A Houston-essentially essentially based mostly doctor and conservative activist is coping with severe prison charges following a 2020 incident tied to a botched voter fraud probe.
An infinite jury handed down an indictment to Steven Hotze, MD, this week on prison charges of unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a lethal weapon, per info from Harris County District Court docket. The charges stem from Hotze’s alleged involvement in an air-conditioning repairman being held at gunpoint all via a look for a full bunch of hundreds of fraudulent mail ballots that truly didn’t exist.
Hotze, 71, whose ethical counsel adamantly denied the costs against him, has prolonged led efforts to push conservative components, including serving to to stable the 2015 defeat of Houston’s anti-discrimination ordinance, which the doctor denounced as “reliable-homosexual,” the Texas Tribune reported. He additionally opposed the legalization of linked-intercourse marriage, and unsuccessfully sued Harris County in 2020 in an strive to own 127,000 ballots cast by voters at pressure-through areas invalidated.
The prison charges center on an incident that occurred all via the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. On Oct. 19, 2020, all via a look for fraudulent ballots, an air-conditioning repairman used to be dash off the road and had a gun pointed at his head, the Harris County District Attorney stated in a observation issued almost straight away after the incident. Though frail Houston Police Capt. Trace Anthony Aguirre used to be arrested and charged for the offense, Aguirre educated police that he used to be share of a neighborhood of non-public residents, diagnosed as “Liberty Heart,” who had been conducting a civilian investigation into an alleged voter fraud diagram.
Hotze leads the Houston-essentially essentially based mostly nonprofit Liberty Heart for God and Country, which allegedly paid Aguirre $266,400, including $211,400 appropriate 1 day after the incident, prosecutors stated.
Aguirre ran his non-public SUV into the abet of the repairmen’s truck to gain him out of his automobile, per prosecutors. After the repairman bought out of his truck, Aguirre allegedly pointed a handgun at him, compelled him to the bottom, and place a knee on his abet. Somewhat than the 750,000 fraudulent ballots that Aguirre stated he had been procuring for, the repairman’s truck contained air-conditioning aspects and instruments, prosecutors stated.
Court docket filings this week stated that Hotze, even in his absence from the scene, recklessly exposed the repairman to a huge likelihood of severe bodily hurt.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Workplace didn’t real away answer to a matter for comment, and neither did attorneys for Hotze. Alternatively, Gary Polland, even handed one of Hotze’s attorneys, educated the Texas Tribune that the costs against his consumer are “immoral,” and that his consumer had no knowledge of the incident inspiring the repairman except discovering out media reviews of Aguirre’s arrest.
Polland “stated Aguirre requested Hotze for funds to overview alleged election fraud, Hotze agreed, and that used to be the extent of his involvement in Aguirre’s affairs,” per the Tribune.
Polland extra educated the Tribune that Hotze has no plans to pause monitoring election job in Houston.
Bond for Hotze used to be situation at $18,500, which he posted.
Amid the costs, Hotze’s clinical license stays active, and with out any action against it, per the Texas Medical Board’s on-line info.
The doctor’s Hotze Well being & Wellness Heart has claimed that it has helped more than 33,000 sufferers “gain their lives abet utilizing bioidentical hormones that restore hormones to optimal ranges, give a enhance to immune methods, and enhance vitality ranges.” The heart’s internet order states that “we give a enhance to you when that that you would possibly maybe additionally merely own determined now no longer to settle the experimental COVID-19 injection.”
A December 2020 warning letter from the FDA directed the heart to quit promoting unapproved and misbranded merchandise, including dietary vitamins, for COVID-19.
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Jennifer Henderson joined MedPage These days as an endeavor and investigative writer in Jan. 2021. She has lined the healthcare industry in NYC, life sciences and the industry of law, among diverse areas.
