US Election Week 2020

[Malthus]

At this point, it's like beating a dead horse with another dead horse.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's a brilliant customer identification/segmentation strategy for a world class grifter.  The problem with grifting is figuring out who the grade A suckers are, and especially the ones with money to burn.  By pushing this asinine legal strategy and bombarding the free airwaves with idiotic theories, you know whoever is buying into it is ripe for whatever grift you want to pull.  Trump has just created a vast database of repeatable con victims he can use to fund himself for the next decade.

[DGuller]

I heard a theory that one of the reason Nigerian prince emails are so poorly written is to filter out people who would be smart enough to be a waste of time.

[Caliga]

I heard a theory that one of the reason Nigerian prince emails are so poorly written is to filter out people who would be smart enough to be a waste of time.

Yeah, I think that's true.  I attended a seminar led by a Nigerian-American engineer a few years back and (while I can't remember why now) he brought those up and asserted the same.  IIRC one of his in-laws worked for the police and had investigated some of those scams, which are like quasi-legitimate companies there.

[The Larch]

Ex-Cop Allegedly Held AC Repairman At Gunpoint, Convinced He Was Voter Fraud Kingpin

A former Houston police captain convinced of a vast conspiracy to steal the election allegedly ran a man off the road and held him at gunpoint, believing there were thousands of illegal ballots in the back of the man's box truck.


In fact, Mark Anthony Aguirre's alleged victim was an ordinary air conditioner repairman, prosecutors say. There was nothing fishy in the back of his truck, nor in the repairman's home in a nearby mobile home community in Houston, which Aguirre said he and others had surveilled for four days straight, police said.

But it gets stranger: The day after the ex-cop allegedly held the terrified repairman at gunpoint, convinced of a massive election conspiracy that did not exist, he received a wire transfer for $211,400, according to prosecutors. The money came from a conservative group that's pumped up election fraud conspiracy theories, and which is led by prominent right-wing activists in Texas.

All that — the alleged car ramming, brief hostage-taking, and wire transfer — happened in late October, as President Donald Trump and his allies across the country flailed to make the case that, if he lost his bid for reelection, it would be the result of massive and unprecedented fraud. Aguirre was arrested Tuesday, nearly two months later, and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Police knew about Aguirre's alleged actions within minutes. In fact, according to a police officer's affidavit, he had called them three days before the incident, urging them to conduct a traffic stop for his voter fraud investigation. When police refused, Aguirre said he would conduct his own "citizen's arrest," according to the affidavit.

Officers were on the scene in time to see that "citizen's arrest" for themselves, according to the affidavit: The first cop on the scene found Aguirre with his knee on the repairman's back. Police interviewed the repairman and Aguirre, and even searched the repairman's home, with his permission, to investigate Aguirre's claims of a voter fraud conspiracy.

Among other things, according to a police affidavit, Aguirre stated that the repairman had 750,000 fraudulent mail ballots, that Mark Zuckerberg had given $9.37 million for ballot harvesting, and that the repairman was "using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children's fingerprints would not appear in any databases."

After initially claiming to be working with others, Aguirre changed his story and refused to name them, police said in the affidavit. He refused to say who moved the repairman's box truck after he'd run into it — though the repairman told police he'd heard Aguirre order another unnamed suspect to search his box truck and then move it away from the scene.

But the ex-cop did have a few choice words for the police who arrived at the scene, according to the affidavit.

"The defendant told Affiant that Affiant can be a hero or part of the problem," one officer responding to the scene recounted. "The defendant told Affiant, 'I just hope you're a patriot.'"

Patriot or not, that officer eventually referred the incident to the public corruption division of the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

The office hasn't responded to TPM's question about the timing of the charges. But in a statement Tuesday, District Attorney Kim Ogg said Aguirre "crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed."

Aguirre was fired from the Houston Police Department in 2003, after commanding a street racing raid involving 278 arrests in a Kmart parking lot, the Houston Chronicle noted. Prosecutors dropped all charges resulting from the arrests — none of which specifically alleged street racing violations — and the department was hit with a wave of lawsuits over the incident.

The conservative group that allegedly funded Aguirre's private investigative work this year, the Liberty Center for God and Country, wired Aguirre $266,400 between September and October, according to grand jury records described by police.

