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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton may yet face criminal charges for peddling shady investments to his former clients, and his friends in high places may not be able to save him. On March 6, 2015, I sent a letter to Collin County grand jurors explaining that they can investigate and indict Paxton on their own initiative, regardless of whether District Attorney Greg Willis recuses his office from the case. Judging from the initial feedback that I have received, I believe the grand jury will give the matter fair consideration during its meeting tomorrow.

Willis’s campaign website still features pictures of him alongside Paxton, and although their longtime friendship does not legally disqualify Willis from the case, Willis’s silence is creating an appearance of impropriety.  The Travis County District Attorney’s Office publicly acknowledged its investigation of Paxton last year before deciding on January 29, 2015 that Travis County was the wrong venue, and most of the relevant facts are already matters of public record, thus there is no reason for Willis to be secretive about whether he is investigating Paxton. One might conclude that he is keeping quiet until the limitations period lapses.

Unlike the bogus charges against former Governor Rick Perry, the case against Paxton has legs. On May 2, 2014, Paxton signed an agreed order with Texas Securities Commissioner John Morgan admitting that he referred clients to his friend’s investment company even though he was not a registered securities representative (he also failed to disclose that he was getting a 30 percent kickback on investment management fees). As I wrote in my letter to the grand jury, I am surprised that his attorney let him sign that document because, in my legal opinion, Paxton’s signatures on the order and the attached affidavit are an admission that he committed a third-degree felony.  … Read more

Mark the date. On March 3, 2015, the citizens of Hearne reclaimed their government from City Attorney Bryan F. “Rusty” Russ, Jr. and the rest of the Booger County Mafia by recalling Councilwoman Maxine Vaughn.

Notwithstanding the race-baiting and fear mongering of the mafia and its allies, voters ousted Vaughn by a vote of 269 to 260. Residents petitioned for a recall election last August, and by law the election should have been held last November, but law doesn’t count for much where Rusty Russ is concerned.

Vaughn, Mayor Ruben Gomez, and Councilwoman Michael Werlinger refused to schedule the election, but on February 2, 2015, the Tenth Court of Appeals ordered the city to hold the election. Now that Rusty and his allies have lost control of the council, I have to wonder if they will start shredding documents at city hall tonight.

 

The recall election for Hearne City Councilwoman Maxine Vaughn ends on Tuesday, and the local political machine wants everyone to know that the negroes are trying to take over the city government. Hide your women and children!

Dennis Phillips, the publisher and editor of the Robertson County News, published a libelous column on Thursday, falsely claiming that when Councilwomen Hazel Embra, Joyce Rattler, and Lashunda White were running for office last Spring, they came to his office along with local activist William Foster and outlined a “plan to unseat the current city government and take over Hearne.”

Not one to be subtle, Dennis connects William Foster to Quannell X, the black radical from Houston, and implies that the three councilwomen – all of whom are black – are trying to impose something radical and racial on the city. He even lists the city officials whom the councilwomen supposedly said they intended to fire. The problem? Dennis fabricated the story. Why? As explained below, Dennis has a serious conflict of interest now that he and his employer have accepted a taxpayer-funded loan from the political machine.

I spoke with Dr. Foster, as well as Councilwomen Embra and White, and they had a radically different account of the meeting with Dennis. For starters, Ms. White did not attend the meeting. Ms. Embra and Ms. Rattler went to Dennis’s office at his invitation, but nothing was said about firing anybody, much less taking over the city government.  … Read more

This evening the Tenth Court of Appeals in Waco ordered the Hearne City Council to hold a recall election for City Councilwoman Maxine Vaughn within 35 days.  You can read the opinion by clicking here.

Congratulations to my clients, Councilwomen Hazel Embra, Joyce Rattler, and Lashunda White, as well as former mayor Milton Johnson, all of whom have battled Hearne City Attorney Bryan F. “Rusty” Russ, Jr.’s underhanded schemes to block the election. I have attached a copy of my December 16, 2014 letter to Robertson County District Attorney Coty Siegert that explains how Mr. Russ committed a third-degree felony while trying to maintain his grasp on power.

If Ms. Vaughn is recalled, my clients will have a 3-2 majority on the city council, and they have repeatedly said the first order of business will be to fire Mr. Russ, who makes more than $4,700 per month for a part-time job even though (1) he does not prosecute traffic offenses, and (2) he charges extra for any litigation that he works on. Based on my review, that’s more than three times what an average city attorney makes in a town the size of Hearne.

