[ad_1]
Dr. Steven Hotze, a Republican megadonor who was briefly jailed for engaging in criminal activity only to have the charges dismissed, is suing former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg and asking that she — or the DA’s office — pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars he claimed he wasted on a legal defense.
First Assistant DA Vivian King and real estate broker Gerald Womack are also named as defendants in the 30-page complaint, filed September 23 by his attorney Jared Woodfill.
Right-wing African American blogger Aubrey Taylor is listed as a plaintiff alongside Hotze. Taylor claims he, too, was targeted for publishing content that was critical of Ogg and her political allies. The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial and asking for compensation for legal fees, the amount to be determined at trial.
Woodfill alleges that Hotze and Taylor were deprived of their constitutional right to free speech, suffered economic damages, and were wrongfully jailed.
This isn’t the first time Ogg has been accused of charging her political adversaries with crimes, only to have the charges dismissed by her successor, District Attorney Sean Teare. Reports surfaced earlier this year that Ogg cost taxpayers more than $1.5 million in frivolous lawsuits that she filed before she lost the Democratic primary to Teare in 2024.
Teare commented in May that, “As we review more cases filed under the previous administration, a pattern has become quite clear: The former district attorney abused the authority of this office to overcharge and investigate those she disagreed with and outsourced high-profile criminal investigations to friends who shared her political views.”
Ogg, who now works as a lawyer at the boutique litigation firm Gregor, Wynne & Arney, did not respond to requests for comment.
Felony charges against Hotze were dropped in May. He was accused of being involved in an attack on an air conditioning repairman in 2020. The repairman was held at gunpoint during a search for fraudulent voter mail-in ballots that did not exist. Prosecutors alleged at the time that Hotze was not present during the attack but paid a former Houston police captain to do it.
Hotze was accused of unlawful restraint, two counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, and engaging in organized crime. He was jailed for about 10 hours, according to the lawsuit filed last week.
“For the last four years, Kim Ogg has waged warfare against me because of my efforts to ensure voter integrity in Harris County, and I thank God that today I was vindicated,” Hotze said in May. “I have no regrets in my efforts to stop voter fraud in Harris County. I am committed to continue to do that and I am just getting fired up.”
The former Houston police captain, Mark Aguirre, is still under investigation for his involvement, with prosecutors saying in May that they would pursue two of five original charges brought against him.
Taylor is accusing Womack of attacking him with an iron statue while Taylor attempted to deliver a copy of his Houston Business Connections newspaper to Womack’s office in October 2023.
Taylor was charged in the incident and indicted in 2023 for felony injury to the elderly. Authorities said he initiated the assault on Womack, who served as former U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s campaign chair. Charges were dropped in February, with prosecutors saying that probable cause existed but they couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Woodfill claims video evidence of the altercation was destroyed.
“As the owner of a newspaper, Mr. Taylor was simply exercising his First Amendment rights to speech, when he opposed King in her election, criticized Gerald Womack and Sheila Jackson Lee, and printed articles and attached evidence which purports to show how Defendants Ogg, King and Womack benefitted from illegal ballot harvesting,” the lawsuit states. “Yet, instead of working through lawful channels, Defendants Ogg and King used their political positions to investigate and jail Mr. Taylor.”
Woodfill said he believes Ogg pursued vendettas against those who opposed her politically. The former district attorney was elected as a Democrat but later admonished by the party for her lack of action on bail reform. Since she lost her bid for re-election, Ogg has appeared at Republican fundraisers and was, earlier this year, rumored to be seeking a Trump appointment in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“In the lawsuit, we laid out in great detail the political persecution via the district attorney’s office where our taxpayer funds were actually used or abused in an effort to take out an opponent,” Woodfill said. “When Sean Teare got in there, he reviewed the cases and ultimately dismissed them.”
Unbeknownst to the Teare administration, a notice of intent to seek hate crime enhancements in all cases pending against Aguirre and Hotze was filed by Warren Diepraam, an outside contract prosecutor hired by Ogg, officials said in May.
The enhancements were found to be meritless, and the notices were withdrawn, Teare said at the time.
Woodfill also raised in his legal filing that, as Ogg was leaving office in 2024, she “brought in her buddy,” Warren Diepraam, to take over the prosecution of Hotze and Taylor, even though hundreds of attorneys are employed by the DA’s office. This action cost taxpayers money and provided income for Diepraam, a former Democratic judge candidate and Ogg’s political ally, Woodfill alleges.
“The case has been pending for years, and when [Diepraam] gets the case, he reindicts Hotze for organized crime and conspiracy to commit a crime, years later, in order to continue to harass Dr. Hotze,” Woodfill said. “Dr. Hotze files suit against him and the very next day, Diepraam filed a motion seeking to have Dr. Hotze prosecuted for hate crimes. It’s just outrageous how the office has been abused in order to take out a political opponent.”
Woodfill said his goals are to “expose everything” and have his clients compensated.
“I mean, these gentlemen spent hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “They were put in jail, incarcerated. Their names were paraded on the front page of every newspaper in the community. For years, they were fighting to defend their reputations.”
The attorney added that a jury will determine whether Ogg was operating outside her authority and whether she should be responsible for paying back Hotze and Taylor, or whether the DA’s office has to foot the bill.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
Related
[ad_2]
April Towery
Source link
