A6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 7 , 2022
dispatch a “federal marshal” to
help Aguirre “capture” the pur-
ported phony ballots, according
to the transcript. “Can you help
out at all?” Hotze asked.
Patrick demurred, saying that
he had no control over federal
marshals and that his office
would need to establish probable
cause — and possibly get approval
from Justice Department pros-
ecutors in Washington — to take
such a step. It is not clear from the
filing whether any action was
taken.
During the call, Hotze ex-
pressed confidence that Aguirre,
whom he named, would crack the
case without help from law en-
forcement, according to the tran-
script. Aguirre, he said, had
“enough balls that he would just,
that he would go in and make a
citizen’s arrest.” He added that
Aguirre would probably extract a
confession from the driver of the
truck “in five minutes,” in part by
threatening to get him and his
family deported, the transcript
shows.
“He’s like a bull dog,” he said of
Aguirre. Hotze cited Aguirre’s ex-
perience as a captain with the
Houston police, claiming he had
taken down drug cartels. “The
only difference is instead of deal-
ing with drugs they are dealing
with ballots.”Aguirre left the Houston Police
Department in 2003, according to
news reports, after he ordered the
mass arrest of nearly 300 people
in the parking lot of a retail store,
some of them families on shop-
ping trips, as part of a crackdown
on drag racing. The roundup led
to multiple lawsuits against the
city, and the city paid at least
$840,000 to settle some of the
cases, according to reports.
Aguirre also was charged crim-
inally with official oppression, a
state statute that covers abuses of
power by public officials. A jury
acquitted him, and after that Agu-
irre appealed his firing and was
allowed to resign before he
launched his career as a licensed
private investigator, his attorney
has told The Post.
Police have said that on Oct. 16,
the day before Hotze’s call to the
federal prosecutor, Aguirre con-
tacted a lieutenant in the Texas
attorney general’s office and un-
successfully tried to persuade
him to “conduct a traffic stop” of a
voter fraud suspect. When the
lieutenant declined, Aguirre al-
legedly responded that he “would
conduct the traffic stop himself
and make a citizen’s arrest,” ac-
cording to a police report.
On Oct. 19, 2020, Aguirre
rammed Lopez-Zuniga’s cargo
truck and detained him duringone of the most extreme tactics
that far-right groups have em-
ployed in an effort to substantiate
former president Donald Trump’s
unproven allegations of wide-
spread voting fraud in the elec-
tion he lost. Groups have tried to
gain access to sensitive election
equipment, pushed for audits of
the 2020 election by handpicked
outside groups and recruited vol-
unteers to scrutinize local elec-
tion officials, sometimes leading
to threats of violence.
The disclosure of the call tran-
script came in an ongoing crimi-
nal case brought by the district
attorney’s office that charges
H otze and the private investiga-
tor with assault with a deadly
weapon and unlawful restraint in
the alleged ramming. Prosecutors
disclosed the transcript in a filing
notifying the court that they in-
tend to use it as evidence against
Hotze.
The filing marks the first time
prosecutors have publicly re-
vealed evidence to support the
charges against Hotze, who was
not at the crash scene. His non-
profit Liberty Center for God and
Country paid $261,000 for the
election fraud probe, a Houston
police report stated.
The recorded conversation
also appears to contradict state-
ments Hotze made earlier this
year during a sworn deposition
separately obtained by The Wash-
ington Post. The deposition was
taken in a lawsuit filed by the
air-conditioning repairman, Da-
vid Lopez-Zuniga, against Hotze
and the nonprofit. In the deposi-
tion, Hotze insisted that he had
no knowledge of the surveillance
or investigation of Lopez-Zuniga.
“I did not know about any
investigation about David Lopez
at all,” Hotze said during ques-
tioning that occurred months be-
fore his April 20 criminal indict-
ment. He also said in his deposi-
tion that he had not talked to any
law enforcement official about
the investigation.
