Texas Tribune
Brandon Herrera gains momentum against Tony Gonzales
by Matthew Choi and Renzo Downey, The Texas Tribune – 2024-03-25 17:40:01
SUMMARY: Brandon Herrera, a pro-gun influencer with 3.3 million YouTube subscribers, is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, the state's sole GOP House member who voted for gun safety legislation after the Uvalde school shooting. Motivated by Gonzales' stance on gun rights, Herrera is making his first political bid. Known as “The AK Guy,” his outspoken and controversial online presence includes dark humor and political incorrectness, which has offended many people across the political spectrum. Despite having no formal political experience, Herrera's grassroots campaign has gained traction. Gonzales, despite facing backlash for perceived moderate stances, still garnered substantial campaign funding, endorsements, and performed well in the primary. Yet without securing a majority, Gonzales now faces Herrera in a May 28 primary runoff. Herrera's online following and campaign contributions have boosted his candidacy, contrasting Gonzales' establishment support.
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Editor's note: This story contains explicit language.
WASHINGTON — Stepping out of a recent hearing in the Colorado Legislature to testify against a ban on semi-automatic firearms, pro-gun activist Brandon Herrera griped into a camera about how much he hates these kinds of things.
“I don't know why I signed up to talk to politicians,” Herrera said, speaking to his 3.3 million gun-loving YouTube subscribers. “I forgot how much I fucking hate doing that.”
He may soon have to.
Herrera, a 28-year-old influencer who made a name for himself online by selling reassembled military-grade weapons and defending gun owners' rights, is building momentum in his bid to oust U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales — the lone Texas Republican in the House to vote for gun safety legislation that passed in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.
It's that particular vote that motivated Herrera's unexpected launch into politics.
“If you vote against our interests, if you vote against gun rights, if you vote against the Constitution, “ Herrera told a crowd of gun rights advocates last week in Denver, “we will challenge you, we will primary you and we will win. We will take your fucking job.”
Known for his politically incorrect online persona as “The AK Guy,” he is guns first, and politics second. His entire brand and fanbase surrounds promoting and sensationalizing guns on his YouTube channel where he explains gun history, trolls gun safety advocates, rates his favorite “gun fails” and shoots a variety of firearms.
His crassness and irreverence has offended many on the left and the right. He has no formal political experience and the most high-profile endorsement he has garnered so far is from Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who was reportedly scolded by GOP House leadership for campaigning against an incumbent.
Despite those hurdles, Herrera has managed to tap into right-wing ire against Gonzales — who is uniquely vulnerable this election cycle for his moderation on guns, as well as a handful of other policy positions Gonzales' took over the past two years that put him at odds with the state party.
Ahead of the March 5 primary, Gonzales, a San Antonian, appeared well armed to sail into a third term in the 23rd congressional district. His campaign had raised over $2.8 million before the primary — more than three times Herrera's haul — and had some of the deepest pockets in politics steadfastly backing him. The district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso and includes more of the border than any other Texas district.
But Gonzales had made enemies in his party's right flank — a conflict that showed its heft when he failed to secure an outright victory with only 45% of the vote. In 2022, Gonzales won the primary with 78%. It's Gonzales' first major challenge since getting elected to Congress and his first race since the Texas Republican Party censured him last year for policy positions the party deemed insufficiently conservative — including his vote on the gun safety bill. Now Gonzales will face off against Herrera in the primary runoff on May 28.
To many of Gonzales' primary challengers, getting rid of Gonzales was as much the goal as serving in Congress, and they are now all rallying behind Herrera.
“Guess what???? I'm still in this race to make sure you LOSE!!” third-place candidate Julie Clark, who garnered 14% of the primary vote, said on social media to Gonzales.
Gonzales' campaign did not make him available for an interview for this story.
The edgelord
Running for Congress was a surprise move to many of Herrera's followers. He made the announcement at a Young Americans for Liberty event in Florida last August. Though a San Antonio resident now, he had spent much of his life in North Carolina.
His followers largely know him for his YouTube channel, which he said he first started in 2015 as “just some idiot kid making videos with guns.” Often clad in a T-shirt with brushed-back long hair, Herrera delivers monologues like a native of the internet: peppering his speeches with pithy one-liners and laughing when he knows he's pushing the envelope. He normally speaks from a gaming chair in front of a wall decorated with various firearms.
Popular videos include him testing guns that killed John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and reviewing “the worst internet gun fails.” He once crashed a gun control rally and tricked anti-gun protestors into signing a petition supporting a pro-gun group, the Firearms Policy Coalition.
His gun-advocacy goes beyond his internet fame. He testified before Congress in a field hearing last year against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as overreaching its authority. He was invited to testify before the Colorado Legislature last week to defend access to guns as the state puts together new definitions and restrictions on assault weapons.
Prior to his internet fame, Herrera started a small firearm manufacturing business, from which he got his internet moniker, The AK Guy.
Herrera's flippant style has generated plenty of controversy. He joked about veteran suicide, saying: “I often think about putting a gun in my mouth, so I'm basically an honorary veteran.” That set off a firestorm of criticism, including from Texas' Border Czar Mike Banks who called the comment “sickening” on social media.
“I just can't even believe that someone would think that something like that is funny,” Clark, whose husband is a veteran, said in an interview before the primary.
“Special place in hell for scum and villainy who mock veteran suicide or shoot up a church,” Gonzales, who is a retired Navy master chief, posted on social media.
Herrera said that the veteran suicide joke was said in the company of veterans who use dark humor to cope with past trauma (Herrera himself is not a veteran).
“The military has failed veterans. The VA has failed veterans. Politicians have failed veterans. The last thing they have to rely on is dark humor,” Herrera said on the UnsubscribePodcast, which he helps host. “You want to take that from them? Fuck you.”
Herrera also mocked former President Donald Trump's son, Barron Trump, as “starting to become a meme” who is “like nine-feet tall.”
“Daddy is coming. Daddy is angry,” Herrera said, mocking the younger Trump.
As he runs for a seat in Congress, Herrera doesn't appear to be prioritizing friendships with his future colleagues. He joked that politicians were “diddling kids,” then cut himself off “before I'm found hanging from my ceiling fan.” In another video, Herrera joked, “It's going to be very awkward” when he reads the client list of Jeffrey Epstein — the deceased financier charged with sex trafficking — and sees that “several of the people on that list are my coworkers in Congress.”
Herrera has brushed off criticism as attempts to get him “canceled.” In an interview at a recent San Antonio campaign event, Herrera said that completely changing his tone would mean becoming a “sellout that people are afraid of their politicians being.”
“I'd rather lose for who I am than win for who I'm not,” he said.
Herrera also fielded concerns before the primary that he was a single-issue candidate with regard to guns. Bexar County GOP Chair Jeffery McManus, who supports Herrera, said at the San Antonio campaign event that he should be more vocal in his support of Trump and anti-abortion policy.
During the campaign event, Herrera also spoke at length about inflation and the border — the top priority across Texas Republican voters. It was colored, however, with his penchant to offend.
“You know, I saw a statistic that, last year, more fentanyl came across the southern border by weight than would be required to kill the entire population of the planet — or about 26 Austin feminists,” Herrera said to a burst of applause. “It's funny the way my mind works now after this whole thing, because I'm already seeing that headline tomorrow.”
Gonzales has no compunction skewering Herrera on social media, casting him as an uninformed carpetbagger who has no business running for Congress. Gonzales noted that Herrera voted in North Carolina for much of his life, calling him an “East Coast fake.” Gonzales' campaign set up a website highlighting objectionable comments by Herrera under the URL “brandonherrerafortexas.com,” including doubt that Trump could win the general election.
“Anti-Trump Brandon Herrera has trashed Donald Trump on numerous occasions. Perhaps Herrera has been too busy begging for clicks on the internet to notice, but Donald Trump is the GOP's presumptive nominee and the America First movement is stronger than ever. Herrera's anti-Trump remarks are a slap in the face to Republicans everywhere,” Gonzales wrote on social media.
Herrera shot back that Gonzales voted to create the bipartisan committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The committee eventually referred Trump to the Justice Department for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for comment on his involvement in the race.
Getting into a gun fight
Gonzales voted for the bipartisan gun safety bill in 2022 with Uvalde on his mind. The vote was held one month after Texas' most deadly school shooting which resulted in the deaths of 19 elementary school children and two teachers.
He was one of 14 Republicans in the House to vote with Democrats to pass the bill but no other Texas Republican supported it except for Sen. John Cornyn, who had a leading role in negotiating the legislation. Cornyn also faced backlash in Texas for working on the bill, though he sailed to reelection in 2020. The bill provided federal funding for state and local violence prevention efforts including the implementation of red flag laws. Gonzales used the bill to bring millions of federal funding to Uvalde.
Herrera, for his part, has said red flag laws are unconstitutional and that law enforcement should be held accountable for its botched response to the Uvalde shooting.
Despite his support for the gun safety legislation, Gonzales has a history of defending the Second Amendment, and said he doesn't support weapons bans or universal background checks. He told CNN in January: “I do not support anything that infringes upon the Constitution or, or prevents those from having due process.”
Still, disdain for Gonzales runs deep among the GOP's right flank over his gun vote. It was a main pillar of the Texas Republican Party's censure against Gonzales last year. The party also took issue with his votes supporting gay marriage protections, against a hardline rules package negotiated to make Kevin McCarthy House speaker and against U.S. Rep. Chip Roy's border security package. Gonzales eventually worked with Roy to get another hardline border security bill passed.
Clark, as then-chair of the Medina County Republican Party, first launched the censure motion against Gonzales, alleging he doesn't represent the conservative values of the district. Despite her previous misgivings about Herrera's humor, she endorsed Herrera and said she would do everything in her power to keep Gonzales from office.
It's a sentiment echoed by the other challenger candidates.
Victor Avila, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agent who also ran in the primary, said he would support whoever was running against Gonzales in the runoff. He also appeared at the San Antonio campaign rally for Herrera.
“From the very beginning, when I met Brandon, we knew that we weren't challenging each other. The challenge was Tony Gonzales,” Avila said at the event. “We disrupted and dismantled this district in the right way.”
Even before the other primary challengers rallied behind him, Herrera proved himself a formidable candidate, fundraising over $827,000 before the primary mostly through individual contributions.
Despite his relentless gun advocacy, he was able to come in second in Uvalde County with 28.34% of the vote — almost two points more than his district-wide percentage. After the shooting, many of the victims' families advocated for Texas to raise the legal age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle, like the one the gunman used at the school.
Herrera may get most of his donations from out of state, but he insists that Gonzales is the one who's out of touch with his district.
“We've been going around all over the district to the little towns that a lot of — that Tony doesn't go to, the towns that are, I think, most negatively impacted by border issues and things, towns like Alpine, Fort Davis, Eagle Pass, just all these little towns that get overlooked for Bexar County or El Paso,” Herrera said.
Gonzales' campaign hits back that he has visited every county in the district and won a plurality in all of them. Gonzales has a record in delivering on hyperlocal issues in the sprawling district. Don McLaughlin, who was mayor of Uvalde during the Robb Elementary shooting, praised Gonzales for bringing federal aid money to the city in school safety grants.
In Brewster County, where Gonzales did worse than his district-wide average, County Judge Greg Henington said Gonzales had visited the county many times and has been easily accessible to him. Henington credited Gonzales for securing funding for Marathon School in the county.
“If I do need him for something or advice on what's going on in Washington, I have not had any issues with him. He's been responsive to me,” Henington said. Henington stressed that he could not endorse in the race as a nonpartisan official.
To Tony's rescue
Shortly after the primary, House Republican leadership came out endorsing Gonzales. House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement that Gonzales has “gone above and beyond to keep the pressure” on the Biden administration on the border and called him “one of the hardest working members I have the pleasure of serving with.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Majority Whip Tom Emmer all issued similar statements.
Gonzales has also made moves to push back on being labeled a moderate, telling the Tribune last year that he would rather call himself “a conservative Hispanic. But many people call me many different things. And they're not all good.”
He was one of the leading advocates for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — an effort spearheaded by far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
He also signed onto a letter led by House Freedom Caucus leaders, including Roy, with whom he feuded over border legislation, threatening to vote against federal funding legislation that doesn't include hardline enforcement measures at the border. When a group of Texas Republicans sent out a similar letter in August, Gonzales did not sign on. Gonzales is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which sets federal funding levels for individual programs.
Still, he has a lot of backing from moderating forces in Congress. His top two donors are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying and campaign organization that gives to members of both parties, and the No Labels Problem Solvers Political Action Committee, a group that promotes bipartisanship.
