All sorts of warning bells here.
Still a crook any way you look
The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”
Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”
Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.
Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.
The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there’s none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”
“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.
Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.
“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”
Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.
“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”
There’s some details about the warrants and what happened at the raids in this later story. Is it possible that there’s some genuinely illegal activity happening? Sure, politics has its share of shady characters, and as these stories make clear there’s a lot we don’t yet know. All one can do is speculate, which doesn’t add anything of value to the conversation. But you’d have to be Tooth Fairy-level naive to take this on face value. I mean, Ken Paxton, in an extremely heated election year, in a rare Republican pickup opportunity district, with vouchers on the line, and bullshit claims of “non-citizens” registering to vote on top of it all? There’s not enough salt in the world to take this with. The Chron has more.
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