The group's CEO, Steven Hotze, is a prominent right-wing activist who's lobbed lawsuits over everything from COVID-19 restrictions to voting rights. He unsuccessfully sued to limit early voting and toss 127,000 ballots cast through a drive-thru location. An affidavit from Aguirre was filed in the first effort. In the document, dated Sept. 27, the ex-cop stated that he was investigating "a wide-ranging and fraudulent ballots harvesting scheme in Harris County intended to rig the elections in the Houston/Harris County area."

Liberty Center's president, Jared Woodfill, told the Texas Tribune Tuesday that he was aware of Aguirre's arrest, but wanted to hear the ex-cop's side of the story.

[Valmy]

Think of how many families and small businesses might have been saved in this pandemic with all the money wasted funding this crazy lunatic. It is a weird kind of patriotism.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Think of how many families and small businesses might have been saved in this pandemic with all the money wasted funding this crazy lunatic. It is a weird kind of patriotism.

Being a wackjob pays well at least.

[Razgovory]

Why would the police search the victim's house?  Is it normal for the police to indulge crazed gunmen like that?

[Barrister]

Why would the police search the victim's house?  Is it normal for the police to indulge crazed gunmen like that?

Victim gave permission.

It has helped sometimes.  The guy who went into Comet Pizza in DC with assault rifles looking for paedophiles was extremely remorseful when he learned how mistaken he was.

[Tonitrus]

Why would the police search the victim's house?  Is it normal for the police to indulge crazed gunmen like that?

Victim gave permission.

I would think, especially under the circumstances presented, that it is still pretty bad that the cops would even ask...

[Oexmelin]

I would think, especially under the circumstances presented, that it is still pretty bad that the cops would even ask...

Is it really that surprising?

[grumbler]

I don't know that the cops asked to search the house, or whether "DL" (whose name hasn't been released) didn't suggest it himself, to get the crazed lunatics off his back. The search was strange either way.

what I don't understand is why Aguirre was not arrested on the spot.  The police caught him red-handed engaged in an assault and battery.  He wasn't arrested until more than two months later.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I don't know that the cops asked to search the house, or whether "DL" (whose name hasn't been released) didn't suggest it himself, to get the crazed lunatics off his back. The search was strange either way.

what I don't understand is why Aguirre was not arrested on the spot.  The police caught him red-handed engaged in an assault and battery.  He wasn't arrested until more than two months later.

I wondered myself.  Is causing a traffic crash and assaulting someone at gunpoint not something the cops enforce if the guilty party is a 'patriot'?

[Razgovory]

I thought it might be just the story, it came from Talking Points Memo.  However, CNN has the same story so all the basic facts appear to be true.  The Harris county district attorney also has a brief story on this.  So does the city of Houston.  Those last two sources have little more.

https://app.dao.hctx.net/former-houston-police-captain-charged-holding-repairman-gunpoint-bogus-voter-fraud-conspiracy

Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to the document. When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back – an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer.

Aguirre directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck. There were no ballots in the truck. It was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

Aguirre never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident

https://cityofhouston.news/suspect-arrested-charged-in-aggravated-assault-investigation/

About 5:30 a.m. on October 19, an HPD patrol officer responding to an unrelated call observed a crash in the 1300 block of Almeda Genoa.  The officer then saw a man, later identified as Aguirre, detaining another man at gunpoint lying face down on the ground in the median.  The officer called for a backup unit.  As the officer approached Aguirre, he observed the box truck involved in the crash being driven away from the scene.

Officers approached Aguirre, who identified himself as a retired HPD captain, and demanded officers take the male on the ground into custody.  Aguirre stated he was part of a security group conducting surveillance on a group of individuals reportedly involved in election fraud.  Aguirre stated he had followed the suspect from the suspect's residence as he transported illegal ballots in a box truck.  Aguirre stated he accidentally struck the box truck with his vehicle.

It seems really odd that some asshole was directing police and trying to give the police orders.  From the way this is written is sounds like the police just sort of sauntered over to where a unknown gunman was holding some one down while another person stole a truck.

I won't beat around the bush anymore:  This looks corrupt.  I haven't seen the tape, so maybe police immediately disarmed and arrested the man who was committing a felony, but that's not the way any of this reads.

[The Brain]

Immediately can mean so many different things. Two months later is pretty much immediately. Have you ever worked for HPD?