“We proudly endorse Rep. Tony Gonzales, as he has proven to be a strong supporter of the US-Israel relationship during his tenure in Congress. For example, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, he has worked to ensure that Israel has the resources it needs to defend itself against Hamas and other Iranian terrorist proxies,” AIPAC's political action committee said in a statement. The group said it would continue to support Gonzales into the runoff.
Gonzales also enjoys support for corporate interests, including Dell Technologies, Toyota and Devon Energy, all of whom gave $5,000, the maximum individual contribution per election.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also endorsed Gonzales after the primary, potentially paving the way for a Trump endorsement ahead of the runoff. Trump endorsed Gonzales before his competitive 2020 runoff, helping him beat Sen. Ted Cruz-backed rival Raul Reyes.
Herrera said Patrick's endorsement was “disappointing” though “I wish he really paid more attention to Tony's record.” Herrera pointed out that he worked on Trump's 2016 campaign and was hoping to secure his endorsement.
Still, Herrera takes pride in his grassroots operation. His YouTube following was a major force in his ability to get where he is now.
“I don't have any big shady corporate donors. I don't have any Super PACs. I don't have any of that stuff,” Herrera said in a YouTube video. “I have an army of militant pissed off autists who want to remind their politicians that they can be held accountable. And at the end of the day, that proved to be enough.”
— Renzo Downey reported from San Antonio.
Disclosure: Dell has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Anti-abortion deposition requests generate fear, not results
by By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-10 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Anti-abortion activist Jonathan Mitchell has filed several legal petitions in Texas, aiming to investigate those involved with facilitating abortions, including abortion funds and women who seek out-of-state procedures. Although judges have not approved these petitions, they have spurred fear and confusion. Mitchell was granted one petition to depose a woman who had an abortion out-of-state, but that ruling is on hold pending appeal. Legal experts argue that Texas abortion laws and federal protections for interstate travel make it unlikely for Mitchell's tactics to succeed. However, his method of incremental legal challenges aims to create uncertainty and exploit legal gray areas, using the fear of litigation to deter people from supporting or accessing abortion services.
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Anti-abortion legal crusader Jonathan Mitchell has filed at least seven legal petitions in Texas in recent years asking to depose abortion funds, providers and researchers. While these filings have created fear and confusion, none have yet to be approved by a judge.
Now, Mitchell has moved on to targeting individual women. He has filed at least two petitions seeking to depose women he claims traveled out-of-state to terminate their pregnancies, one of which a judge granted; that ruling is on hold while an appeal proceeds.
Under state law, the person who terminates a pregnancy cannot face criminal or civil penalties. Texas abortion laws govern in-state conduct, and there is broad constitutional protection for interstate travel. A federal judge has previously ruled abortion funds are likely safe from prosecution, and just this week, a federal judge in Alabama upheld the right to leave the state to seek medical care that is legal in another state.
All of this would make it difficult, if not impossible, to take action against someone who assisted a Texan in getting an out-of-state abortion, legal experts say. But Mitchell has made his name turning long-shot legal theories into the law of the land through exactly this strategy of incremental, often losing, legal battles that exploit confusion about the law.
“These … proceedings are just about scaring people into thinking they can't help somebody going out of state to have an abortion, or they're going to go after them with a lawsuit,” said Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “It's not about a lawsuit, it's about using fear to induce compliance.”
Rule 202 petitions
Most states, and the federal judiciary, allow a lawyer to depose someone before a lawsuit is filed to preserve their testimony. It's most commonly invoked when someone may die before the lawsuit is filed.
Texas, however, goes much further, also allowing lawyers to depose someone for the purpose of investigating a potential claim before filing a lawsuit. This provision went largely unnoticed and unused before the judiciary revised its rules in 2000 and combined it with the more typical pre-suit deposition rule, said Lonny Hoffman, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
“This is a very unusual animal,” Hoffman said. “We're allowing people to use the court system, the coercive power of the state, to compel someone to give testimony before a lawsuit has been brought against them.”
Conservative Texas courts, typically not so friendly to plaintiffs, have slowly imposed stricter restrictions on when they agree to grant Rule 202 petitions, Hoffman said. In 2011, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the “intrusion into otherwise private matters authorized by Rule 202 outside a lawsuit is not to be taken lightly,” and “is not a license for forced interrogations.”
When used correctly, Rule 202 petitions can diminish frivolous lawsuits and save time, Rhodes said.
“There are strong policy reasons for the rule. I think it's a good rule,” he said. “It's just being abused here. This is harassment, and contrary to the very purposes of the rule.”
Petitions filed against women
The two petitions Mitchell has filed against women who allegedly traveled out-of-state are similar. Both were filed by ex-boyfriends who say they disagreed with their former partner's decision to get an abortion. The petitions assert each woman's mother influenced her to have an abortion.
One petition, first reported by The Washington Post, was filed last month and is sealed. The woman is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which declined to make her available for an interview.
“I think anyone would agree that it's pretty terrifying to be told that you might be sued for doing something that is entirely legal,” said senior staff attorney Molly Duane. “The petition uses the word murder 23 times. This is just not a normal document for anyone to receive and I think the inflammatory nature of it is by design.”
Duane reiterated that it is legal to travel to a state where abortion remains available to terminate a pregnancy.
“This is part of a yearslong campaign by Jonathan Mitchell and other abortion extremists to intimidate people into chilling their own constitutional activity,” Duane said.
The other petition, which has not been previously reported, was granted by a judge earlier this year. The Texas Tribune is not naming either party, or the jurisdiction in which it was filed, since no lawsuit has been filed and the woman named in the filing has not been accused of a crime. Her lawyer declined to comment.
The deposition in that case is on hold while an appeal proceeds.
In a brief, the woman's lawyers argued that granting the petition would be “repugnant to the liberty interests that Texas fiercely protects,” by validating the petitioner's “scheme to harass an ex-girlfriend who has moved on from her relationship with him.”
Both petitions claim to want to investigate potential violations of Senate Bill 8, also known as the “Texas Heartbeat Act,” which prohibits anyone from “aiding or abetting” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. But that law, which Mitchell helped design, only applies to abortions performed by Texas-licensed physicians. While the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to remain in effect, a state judge found it unconstitutional, a case that is still moving through the courts.
“It is helpful for them to just have this [Rule 202] threat rather than actually litigate,” Rhodes said. “Because if an actual challenge arises and it's determined that somebody cannot actually sue under SB 8, that would make the law entirely toothless.”
The petitions also hint at future wrongful death lawsuits, which cannot be brought against the person who terminated their pregnancy. Mitchell previously filed a wrongful death lawsuit against women who allegedly helped their friend obtain medication to terminate a pregnancy in Texas. That case is still pending in Galveston.
In a filing, the lawyers in the case now on appeal noted the risk to women across the state if judges began green-lighting Mitchell's strategy.
“A Rule 202 petitioner would be entitled to depose and seek documents from any woman who is not now pregnant, but was rumored to be at some time. Any woman who has a miscarriage could be subject to a forced interrogation. Any scorned lover could harass or intimidate their ex … for simply receiving a false-positive pregnancy test,” the lawyers wrote in their brief.
“Someone who has sex and then gains and loses weight may be forced to produce documents proving that she did not violate a wrongful death statute or SB 8,” they wrote. “The implications of a grant of this petition on the personal freedom and liberty of women to simply exist in Texas without being forced to answer to any ideologue anywhere in the world … are staggering.”
Other petitions
None of Mitchell's previous Rule 202 petitions have resulted in anything other than extended legal battles. He has filed at least nine, including three against abortion funds that help people travel out-of-state.
Two of those cases — one against the Lilith Fund, filed in Jack County, and another in Denton County against the Texas Equal Access Fund — were nearly identical. In each case, the funds countersued and Mitchell moved to dismiss their suits.
The judge on each case ruled differently — one granted the dismissal, the other denied it — and, complicating matters further, two three-judge panels from the same appeals court also disagreed. Both cases will likely go to the Texas Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, in Hood County, Mitchell filed a Rule 202 petition against the San Antonio-based Buckle Bunnies Fund. A judge denied the fund's motion to dismiss. That case is on appeal at the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, which issued the dueling opinions in the Jack and Denton county cases.
In a rare move likely intended to address the discrepancies between the rulings, the appeals court voluntarily said it would hear this case en banc, before all seven judges, on May 22.
Mitchell filed two Rule 202 petitions against abortion providers that left Texas after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which are still pending. He has also filed petitions against Sidley Austin, a law firm that said it would pay for Texas-based employees to travel out of state to get an abortion, and an abortion researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.
