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An air conditioning repairman was driving his truck through Houston in late October when a black SUV suddenly struck him in the tail. When he got out, the driver of the truck jumped up and pointed a gun at his head, police said.
When the police arrived, the gunman told an incredible story: The driver, he said, was the face of a vast electoral fraud scheme and had about 750,000 fake ballots inside his truck.
That story was totally untrue, police now say. The man’s truck was filled with nothing but air conditioning parts, and the attacker, Mark Anthony Aguirre, a former captain of the Houston Police Department, had been paid more than $ 250,000 by a right-wing organization to pursue far-fetched conspiracy theories. electoral fraud. .
On Tuesday, Aguirre was arrested and charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon as part of a “bogus voter fraud conspiracy,” the Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
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“He crossed the line from dirty politics to committing a violent crime and we’re lucky no one was killed,” Harris County Democratic District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.
A lawyer for Aguirre, 63, challenged the charges, telling KTRK that the case is “political.”
“I think it’s a political process. I really do,” attorney Terry Yates told KTRK. “He was working and investigating voter fraud, and there was an accident. A member of the car got out and jumped on him and that’s where the confrontation took place. It is very different from what he is citing in the affidavit.”
The strange story of Aguirre’s alleged assault comes as US President Donald Trump and his allies continue to spread unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud, and features a direct link to a group of Texas Republicans who unsuccessfully sued for drop nearly 127,000 Harris County ballots.
Police said Aguirre had received $ 266,400 from the Liberty Center for God and Country, a Houston-based organization funded by Republican mega donors. The group’s CEO is Steven Hotze, a prominent right-wing activist from Texas who joined other Republican activists in the election lawsuit filed in late October.
“His alleged investigation went backwards from the beginning, first alleging that a crime had occurred and then trying to prove that it happened,” Ogg said of Aguirre’s work.
Aguirre spent 24 years in the Houston Police Department, the Houston Chronicle reported, before being fired in 2003 for his role in a failed raid on a department store parking lot.
The bizarre case involving the air conditioning repairman, who was not named by police, began in mid-October, police said, when Aguirre called the Texas Attorney General’s Office asking authorities to make a traffic stop. for your personal “research”.
John Locher / AP
Aguirre had been guarding the man’s home for four days and claimed that he “knew” the man had hundreds of thousands of “fraudulent ballots in his truck and at his home.”
When a lieutenant told Aguirre that he could not involve the police, Aguirre responded that “he would drive the traffic stop himself and make a citizen arrest,” according to court records.
Then, around 5:30 am on October 19, Aguirre rammed the man’s truck, ordered him to drop to the ground, placed a knee on the man’s back, and “pointed a gun at him,” says an affidavit. . Aguirre’s anonymous associates later searched his repair truck and took it away.
When officers arrived, Aguirre still had his knee on the man’s back, according to court records. Aguirre told an officer that he and his “friends” were “investigating a voter fraud conspiracy” operated by the man at his home and inside a shed in the backyard.
Aguirre added that his group had been guarding the man’s home for four days and claimed he “knew” that the man had hundreds of thousands of “fraudulent ballots in his truck and at his home,” according to the affidavit. He claimed that he was “using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any database.”
“I just hope he’s a patriot,” Aguirre told the officer who interviewed him, the affidavit said.
Aguirre then took police to the air conditioning repairman’s home and showed an officer where he had parked to keep an eye on him, according to the affidavit.
But police said Aguirre’s allegations were not confirmed. Police found no “evidence of election fraud or vote gathering” after the technician allowed them to search his property.
“There were no ballots in the truck. It was full of air conditioning parts and tools,” Ogg’s office said in the statement.
Later, police discovered that Aguirre had received three separate wire transfers from the Liberty Center for God and Country, including $ 211,400 transferred the day after the alleged assault.
Jared Woodfill, president of Liberty Center and attorney for Hotze, confirmed to Texas Tribune that the organization had hired a company run by Aguirre to investigate the fraud allegations before Election Day. The company hired about 20 private investigators to work on fraudulent ballot claims in Harris County and other parts of Texas, the Tribune reported.
“[Hotze] did not direct or direct any of the investigations, “Woodfill told the Grandstand. “The [Liberty Center] hired the investigation team that examined the allegations. “
Hotze sent advice and information to the group of private investigators, who would then decide how to proceed, Woodfill told the Grandstand. Woodfill also said KTRK that the center would not support anything similar to what they accuse Aguirre.
“I would be surprised if that’s what happened,” Woodfill said. KTRK.
Following an investigation by the Houston Police Department and the Harris County Election Security Task Force, Aguirre’s allegations of voter fraud “proved unsubstantiated,” the district attorney’s office said.
Despite claims made by Trump and other conservatives, the courts and law enforcement have found no evidence of any widespread fraud in the November election. All lawsuits brought by the president’s legal team have been dismissed in several states.
Aguirre was released after posting a $ 30,000 bond. He is expected to return to court on Friday (NZT), court records show.
