HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Friday responded to an investigation into her office launched by the Texas Rangers by accusing District Attorney Kim Ogg of abusing the power of her office.
"This is the same politics she's been playing for years," Hidalgo said in a media briefing. "She's abused the power of her office the way that a bully abuses size on the playground."
The investigation centers on the 2022 felony indictments against three of Hidalgo's high-level staff members who are accused of helping steer a nearly $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract to a local women's company.
Hidalgo claimed it was within her power to award the contract to whomever she chose, but instead decided to allow for bids
"First of all, you know, I could have awarded the contract unilaterally. I chose not to because I wanted to get bids. Again, I don't take contributions from contractors," she said. "In the final evaluation, with my office outnumbered, this other group came ahead."
Newly unsealed search warrants show that investigators are now looking into whether or not evidence was deleted during the initial investigation. The warrants reference deleted WhatsApp messages between key staff members in Hidalgo's office as well as other electronic records from Google and Verizon Wireless.
Hidalgo claimed nothing had been deleted and that her office complied with any requests for documents from the DA's Office or the Texas Rangers.
"Whatever it is she's accusing me of, it did not happen, is absolutely false. Any documents that they requested, all of us would have done our very best to hand over," she said. "And I will say, they requested a trillion documents from a bunch of people."
The judge accused DA Ogg of leaking the search warrants to the media for political reasons.
"The timing, right? The same day yesterday, the same day that polls are released showing that Kim Ogg is losing to her primary opponent," Hildago said. "She has these extreme detailed statements in the subpoena that any lawyer will tell you did not need to be that detailed, but she wanted to be able to have the false story for people to read and get alarmed about."
She said Ogg was attempting to discredit her upcoming endorsement of Sean Teare, who's running to be the next Harris County District Attorney. The primary election is on March 5.
We've reached out to Ogg's office for a response to Hidalgo's comments. Here's what she had to say:
"County Judge Hidalgo’s outburst today was nothing more than an attempted deflection from the facts and evidence that led to the initial indictment of her staffers. She conflated an ongoing Texas Rangers criminal investigation with her political endorsement of my challenger and engaged in a childish exercise in name-calling that has become all too common in our political process. Using her status as county judge to launch this diatribe is an unfortunate attempt to taint the investigative process and to confuse the public. It also serves her indicted staffers very poorly. My office pursues evidence-based prosecutions, regardless of political party, and we look forward to resolving this case in court."
We've also reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety, who gave us two statements on the case.
Originally, they gave us this statement at 8:49 a.m. Friday morning:
"At the request of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the Texas Rangers (DPS) are conducting an investigation into this matter. We would refer additional inquiries to the DA’s Office."
Then, around 11 a.m., they sent the following updated statement:
"In December 2021, the Texas Rangers and Harris County District Attorney’s Office initiated an investigation into criminal allegations against the County Judge’s Office in Harris County. Recently, additional search warrants were served on various service providers for records relevant to this investigation. This investigation is ongoing, and no further information will be released at this time."
Watch the full briefing Hidalgo gave Friday morning: