Ex-cop investigating ‘bogus’ voter fraud holds repairman at gunpoint, Texas police say
A former Houston police captain has been indicted by a jury after he was accused of running a repairman off the road and holding him at gunpoint because the he believed the repairman was involved in a voter fraud scheme, the district attorney said in a news release.
Mark Aguirre, 64, initially came to authorities with claims of a voter fraud conspiracy in Harris County, but was instead charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in December 2020, the release said.
Aguirre’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
An affidavit showed Aguirre first came to police as early as September 2020 to report a “massive” voter fraud scheme that he had been investigating. Aguirre no longer worked with the Houston Police Department at this point, the release said.
“I am currently involved in an investigation related to a wide-ranging and fraudulent ballot harvesting scheme in Harris County intended to rig the elections in the Houston/Harris County area,” Aguirre said in a Sept. 27, 2020 affidavit. “This scheme involves voter fraud on a massive scale.”
Aguirre, who said he was a private investigator after retiring from the police force, later told authorities he had been “conducting surveillance” for four days on a man he believed was the “mastermind” of the voting scheme, a release from the district attorney’s office said. According to Aguirre, the air conditioning repairman had 750,000 fraudulent ballots in the back of a truck he was driving.
The former captain had been following the man on Oct. 19, 2020, when he hit the man’s truck with his SUV to get the repairman to stop and exit the truck, according to officials.
“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,” the release said.
When officers searched, they found the truck was filled with air conditioning parts and tools, but no mail ballots.
“He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in the Dec. 2020 release. “His alleged investigation was backward from the start – first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened.”
An investigation revealed Aguirre had been paid $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, a group of private citizens undertaking investigations into supposed voter fraud. Over $210,000 of that amount was deposited into his account the day after the he assaulted the repairman, the release said.
Aguirre’s election fraud claims were determined to be “baseless” by investigators, the release said.
“Aguirre victimized an innocent guy,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a Dec. 15 tweet. “He made this victim feel like he was going to die. And the fellow was not involved in any type of voter fraud, but instead was just an air conditioning repairman with a box truck.”
If convicted, Aguirre could face up to 20 years in prison.
