HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — The Harris County District Attorney's Office announced that charges have been re-filed due to a "clerical change" against three of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo's former staffers in connection with the investigation into how a vendor landed an $11 million COVID vaccine outreach contract.
According to court documents, the staffers are facing misuse of official information charges after being indicted in April 2022 for misuse of official information and tampering with records.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story called the charges new, when, in fact, they were re-filed due to a "clerical change," according to the Harris County DA's Office.
The DA's Office said the charges didn't change and the penalties would be the same as before.
The investigation
Former chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis, former policy director Wallis Nader and former policy aide Aaron Dunn are all accused of helping Elevate Strategies get an $11 million COVID vaccine outreach contract by providing the vendor inside information about the contract weeks before a request for proposal was open to the public.
The staffers were said to also have worked to ensure another company didn’t win the contract, according to a search warrant.
The staffers reportedly began communicating with Elevate Strategies CEO Felicity Pereyra about the vaccine community outreach in January 2021, a month before a request for proposal on the subject became public, the search warrant said.
Four companies ultimately applied for the project after the request for proposal became public in February.
The contract was awarded to Elevate Strategies in June 2021 but was later terminated in September 2021 due to the company's inexperience with public health outreach and alleged ties to local Democratic party officials.
The investigation into the staffers' involvement in the contract started unraveling in March 2022 when the Texas Rangers and the Harris County District Attorney's Office served search warrants to the Harris County Administration Building.
The investigation came back into the limelight in November 2023 after the Texas Rangers obtained new search warrants looking into possible evidence tampering in Hidalgo's office.
Hidalgo has called the investigation a political vendetta spearheaded by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.