A former police captain was reportedly paid more than $200,000 to “hunt ballots” for a far-right group to help aid former president Donald J. Trump in securing the 2020 election.
New documents reveal that the pro-Trump fringe group Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), “led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre, 63, allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots,” The Daily Beast reported. The driver of the truck was “an innocent air conditioner technician” named David Lopez-Zuniga.
Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“[Aguirre] crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed. His alleged investigation was backward from the start, first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.
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.
The case was investigated by the Houston Police and is being prosecuted by the Public Corruption Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Aguirre’s claims of election fraud were found to be baseless after thorough investigation by Houston Police and by the Office Constable Precinct 1 Alan Rosen, as part of the Harris County Election Security Task Force.