Dave Wilson would like to not be sued any more, so he went to Commissioners Court to air his grievances over the lawsuit that stemmed from his controversial election last year.
Dave Wilson
After Wilson won the election, and County Attorney Vince Ryan sued Wilson, trying to keep him from office. To prove it before trial, Ryan combed over Wilson’s family Facebook pages and added his wife and kids to a witness list.
After he found that out Wilson told us, “They’re abusing their power. Vince Ryan is totally out of control.”
On Tuesday, Wilson was at commissioners’ court to ask it all to stop.
“I apologize for taking your time and I especially apologize for the county attorney wasting valuable taxpayer resources on his frivolous lawsuit against me,” he told Commissioners.
He claimed the county attorney has spent $100,000 on the case. The county attorney says the real amount (not counting staff time) is just under $8,000.
Among the costs, the county spent $3,000 on private investigators to trail Wilson. At least one of those PIs rented a room at the Super 8 across from Wilson’s claimed residence capturing video of Wilson coming in and out of that warehouse apartment.
When he saw the video Wilson told us, “He caught me red handed living at my residence.”
The county attorney’s office says this is important work to protect voters who deserve a representative who lives where he says he does.
“Mr. Wilson likes the publicity. He likes to make these appearances and he likes to make allegations that are difficult to respond to,” Robert Soard, Ryan’s chief of staff, told Eyewitness News.
That trial was originally set to start this week, but this story says it’s been moved back to July. Not sure what’s up with that. The fact that Wilson has been filmed at the warehouse he’s claiming as a home address is irrelevant; the question is whether he was living there in some meaningful sense before the election. The difficulty for Vince Ryan is how do you prove he wasn’t? If their case is based on the assertion that it isn’t habitable, Wilson can say “is too, I’m living there now!” I don’t want to think about how insufferable Wilson will be if he wins and can credibly claim to have been victimized by that mean old Vince Ryan. And I’ll say again, if Wilson does win we may as well just abandon the idea of residency requirements, because if his setup is kosher I can’t imagine what wouldn’t be. May as well just leave it to the voters if there isn’t an enforceable standard and an enforcement mechanism.