Is there a petition I can sign for this?
A former client of Houston attorney and Texas House candidate Jared Woodfill is asking state and federal investigators to give fresh scrutiny to a 2017 investigation into allegations that he misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from his firm’s clients.
In a sworn affidavit sent this week to the Texas Rangers, the FBI’s Houston office and U.S. attorneys in the Southern District, Amy Holsworth, the former client, alleges that Harris County prosecutors mishandled her case against Woodfill and unexpectedly closed it. She also suggests the outcome of the case may have been improperly influenced by District Attorney Kim Ogg and Rachel Hooper, a Houston attorney and counsel for the Texas GOP whose relationship with Ogg has been under scrutiny since January.
Holsworth said in the new complaint that she recently learned that Hooper was associated with Woodfill’s legal team during the 2017 investigation into his firm. Woodfill appeared in a video with Hooper that was taken at the Harris County courthouse days after investigators raided his office. In October 2021 — a month before Holsworth says she was told the Woodfill case was closed — Hooper was reportedly hired as a contract employee for the district attorney’s office.
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The complaint centers around a fraud and money laundering investigation into Woodfill’s firm that began in 2017, after a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge found more than $140,000 in unaccounted funds or overpayments to Woodfill’s firm. In a massive findings of fact document that was filed in federal court at the time, the judge detailed more than a year of alleged financial “discrepancies,” overcharged attorneys fees and other instances of financial mismanagement by Woodfill’s firm.
At one point, the judge found, there was only $650 left of the $225,000 that was placed in a trust to fund legal services for Holsworth and her then-husband. Her husband declared bankruptcy, and Holsworth eventually filed a criminal complaint against Woodfill with the district attorney.
Woodfill’s firm disputed the judge’s findings.
In a separate complaint filed with the Houston Police Department around the same time, Woodfill was accused of misusing at least $300,000 from a trust account in a different divorce case.
In November 2018, Woodfill’s law offices were raided by the District Attorney’s Office, which seized more than 127 boxes of files and six computers, according to a search affidavit from the time. The warrant also cited a second complaint from a woman who hired Woodfill’s firm in 2013, as well as an employee for Woodfill’s firm who said that Woodfill often moved money between client accounts and his own bank accounts.
Woodfill was also publicly reprimanded and fined by the Texas Bar for violations related to the complaint.
In her new complaint, Holsworth wrote that she had expected charges to be filed in the case, given the detailed allegations that were already outlined by a federal judge.
At one point, Holsworth, who was previously active in Harris County conservative politics, alleges that her friends and employer were contacted by a private investigator claiming to work for Woodfill. She wrote that Hooper’s husband Don, who runs a small conservative blog, spread “malicious gossip” about her and harassed her in online Republican groups.
Holsworth said that she spent years contacting officials in the District Attorney’s Office to check on her case. She wrote that she also ran into Ogg at a 2020 political event, and introduced herself as one of the victims in the Woodfill investigation.
“Ogg said that she knew exactly who I was and that she would reach out soon,” Holsworth wrote. “I never heard from DA Ogg.”
In the year after, Holsworth wrote that she and another alleged victim of Woodfill’s continued to contact investigators, who told them that they were waiting for Ogg’s approval to bring the case to a grand jury.
In November 2021, Holsworth said she was unexpectedly told that the case had been closed.
“This came as a complete surprise to me,” she wrote. “I was always given the impression that they believed they had a very strong case against Woodfill.”
See here and here for more on that office raid. Jared Woodfill is pond scum and a menace to society, and you don’t have to convince me that he’s dirtier than the Reliant Stadium floor after a monster truck show. I have no idea if Amy Holsworth’s complaints have merit or not, but you know how we can find out? By investigating them, which I sincerely hope that the Rangers and the FBI do. The allegations are credible, so let’s see where the evidence takes us. Public safety and common decency require nothing less. As for the allegations that the case was improperly dropped by the DA’s office, that’s obviously very troubling. There’s a lot to unravel here, and again the remedy for that is more investigation. Let’s get on with it.
I don’t know enough about this event to comment. I am more disturbed by Woodfill’s involvement in the Paul Pressler case.
Once again Boss Ogg manages to get her name associated with some past scandal, nefarious, or controversial case. Perhaps she should ply her trade in Hazzard, not Harris, County.