6-billion annual tax increase by stripping Disney of its special tax status, shifting the burden for security and other costs onto the taxpayers.

     Florida has a pretty good name for itself in the race to see which state can turn toward violent white supremacy most quickly, as well: Ron DeSantis couldn't bring himself to condemn Nazis that are multiplying like rabbits in the state, and his attempt at gerrymandering will take black Floridians right back to the era of Jim Crow. Both states are on track to surpass 100 arrests related to the Capitol riot relatively quickly. (Florida, however, is winning in this regard due to the fact that most of its arrests are Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other violent militia members.) Today, however, we're continuing our focus on arrests being made in Texas: it was Texas, after all, that had the Austin Arson and the Biden Bus Attack, the latter incident not resulting in consequences of any kind, and Texas was the home of Alan Swinney.

     To be clear, nobody should have expectations of anything positive from the GOP, ever. Look at Ray Holmberg, a Republican who spent nearly 50 years in the North Dakota Senate before announcing his resignation effective June after it was revealed that he texted a man who was in jail on child porn charges asking to have a teen boy come to his home to, at a minimum, give him a massage. Just south, there was the case of South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who was impeached after getting drunk, killing a man with his car, using his public position to escape felony manslaughter charges, and then implying that the death of the man he had killed was not a tragedy because the man had been a Democrat. That's two GOP members in two states in April 2022.

     However, this latest indictment from Texas is disturbing. We all know voter intimidation in Texas was especially rampant in 2020: Chad Stark of Leander became the first person arrested by the DOJ Threats Against Election Workers Task Force in January 2022 for saying it was "time to kill" an election official in Georgia. This latest indictment is that sort of behavior on steroids. 71-year-old Steven Hotze, a prominent conservative donor in Texas who opposed gay marriage, defeated an anti-LGBT2SQIA+ discrimination ordinance in Houston, told Greg Abbott to "shoot to kill" any and all Black Lives Matter protestors in Texas, and tried to get 127,000 Harris County ballots thrown out, paid over a dozen private investigators literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate voter fraud for which no proof of such widespread activity significant enough to influence the result of the 2020 election has been found. One of these PIs, a former Houston police captain named Mark Aguirre, ran an air conditioning repair van off the road and held the driver at gunpoint after claiming the van was filled with 750,000 illegal ballots prepared by Democrats. Obviously, it was just some poor AC technician trying to do his or her job, and Mr. Aguirre obviously faced two felony charges of unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Here's the thing, though; here's where Mr. Hotze's criminal liability comes in: not only was Mr. Aguirre acting on his behalf, but most of the money Mr. Hotze paid Mr. Aguirre was actually the day AFTER the attack. It's not as if Steven Hotze saw Mark Aguirre had crossed a line and cut ties with him: he actually saw that behavior as a positive, and Mr. Aguirre wouldn't have done it had is not been for nearly $270,000 provided by Mr. Hotze. Therefore, Steven Hotze gets the same charges. If convicted on both, he could face anywhere from 30 months to 22 years in prison. Still, he's CONTINUING his fruitless quest for voter fraud, one he has spent millions on, in spite of looking at spending potentially the rest of his life in a state prison.

     Vandalism. Arson. Vehicle attacks. Assault with a deadly weapon. Terroristic threatening. Voter suppression laws. Gerrymandered maps. These people will stop at nothing to defend their power and try to overturn American democracy in Texas and across the nation. That's why it's so important to vote in the 2022 midterms. If the GOP takes power, this will become the norm; this will be the new playbook, and Americans won't like where it takes us.