Sen. Charles Schwertner
Lawyers for state Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican alleged to have sent lewd messages to a graduate student, said Wednesday that the University of Texas at Austin has hired former federal prosecutor Johnny Sutton to help investigate the accusation.
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Schwertner is “devastated that the graduate student involved received any texts of this nature from anyone,” the lawyers, Perry Minton and David Minton, said Wednesday in a press release that also said the senator had taken a polygraph test and that the results backed his denial.
By hiring Sutton “to help resolve this matter, the University has engaged one of the most experienced and fair-minded investigators around,” the lawyers said. Sutton was recently contracted by UT to conduct an internal review, after a former employee of the law school was arrested amid a fraud investigation involving potentially millions of dollars.
See here, here, and here for the background. It would be nice to have some idea how long this investigation may take, but at least everyone agrees that the investigator is aces. One hopes this means he’ll actually talk to the woman who made the complaint.
In the meantime, Schwertner has a complaint of his own.
Schwertner’s attorneys on Wednesday also called on the University of Texas to issue a statement exonerating Schwertner.
“The leak by three senior University officials is in clear violation of state and federal laws,” the Mintons said. “Additionally, these officials deliberately set out to leak these false allegations to the press in order to damage Senator Schwertner in the middle of a political campaign. There is no other plausible explanation.”
The attorneys said the administrators should be fired for compromising the integrity of their investigation.
Actually, another plausible explanation I can think of is that someone with knowledge of the investigation had leaked about its existence because they thought it was a sham that was on its way to becoming a coverup. They got the word out about it while they still could to prevent that outcome. I have no idea if this is remotely true – it is certainly possible that there was a political motive at play here, or maybe there was some other reason for what happened – but I can spin a hypothetical as well as Schwertner’s attorneys.
And so, the final word goes to Meg Walsh, from the inbox:
The investigation of Senator Schwertner’s inappropriate text must be fully investigated without threats or retaliation from the Dan Patrick, State Senators or any other person.
I call upon the State Senate to reverse its decision to take a “sit and wait approach” and also launch a full investigation into this matter.
Women must be believed and heard when these incidents occur, no matter if the offender is a boss, friend, U.S. Supreme Court nominee or Texas State Senator.
From my years of experience helping survivors of sexual assault, law enforcement and the University of Texas are doing the right thing to in keeping the survivor anonymous.
Speaking out about harassment is a courageous and vulnerable act in seeking justice. Women must be believed and supported, plain and simple.
“If these allegations are true, Senator Schwertner is unfit to serve in office.”
We’ve seen everything Meg Walsh is talking about right there in Washington. Let’s not have a repeat of it in Austin.