In the run-up to the 2020 presi-
dential election, Hotze received
regular briefings about the pri-
vate investigation from a former
Houston police officer hired to
run the probe, he said in his
deposition. During weekly calls,
he said, the ex-cop, Mark Aguirre,
detailed his pursuit of a sensa-
tional theory: Democrats were
using undocumented Hispanic
children to forge signatures on
hundreds of thousands of phony
ballots to rig the election in Har-
ris County, home to Houston.
“From what he told me, it
appeared he was hot on a trail,”
Hotze said in the deposition.
Hotze and Aguirre have not yet
been arraigned or entered a plea
to the charges of aggravated as-
sault with a deadly weapon and
unlawful restraint, but Hotze has
said publicly that he is not guilty.
Jared Woodfill, an attorney for
Hotze, said the statements in the
deposition were not at odds with
the remarks in the call transcript.
He declined to elaborate.
The transcript of Hotze’s pri-
vate phone conversation is nota-
ble not only for its content but
also because authorities said the
call was recorded by the former
U.S. attorney. Patrick is a son of
Texas’s Republican Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick, who has received nearly
$100,000 in political campaign
donations from Hotze since 2005,
state campaign records show.
The younger Patrick, who re-
signed in February 2021 after
President Biden took office and
now works at a law firm, declined
to comment Friday about the
transcript of the phone call.
Hotze has pledged more inves-
tigations. In early April he hosted
a sold-out fundraiser to help
bankroll them through his non-
profit. The keynote speaker at the
event was My Pillow chief execu-
tive Mike Lindell, a prominent
promoter of baseless claims —
HOTZE FROM A1 rejected by court after court —
that Trump lost in a rigged elec-
tion.
Hotze, 71, who runs a natural-
health and hormone replacement
clinic, has donated hundreds of
thousands of dollars to conserva-
tive candidates in Texas. He has
filed lawsuits, with mixed results,
seeking to limit mail-in voting in
the state and to dismiss ballots
submitted via drive-through vot-
ing sites in the 2020 presidential
election.
Woodfill said the recording did
not capture the complete conver-
sation between Hotze and Pat-
rick. “The Ryan Patrick tape fur-
ther demonstrates that the in-
dictment of Dr. Hotze was politi-
cally motivated and that Dr.
Hotze is innocent of any criminal
or civil wrongdoing.”
Aguirre, a 65-year-old former
Houston police captain, was
charged in December 2020 and
on April 20 was indicted by a
grand jury, a required step in a
felony case in Texas. An attorney
for Aguirre declined to comment.
“I’m not trying my case in the
paper,” Aguirre, who was released
on $30,000 bail, told The Post in a
brief phone interview on Dec. 16,
- “I don’t care about public
opinion. I’m trying my case
against these corrupt sons of [ex-
pletives].”
In a statement to The Post,
District Attorney Kim Ogg, a
Democrat who was first elected in
2016, called the voter fraud opera-
tion a “misguided fantasy.”
“The defendants were charged
as part of a bizarre scheme that
crossed the line from dirty poli-
tics to violent crime and we are
lucky no one was killed,” she said
Friday. “The entire plan was back-
ward from the start, alleging mas-
sive voter fraud occurred and
then trying to prove it happened.”
Friday’s filing did not specify
how or when authorities had ob-
tained a record of the 2020 phone
call, and the district attorney’s
office declined to answer detailed
questions about the transcript.
The filing stated that it was an
“informal transcript” that would
be followed by a certified version.
The 2020 election
In September 2020, as Trump
was floating claims that the presi-
dential election would be rigged,
Aguirre and a team of other inves-
tigators set out to find voter fraud
in Harris County, with funding
from Hotze’s nonprofit, court rec-
ords show.
By mid-October the investiga-
tors had set their sights on Lopez-
Zuniga, setting up a command
post at a hotel near his mobile
home and tracking his move-
ments for four days before the
alleged assault, police have said.