On Friday, February, 6, 2015 at 10 a.m., Visiting Judge Reva Towslee-Corbett will hear my motion to sanction Mr. Russ, refer him to the State Bar of Texas, and enjoin him from filing any additional legal claims without first getting approval from the city council. The hearing in the Robertson County Courthouse will be open to the public, so come one and all. … Read more

Former Robertson County Judge Jan Roe seems awfully anxious to start feeding at the public trough again. She lost her election in November, but shortly thereafter convinced the outgoing commissioners’ court to appoint her to the water board. Now, according to an e-mail that I received today, she wants to replace Pee Wee Drake as the city manager of Hearne.

On December 23, 2014, I filed a request for records under the Texas Public Information Act, and Hearne City Attorney Bryan F. “Rusty” Russ, Jr. produced 50 pages, including a November 10, 2014 e-mail claiming that Roe wants to succeed Drake.  I doubt seriously that my clients — Councilwomen Hazel Embra, Joyce Rattler, and Lashunda White — would let that happen, but the e-mail is further evidence of Mr. Russ’s efforts to maintain control of city government.  Mr. Russ is making a nice chunk of money from the City of Hearne (more on that later, but I can tell you that he gets paid far more than the city attorneys for other communities of comparable size, and a company that he owns received taxpayer funds from the city). Obviously, he doesn’t want to lose control of his cash flow.

I’ll have more to say about the remaining records, including Mr. Russ’s letter to the editor that was published in the Robertson County News on December 25, 2014, in the next few weeks. But I can say this much: Mr. Russ lied, even as he accused my clients of lying. While it is not a crime to lie to a newspaper, it could sure get him in trouble with the State Bar of Texas.

Robertson County Judge Jan Roe is fit to be tied. In a recent post on her campaign Facebook page, Judge Roe claimed — without any specifics whatsoever — that I was “lying” on this blog and elsewhere, then she suggested that I was obsessed and deranged. This reminds me of the good old days in the courthouse, when then-District Attorney John Paschall (a political ally of Judge Roe) would publicly call me a “queer” or a “homo.” (I’m straight, but thanks for your interest, John).

Beneath Roe’s Facebook post, I posted a comment asking Roe to identify specifically what she thought I was lying about. I also offered to let Roe write her own rebuttal, which I would post verbatim and unedited on this blog. Roe quickly deleted the comment (and I am informed that she has deleted every other comment that disagreed with her post).

Yesterday, I sent the following e-mail to Judge Roe:

Judge Roe,

[Name deleted] informed me about your objections to my October 19, 2014 blog post. If I have misstated something, I certainly want to correct it. According to [name deleted], your original argument in January centered on your definition of “disabled” and did not concern your use of a vote harvester to collect absentee ballots. [Name deleted] said that argument arose later. If you believe anything else is incorrect, please identify the error with as much specificity as possible. Alternatively, you can write your own version of events or your own response, and I will post it on my blog unedited. Thank you.

Ty Clevenger

As of this afternoon, Judge Roe still has not responded, and I am not holding my breath. Like most bullies, Judge Roe pushes people around, then cries foul when somebody pushes back.  Regardless, my offer to post her rebuttal on this blog still stands. She and all of her cronies can also post whatever they wish in the comments section below, and they can do it without fear that their comments will be deleted.

I have nothing to hide. How about you, Judge Roe?

Last week’s article in the Washington Post about black voters in St. Louis revolting against local Democratic candidates got me thinking about Robertson County, where black residents may be turning against the white (and often racist) Democratic establishment. If so, it is only the latest sign that the local political machine, a.k.a. the Booger County Mafia, is beginning to unravel.

First, I should mention some news that will likely send a shiver through the political machine: Senator John Cornyn recently asked the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Department of Justice to respond to my letter reporting fraud and political corruption in Robertson County. I have not seen Cornyn’s letter to the Rangers or DOJ, but a source in Austin told me last week that it has circulated within the Texas Department of Public Safety and at least one other state agency. You can read my letter to Cornyn by clicking here, and his response to me by clicking here. My earlier letter to DOJ can be found at BoogerCountyMafia.com (or you can click here), as can the “road map to an indictment” that I sent to District Attorney Coty Siegert.

As you can see from the BCM website, I’ve already provided prosecutors with enough evidence to indict District Judge Robert M. Stem and attorneys Bryan F. “Rusty” Russ and James H. “Jimmie” McCullough. All three of them are key players in the white Democratic political machine, as is their ally, County Judge Jan Roe (more on her below). Meanwhile, the disbarment case of former Robertson County District Attorney John C. Paschall is scheduled to be heard in January, and I suspect a special grand jury will be convened before the holidays in order to indict Paschall for stealing from the estate of Marium Oscar.

