Several previous LinkSwarms have reported on the burgeoning Harris County corruption scandals (many reported by Holly Hansen) involving corrupt no-bid contracts and FBI raids. Now the scandal has finally resulted in indictments.
Three employees of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have been indicted by a grand jury on charges related to how they helped award a contract for COVID-19 vaccine outreach last year.
The Harris County district clerk lists two felony counts each for chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis, policy director Wallis Nader and policy aide Aaron Dunn. The charges are misuse of official information and tampering with a government record.
The charges add weight to a scandal Hidalgo has attempted to dismiss as politically motivated, and they threaten to tarnish her image as an ethically minded public servant as she seeks reelection this year. Hidalgo is widely seen as a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party and a future statewide candidate.
The three employees were part of a selection committee to choose a vendor for a COVID-19 vaccine outreach campaign Hidalgo wanted. The committee, which also included members of the county health department, unanimously awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, a small political consulting firm owned by Felicity Pereyra, who has previously worked on Democratic campaigns.
Republicans have seized on this as evidence of corruption, alleging without evidence [Ahem – LP] that Hidalgo was funneling money to help the Democratic Party build relationships with voters. Hidalgo accused Republican county commissioners of spreading conspiracy theories, though she agreed to cancel the contract in September because she said it had become too politicized.
Court records filed by the Texas Rangers, who are assisting prosecutors, suggest the inquiry focuses on whether Hidalgo’s office inappropriately involved Pereyra in designing the bid proposal she would later win.
My working assumption is that any time you see smoke like this, the fire is almost invariably channeling taxpayer money to the pockets hard-left Democratic Party cronies.
When Holly has a piece up on the story I’ll link it here.
Edited to Add: Holly’s piece is now up, and provides important context left out of other stories.
The affidavits also allege that in April 2021, after the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center earned a higher score at a lower cost than Elevate Strategies, Triantaphyllis texted Nader that they needed to “slam the door shut on UT.” The selection committee later instructed purchasing agent Dwight Dosplauf to disqualify UT for underperforming on another project.
In August of 2021, The Texan first reported that Harris County had awarded an $11 million vaccine outreach contract to Pereyra’s Elevate Strategies. Prior to founding the company in 2019, Pereyra had previously served as the deputy campaign manager for county Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2). Pereyra had also been with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked with the Democratic National Committee.
During the August 26, 2021 meeting of the commissioners court, Hidalgo accused Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4) of telling a “bold-faced lie” after he posed questions about the “one-woman firm” handling the contract.
Following Monday’s indictments, Cagle said on social media that he “took no pleasure in being right about this.”
“This is a major black eye for Harris County. Now it’s time for the courts to sort it out.”
Last September, emails obtained by The Texan showed that Dunn, Nader, and Triantaphyllis had instructed Dopslauf to revise vendor experience requirements for the vaccine outreach project. Documents obtained by FOX 26 Houston also showed that UT had earned a score of 240 and bid $7.5 million compared to Elevate Strategies’ score of 204 with a cost estimate of $19 million. Some time before the project award, Elevate Strategies lowered the cost to $10.9 million.
Even before the scoring of proposals, however, on January 14, 2021, Hidalgo had texted about the scope of a project mentioning “Felicity,” and Triantaphyllis later clarified to Nader, saying, “She was trying to add to Felicity’s scope relating to engaging community groups and stuff.”
Tags: Aaron Dunn, Adrian Garcia, Alex Triantaphyllis, corruption, Democrats, Dwight Dosplauf, Elevate Strategies LLC., Felicity Pereyra, Harris County, Holly Hansen, Jack Cagle, Lina Hidalgo, Texas, University of Texas Health Science Center, Wallis Nader
seized on this as evidence of corruption, alleging without evidence
How to say you are a political hack operative masquerading as a “reporter” without just saying you are a political hack operative masquerading as a “reporter”.
The “bald face-lie” was Cagle reading from Elevate Strategies own website in which Pereyra bragged of being a one woman operation run out of her own home. His question was how such an organization out-performed UT Health Science Center on the bid?
“Vaccine outreach program”…which does what, exactly? Encourage people to volunteer for the mRNA-based therapeutic drugs that don’t confer immunity or prevent transmission? “Raise awareness” of a drug that everyone’s already aware of?
Oh well, at least it wasn’t something wasteful, like filling potholes.
Jabrwok- ppotholes are cultural enrichment, and filling them would only spend much- needed public money on burly men’s pay, whereas funneling millions to Democratic operatives for “outreach”, with fuzzy goals and fungible metrics is infrastructure!
Remember, Lina Hidalgo never held a paying job before being elected County Judge of the 3rd largest county in the US with a $2.5 billion/year budget.
I must be missing part of the story: why in the H is a county judge involved in awarding a multimillion dollar “outreach” program for the Covid vaccines? I mean, there shouldn’t even be a program like this in the first place, but if it exists it should be handled by the health department employees appointed by the county’s legislative or executive teams, not the judiciary.
Things like this are pure graft for politically connected people. Unfortunately, After many years of disappointing experience I am absolutely convinced that the only way to limit the size of graft, grift, patronage, paybacks, payoffs, nepotism, waste, and fraud in government is to limit the size of government itself. People are naturally too greedy and self-interested to do the right thing. Capitalist/free market solutions are the only way to counter humans’ natural bad behavior, and turn it around and harness it for the general good. Government is not subject to free market pressures and therefore humans’ worst traits of greediness and thieving are pulled to the surface and activated.
County Judge is the highest level of government for a Texas county.
As noted by Lawrence, the title Judge is the honorific for the county executive. But there is one more part of that story. Because “Covid”, she claimed emergency powers that allowed her to award this and other contracts without getting approval of the board of county commissioners.
Normally, this would be brought to a vote of which there are 4 precinct commissioners and 1 judge, each with an equal vote. This likely would have passed as 2 commissioners are Democrats and 2 are Republicans. The Judge also being a Democrat makes it a 3:2 split.
Except there is another part of the story. The Pereyra that won the contract worked on one of the Democrat commissioners campaign staff. There is an obvious conflict of interest. Fortunately, that didn’t become an issue because, they voted to give the Judge emergency powers first. Powers that she still retains several months after the governor declared the emergency over in Texas.
[…] A lot more at the link. (Note: This piece came out just before the indictments came down.) […]
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