Alex Triantaphyllis, who is Hidalgo’s current chief of staff but was the deputy chief of staff at the time of the allegations, Aaron Dunn, then county’s senior public security and emergency management adviser, and Wallis Nader, who is Hidalgo’s deputy policy director, was charged Monday. Each of them was charged with one count of abuse of official information and one count of falsification of a state register. “I’m aware of my feelings about this investigation, which has been going on for months. Various news stories have shown that it is proceeding with what is, at best, a serious misunderstanding of the facts. I’m very sure that when the “My team will clear it up,” Hindalgo said in a statement on Tuesday. I have not seen anything to suggest that my staff did anything other than work tirelessly for the people of Harris County. They will stay in my team. “ An indictment is not a guilty plea, it is simply that a large court, composed of county residents, found that there was enough evidence to prosecute a person. “Since the State of Texas disbanded the Public Integrity Unit, which housed the Office of the District Attorney in Travis, responsibility for such work has been removed from the state attorneys,” said Dean Schiller, Dean Schiller. of Harris County. . “Prosecutors presented the evidence to a Harris County jury, which found that there was sufficient evidence for criminal charges. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and apply the law equally to all. Our work continues.” Since 2014, fewer than 20 counts of official information abuse have been filed in Harris County. It is a third degree crime. A 13 Investigates analysis of data from the Harris County Attorney’s Office shows that over the past three years, nearly 53% of the approximately 53,200 third-degree felony counts filed with the county have been dropped. For the cases that have been resolved, our analysis found that the average time before a mood was 297 days. Triantafyllis, Nader and Dunn appeared in court Tuesday morning with their lawyers and received $ 3,500 bail each. The judge told all three that they could not discuss the matter with each other and that they were also barred from participating in evaluation committees for county contracts. As they left the room, Triantafyllis’s lawyer Marla Poirot said her client would not answer any questions. “There has been no injustice. We are glad to be in a fair and objective forum at last. One side of the story has been published and reported so far. We are excited to have our side of the story out there,” Poirot said. Dunn’s lawyer, Derek Hollingsworth, also did not answer questions, but did offer a statement. “I’m proud to represent a civil servant. After hearing the prosecutor’s testimony about a possible cause, I’m really curious to see how they will actually prove this case, but I stand by my client. He is innocent and we look forward to spending the day at court, “said Hollingsworth. Calls to Nader have not been returned and on Tuesday, her lawyer declined to comment. There is no obvious policy on how the county handles this. In 2012, a county commissioner resigned only when he settled a federal appeal. Last year, a county commissioner remained in office even after her appeal, only to resign when it became public. By contrast, county law enforcement officials are usually put on leave even before charges are filed. Investigation warrants released last month indicate that Attorney General Harris and the Texas Rangers investigated whether Roses, Dan, and Neider contacted Elevate Strategies founder Felicity Pereyra about possible work for the county before it was made public. tender for the vaccine promotion project. other potential sellers. RELATED: 13 Inquiries: Inquiry into Harris County contract details for alleged benefits An additional warrant released last week sought to retrieve and seize documents from Google’s client accounts for Triantaphyllis, Dunn and Nader, as well as Hidalgo, Rafael Lemaitre’s communications director and Kathryn Kase, who serves as Adviser to the County Judge’s Office. Investigators have not claimed or accused Hidalgo, Lemaitre or Kase of misusing official information. “This warrant was sought at the same time as the others and merely copied and pasted the same misleading allegations, based on the same excerpts from the same documents,” Hidalgo’s lawyer Eric Gerard told 13 Investigates last. Thursday. “We reiterate our concern that this investigation appears to be proceeding hastily despite a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts.” In a statement to 13 Investigates on Thursday, Lemaitre’s attorney, Murray Newman, told Newman & Chappell Law Firm: in the latest documents released by the Prosecutor’s Office “. Kase’s lawyer, Nick Dickerson, said last week that Kase was not the target of the investigation, but merely a witness. “As a member of the judge’s staff and custodian of the files, Ms Kase would certainly have been involved from time to time in drafting and editing documents available in Google Docs,” Dickerson said. “We have nothing to hide. We collected more than two and a half terabytes of data and turned thousands and thousands of pages of documents. These (four) search warrants are a bit strange. They seem to be used as an end to the lawyer-client privilege.” On Tuesday, Hidalgo said: “I have adhered to the highest ethical standards and this is reflected in my unprecedented commitment not to accept money from anyone who deals with the county. The people I choose to serve in my office understand this code of ethics. I have dealt with it. a Harris County policy style that worked more for incumbents than for those who voted for it. I’m not playing the game. And that’s threatening to the authorities. “My strength – the morale of this office and my own – that they can earn political points. I do not think it is a coincidence that unfair accusations are leveled against my group in the middle of my re-election campaign.” Hidalgo campaign spokesman Toni Harrison told 13 Investigates Ted Oberg last week that Pereyra should never have received the scope of work on the vaccine promotion contract before it was made public to sellers bidding. When asked why Oberberg received the scope of work for the contract, Harrison said, “As wild as that sounds, human error.” “They sent her a job. That was the wrong document. It was just a human error,” Harrison said. “I send (sometimes) the wrong attachment (to people). I probably do it once a day. (In this case), you will see a trace where this is corrected and another message is sent to (Pereyra) and he says, this is in fact the right field of work approved by the judge. “ The affidavits do not contain messages to Pereira indicating that the subject matter of the work – which the Texas Rangers say is similar to that for RFP – was accidentally sent to her. When asked about it, Harrison said, “this will work out.” RELATED: Harris County Judge Lina Indalgo describes contract warrant search warrants as “misleading.” The search warrant released last week prompted Google to hand over all three links to Google Docs that they believe are relevant to the project, as well as the email addresses of the people with whom Google Docs was notified. Different editions of the same document could give researchers a sense of how the project has evolved and its scope, as Hidalgo executives and a salesman have tackled it. According to the researchers, Triantafyllis, Nader and Dunn reportedly contacted Pereyra in January 2021 and allowed her to review and revise the project’s work almost a month before a bid was publicly available to everyone on 19 February. 2021. In an email on February 25, 2021, “Pereyra stated that she had just been invited to bid on Harris County’s large COVID-19 approach program to reduce vaccine hesitation. “I have a good relationship at home and I feel very good about my chances of landing the project (I was asked to plan the project in advance, but then I was told to go RFP), so I’re just starting to form a team,” according to the research warrant. . Harrison said Pereyra was being considered for the position of data analyst – not for the vaccine approach contract. “Many of these text messages you see in the affidavit were not about RFP at all. In fact, RFP was not under consideration at the time. They were discussing a data analytics position,” Harrison said. “At the time, we need someone who can understand the data and hide it and help us decipher it. Miss Pereyra had done a wonderful job of approaching the Harris and Fort Bent Census, so it was in mind, and that is what the show was for. “ Harrison said Pereyra eventually turned down the position of data analyst. It seems that the job was never covered. Elevate Strategies took over the multimillion-dollar vaccine approach contract in June 2021, but in the midst of the controversy, it was canceled three months later. Although the contract was canceled in September 2021, Elevate was paid $ 1.4 million. The county said that Elevate is …