As I was writing this blog post on Monday evening, I learned from multiple sources that Charles Ellison, the Republican challenger to Judge Roe, passed a polygraph test in response to allegations that he offered to pay for votes. Ellison took the test in Austin, but I don’t know yet whether the test was administered by DPS, another agency, or a private examiner.  As I mentioned in my post on Saturday, the allegations against Ellison looked like an attempt to distract from Judge Roe’s own shady campaign practices. Ellison has now challenged his accusers to take a polygraph, but I doubt they will accept, because they probably know they were lying.

One more bullet point: on Monday I was retained by Hearne City Council members Joyce Rattler, Hazel Embra, and Lashunda White to force the city council to hold a recall election for Councilwoman Maxine Vaughn. You can read my letter to Hearne City Attorney Rusty Russ by clicking here, and I’ll have more to say about it below. Now, back to my original story… … Read more

Robertson County District Attorney Coty Siegert recently asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to settle a dispute between Siegert and Robertson County Judge Jan Roe over voting by mail, and I suspect his request will ultimately prompt the Texas Secretary of State to change the application form for mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, the dispute between Siegert and Roe is still reverberating through the courthouse.

Back in January, Siegert, a Republican, and Roe, a Democrat, got into a shouting match in the courthouse about whether Hearne residents were illegally registering to vote absentee by claiming that they were disabled.  According to Roe, voters could vote by mail if they had any kind of disability (maybe a speech impediment?), whereas the Texas Election Code defines “disability” as “a sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or of injuring the voter’s health.” See Tex. Election Code 82.002(a)(emphasis added).

As it turns out, Roe had hired a convicted felon to recruit potential voters. That campaign worker had been targeting “The Hill” and the Columbus Village neighborhood in Hearne, trying to sign up as many absentee voters as possible, apparently without regard to whether the voters had “a sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day…” After Siegert questioned Roe’s definition of “disability”, Roe reportedly got angry and accused Siegert of trying to suppress the vote.

According to Siegert, he said at the time that he had no intention of prosecuting any voters – who would have had good reason to believe that they were qualified to receive an absentee ballot – but only the people who were knowingly inducing voters to break the law. (That happens to be the same policy adopted by the attorney general’s office). Roe, who is not an attorney (even though she is a judge), argued that because “disability” is undefined on the ballot application, she was free to define the term as she saw fit.

… Read more

Today, I’d like to say a few words about Spandex booty shorts and seventh-grade volleyball. (Granted, that’s far beyond the normal sphere of discussion on LawFlog, but it’s my blog, so I suppose I can talk about whatever I want). Here’s the scenario: A few weeks ago, my friend’s 12-year-old daughter made the team at a small-town school in North Texas, and the young lady told her coach that she wanted to wear her own shorts instead of the little black panties issued by the school.

The coach pressured her to conform to the school uniform, but fortunately grandma (a former coach herself) was nearby and put the young coach in her place. My friend’s daughter now gets to cover her rear end, but I’m wondering why the half-witted school officials approved the uniform in the first place. Maybe the educrats thought they could attract more lecherous old perverts to the games if the pre-teen girls showed a little more skin? Or maybe the seventh-grade boys weren’t thinking about sex enough already? … Read more

On Tuesday, I launched DirtyRottenJudges.com and BoogerCountyMafia.com, both of which outline evidence of crime and misconduct against U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith, Jr.  Yesterday and today I was interviewed by a reporter from the Waco Tribune-Herald, and I am informed that the newspaper will be running a story tomorrow about Judge Smith.

That will probably be the beginning of the end of Judge Smith’s judicial career, and it’s long overdue.  On DirtyRottenJudges.com, I laid out the evidence that Judge Smith forcibly groped and molested a female deputy clerk in his private chambers. Other female employees have described incidents of groping and sexual harassment at the hands of Judge Smith, but this far none of them have gone public with their stories. I hope that changes soon.

Meanwhile, this afternoon I received an audio recording of a telephone conversation between attorney Jeff Duke and Judge Robert M. Stem of the 82nd District Court of Robertson County, Texas.  Earlier this week, I wrote about how Judge Stem tried to pressure Jeff to file a bar grievance against me, apparently because I had publicly exposed some of Judge Stem’s criminal activities. When you listen to the audio, bear in mind that Jeff had been an attorney for about a year at the time of the conversation with Judge Stem. It sounds to me as if Judge Stem was trying to get Jeff to do some of his dirty work.