During his call with the U.S.
attorney, Hotze offered an expla-
nation for why private investiga-
tors were tracking the white van,
according to the transcript.
“We’ve surveilled them for the
last two nights,” he said, accord-
ing to the transcript.
Investigators had spotted the
van outside the apartment com-
plex of a Harris County Demo-
cratic political operative they
were surveilling, he said. They
followed the van to a mobile
home park where boxes were
moved between the truck and a
building behind it, Hotze said.
Later, the same truck stopped at a
post office, he said, suggesting
that ballots were being dropped
in the mail.
“They literally have boxes with
thousands of votes in it, and
they’re just taking these down
and voting them,” he added. “I
mean, this is the way these guys
operate, Ryan. The criminal ring
is so incredible.”
During the call, Hotze repeat-
edly referred to the truck’s owner
by the last name of “Perez.” The
district attorney’s office declined
to answer a question Friday about
who that was.
Hotze asked Patrick if he couldhis commute to work, according
to a police report and prosecu-
tors.
When police responded to the
scene, Aguirre told them that
Lopez-Zuniga was part of a mas-
sive voter fraud scheme involving
750,000 mail-in ballots and that
he was transporting ballots
forged by undocumented Hispan-
ic children whose fingerprints
couldn’t be traced, police stated.
Aguirre directed them to Lo-
pez-Zuniga’s mobile home and a
shed behind it where he claimed
the forged ballots were being
stored.
Inside the mobile home, police
found only “a family conducting
ordinary business,” according to a
Houston police detective who
also gave a deposition in the
lawsuit against Hotze and his
nonprofit.
“There was kids in the trailer,”
said John Varela, the detective.
“And one child was on Zoom, you
know, going to school. And I think
a young lady was in there cook-
ing. And they were just an ordi-
nary family.”
The shed, Varela said, con-
tained air conditioning equip-
ment.
“He [Aguirre] gave me a couple
of people’s names to look into. He
gave me some other pieces of
evidence that I — that I looked
into regarding the voter fraud,
but I wasn’t able to corroborate
anything that he said,” Varela
said.
Aguirre was deposed in Lopez-
Zuniga’s lawsuit, but by then he
already had been arrested and
invoked his Fifth Amendment
protection against incriminating
himself.
During his deposition on Jan.
4, Hotze said he didn’t know
anything about the investigation
into Lopez-Zuniga.
Hotze gave the same two-word
response when an attorney asked
him if knew what led Aguirre to
suspect Lopez-Zuniga and
whether he knew about the sur-
veillance of Lopez-Zuniga: “No
sir,” he said, according to a tran-
script.
Hotze said he had no written
communications about Lopez-
Zuniga and wasn’t aware of him
until news reports of the incident
on the road.
“Never heard of Lopez before,”
he said when asked if he had any
documents that mentioned Lo-
pez-Zuniga.
When Lopez-Zuniga’s attorney,
Dicky Grigg, asked if Aguirre had
ever mentioned Lopez-Zuniga,
Hotze responded: “Never did.”
Hotze acknowledged during
the deposition that Aguirre was
mistaken about Lopez-Zuniga.
“Whatever Officer Aguirre
thought he was going to find,
didn’t find anything,” Hotze said.
“He had a dry run. Let’s put it that
way. ... Whatever his assessment
was, apparently was incorrect.”
Lopez-Zuniga’s attorney also
asked Hotze if he wanted to apol-
ogize to his client. “Let Mr. Agu-
irre apologize,” he answered. “I
have no responsibility.”
Hotze’s nonprofit paid Aguirre
$211,000 on the day after the
alleged assault, according to a
police report, which said the
group had previously made
$25,000 payments on Sept. 22
and Oct. 9.
Hotze has continued to raise
money to hunt for election fraud.