None of these petitions have resulted in any depositions, let alone any lawsuits. But they have generated a lot of fear and confusion, which legal experts say is largely the point.
“What's so clever about [Rule 202 petitions] is that they never have to sue,” said Hoffman. “They just have to threaten to get the woman in front of a court reporter and force her to answer questions, and it has exactly the chilling effect that they want.”
In a statement, Mitchell reiterated his claim that abortion funds and employers that pay for out-of-state abortions are potentially vulnerable to criminal prosecution and civil liability.
“Conduct taken inside Texas that procures an abortion is a criminal act under the state's pre-Roe abortion ban, even if the abortion occurs out of state,” he said, referring to 19th century laws that were on the books before the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The question of whether those laws remain in effect has not yet been fully resolved by the courts. But a federal judge has preliminarily ruled that abortion funds are likely safe from prosecution.
But Mitchell has made his career working the margins of the law, pushing on weak spots until he finds a way in. He successfully circumvented the constitutional protection for abortion with SB 8, and has been a leading voice in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to consider reviving the Comstock Act, a zombie law restricting the mailing of abortion drugs, which hasn't been enforced for over 100 years. He's been advising towns and cities that want to pass so-called “travel bans” that prohibit the use of municipal roads to transport someone leaving the state for an abortion.
“He's been harassing the funds and abortion support networks for years, so it's not a new tactic,” said Elizabeth Myers, a Dallas attorney who represents the funds. “But now that target has expanded to actually include pregnant women, which they've said they would never target. This was always where they were going to go, and now we're here.”
Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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SUMMARY: The content discusses the importance of digital marketing for businesses in the modern age. It highlights the need for a strong online presence, the use of social media platforms, and the importance of SEO to drive traffic to websites. The article also emphasizes the role of content marketing in engaging with customers and building brand awareness. It concludes with the recommendation for businesses to invest in digital marketing strategies to stay competitive in today's market and reach a wider audience. Overall, the message is clear: digital marketing is crucial for businesses looking to succeed and grow in the digital world.
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Texas Tribune
Two political advisers plead guilty in Cuellar bribery case
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-09 12:33:09
SUMMARY: Two political consultants are set to plead guilty to laundering over $200,000 in bribes with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar. Court documents reveal their agreement to assist the Justice Department's case against Cuellar, who, along with his wife Imelda, was indicted for accepting nearly $600,000 from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank. Cuellar supposedly influenced U.S. Treasury policies to benefit the bank. The consultants, who may face 20 years in prison and heavy fines, were reportedly involved in a project that was a front for channeling money to Cuellar, bypassing financial disclosures. Cuellar maintains his innocence.
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Two political consultants agreed to plead guilty to charges that they conspired with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar to launder more than $200,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank, according to recently unsealed court documents that show the consultants are cooperating with the Justice Department in its case against the Laredo Democrat.
Cuellar, a powerful South Texas Democrat, was indicted with his wife Imelda on charges of accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank. The indictment, unsealed last week, accuses Cuellar of taking money from the commercial bank in exchange for influencing the Treasury Department to work around an anti-money laundering policy that threatened the bank's interests. Cuellar allegedly recruited his former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and another consultant, Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, to facilitate the payments, according to court records.
Rendon and Strother both struck plea deals with the Justice Department in March, in which they agreed to cooperate in the agency's investigation of the Cuellars. They each face up to 20 years in prison and six-figure fines for charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The plea deals, which were first reported by the San Antonio Express-News, allege that Cuellar first asked Strother to meet with Rendon in February 2016 to “participate in a project to test and certify a fuel additive made by a Mexican company … so that it could be sold in the United States.” Rendon told Strother he would pay him $11,000 a month for the project, $10,000 of which Strother would pass on to Imelda Cuellar, according to the plea agreements.
Rendon paid Strother a total of $242,000 from March 2016 to December 2017, nearly $215,000 of which Strother then paid to Imelda Cuellar, the documents allege. Strother concluded the project was “a sham,” according to his plea deal, because neither Rendon nor Imelda Cuellar “did any legitimate work.” Strother “understood that the true purpose of the payments” was to “funnel money” to Henry Cuellar without the Laredo Democrat having to reveal it in his annual financial disclosures.
Cuellar has asserted his innocence, releasing a statement Friday in which he said his actions were “consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people.”
This story is being updated.
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