Conservatives will do anything to attempt to control or even disrupt elections under the guise of voter fraud, aka the Big Lie and Stop the Steal.
Make no mistake: There’s a grassroots movement brewing to disenfranchise, intimidate, and criminalize Black and brown voters across the nation. If voting rights activists don’t step up, they’ll get away with it.
A prime example is taking place in Texas, where former Houston Police Department Capt. Mark Aguirre ran air conditioner repairman David Lopez off the road, held him at gunpoint, and searched and stole his truck—all because Aguirre believed Lopez was part of a massive conspiracy of secreting 750,000 fraudulent mail-in ballots, Bolts reports.
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Last year, Lopez filed a civil lawsuit against GOP activist Dr. Steven Hotze for his part in paying for and planning the violent investigation of Lopez, which resulted in Aguirre’s arrest. Hotze runs the nonprofit Liberty Center for God and Country.
According to court documents, Aguirre told police he was part of a “group of private citizens called ‘Liberty Center,’” and that the group was “conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.”
According to the arrest affidavit, Aguirre told police Lopez was “using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any database.”
Police officers on the scene when Lopez was stopped and searched found nothing inside the truck besides air conditioner parts and tools—exactly the kinds of items Lopez would be expected to have.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Aguirre, who was fired from the police department in 2003 after a raid gone bad, was indicted and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. During his indictment, the Harris County District Attorney’s office claimed Aguirre was paid “a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.”
“He [Aguirre] crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed … His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.
Of course, Hotze’s camp denies being behind Aguirre’s investigation.
"We would never endorse that, saying go pull someone over, put a gun up to their head and make them open up their truck," Jared Woodfill, an attorney for Hotze, has said.
But in early April, a gala organized by Hotze and his group was held in Houston to raise money to:
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Hire private detectives to investigate, identify, and expose the criminal vote fraud scheme in Harris County and across Texas.
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Ensure that poll watchers are recruited, hired, and trained for the upcoming elections.
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Fund legal defensive and offensive efforts to Stop Vote Fraud.
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Broadcast radio messages offering rewards to those who expose individuals involved in vote fraud.
Speakers at the “Freedom Gala” were listed as conspiracy theorist and Big Lie guru Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow; GOP Party Chair Cindy Siegel; and Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton.
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Paxton has a long history of working to turn back results in the 2020 presidential election, and Bolts reports that the attorney general has increased pressure to prosecute more voting-related cases, many of which involve Black and brown voters.
The frightening thing is that it’s not just Texas launching militia-style voter fraud Gestapo.
In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a militarized Office of Election Crimes and Security department that would report directly to him. And in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law making it illegal to hand out food and water to voters standing in lines.
Gilda Daniels, litigation director for the Advancement Project and author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America tells The Appeal, “Whether it’s an armed police officer patrolling a polling place or just having a police car with lights blaring in front of a polling place, all can serve as a form of voter intimidation and certainly can have a chilling effect, particularly in Black and brown communities.”
Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, tells the Bolts the “possibilities are kind of endless for how that could go really badly” when someone is hired to investigate based on beliefs of a stolen election.