“A criminal element in our soci-
ety has developed a well-orga-
nized vote fraud scheme that they
are using to turn Texas blue,” a
page on the website for Hotze’s
health clinic stated while adver-
tising the April fundraiser, called
the Freedom Gala. The website
urged donations ranging from
$50 to $20,000 per person to the
Liberty Center to continue to
“hire private detectives to investi-
gate, identify, and expose the
criminal vote fraud scheme in
Harris County and across Texas.”Alice Crites contributed to this report.Call transcript offers window on private vote fraud probe
OBTAINED BY THE WASHINGTON POST
Portions of a deposition given Jan. 4 by Steven F. Hotze in a lawsuit against him and his nonprofit.BY NICK ANDERSONLaw schools would be given a
green light to end admission test
requirements, under a recom-
mendation from a key committee
of the American Bar Association
that is scheduled for review in a
public meeting this month.
The proposal still faces layers
of scrutiny within the ABA and
would not take effect until next
year at the earliest.
If approved, it could challenge
the long-dominant role of the
Law School Admission Test, or
LSAT, in the pathway to legal
education.
On May 20, the Council of the
ABA Section of Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar is
scheduled to consider a recom-
mendation from its Strategic
R eview Committee to allow
t est-optional admissions.
The council is the national
accreditor for nearly 200 law
schools.
The recommendation on test-
ing, dated April 25, is straightfor-
ward: “A law school may use
admission tests as part of sound
admission practices and policies.
The law school shall identify inits admission policies any tests it
accepts.”
Current ABA standards state
that law schools “shall require”
applicants for first-year admis-
sion to submit scores from a
“valid and reliable admission
test.”
Admission testing for higher
education has been in flux in
recent years, in large part be-
cause of disruptions to testing in
2020 and 2021 that coincided
with shutdowns during the
c oronavirus pandemic.
At the undergraduate level,
most colleges and universities
have ended admissions testing
requirements or suspended
them temporarily.
Questions have also emergedabout law school testing. Some
predate the pandemic. In 2017,
Harvard Law School announced
it would no longer require LSAT
scores for admission and would
accept, as an alternative, scores
from the Graduate Record Exam-
ination.
Dozens of law schools now
accept either LSAT or GRE
scores.
But the LSAT remains the lead-
ing test for legal admissions.
More than 100,000 potential ap-
plicants a year take it. Through a
timed, multiple-choice format, it
assesses skills in reading compre-
hension, analytical reasoning
and logical reasoning. A second
part of the LSAT requires a writ-
ten essay.Whether the ABA’s council will
ditch the testing requirement
remains to be seen.
“Issues concerning admission
policies have been of concern to
the Council for several years,”
Bill Adams, managing director of
ABA accreditation and legal
e ducation, said in a statement
Friday.
He added that the accrediting
body will discuss the recommen-
dation at its May 20 meeting and
whether to circulate it to obtain
further comment.
The Law School Admission
Council, which administers the
LSAT and is separate from the
bar association, said in a
s tatement that “studies show
test-optional policies often workagainst minoritized individu-
als, so we hope the ABA will
consider these issues very care-
fully. We believe the LSAT will
continue to be a vital tool for
schools and applicants for years
to come, as it is the most accu-
rate predictor of law school
success and a powerful tool for
diversity when used properly as
one factor in a holistic admis-
sion process.”
Robert Schaeffer, executive
director of FairTest, a group
critical of standardized testing
requirements, said the ABA has
long been viewed as a supporter
of admissions testing.
“ Saying it’s up to the law
schools would be a wholesale
change,” Schaeffer said.Bar association’s recommendation would allow law schools to bypass LSAT
If approved, the test
could become optional
as soon as next year“The defendants werecharged as part of abizarre scheme thatcrossed the line fromdirty politics to violentcrime and we are luckyno one was killed. Theentire plan wasbackward from thestart, alleging massivevoter fraud occurredand then trying to proveit happened.”
Kim Ogg, Harris County
district attorney