SAN ANTONIO — Project Veritas allegations that Battleground Texas illegally acquired voter information in San Antonio have been rejected by a Bexar County district court after a pair of special prosecutors called it “political disinformation.”
The ruling was based on an investigative report from those special prosecutors who found no wrongdoing and described hidden-camera evidence produced by conservative activist James O'Keefe III's Project Veritas group as deliberate falsehoods.
Three people had alleged that a Battleground Texas staffer violated state election law last year by mining voters' personal data while registering them.
The Democratic group steadfastly denied that claim saying their activities followed the law. The group called the allegation another fiction from O'Keefe, who's been criticized for his video editing and investigative tactics.
After reviewing the Feb. 19 video, the appointed prosecutors said there was “no applicable criminal offense for the alleged act and insufficient evidence to suggest potential offenses.”
Project Veritas officials had no immediate comment.
The attorneys, Christine Del Prado and John M. Economidy, summed up their findings with a harsh assessment of the allegations.
“The Veritas video was little more than a canard and political disinformation,” their 18-page report stated.
“The video was particularly unprofessional when it suggested that the actions of Battleground Texas were advocated by a Texas gubernatorial candidate and that the actions of a single volunteer deputy registrar may even involve private health data, which is not involved in the voter registration process,” the review said. The candidate referred to is Democrat Wendy Davis.
Despite assertions that the deputy registrar illegally copied personal data including phone numbers from voter registration applications, the prosecutors said legal restrictions including those cited in the video don't apply to deputy registrars.
The case originally was lodged with the Texas secretary of state's office, which referred it to Attorney General Greg Abbott, who cited his gubernatorial candidacy when he forwarded the case to Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed on Feb. 21.
Reed, who's on 2014 ballots, referred the matter to a state district judge who's also seeking re-election and who then handed it over to state District Judge Ray Angelini.
On March 11, Angelini appointed the special prosecutors. On Friday, Angelini accepted their recommendation to dismiss the case due to “insufficient evidence and failure to state an offense.”
On Monday, Battleground Texas spokesman Ellis Brachman welcomed the outcome.
“The simple truth is that Republicans are scared of our success and are doing everything they can to interfere, including sending admitted criminal James O'Keefe to Texas to make fabricated videos and false allegations,” he said.
jgonzalez@express-news.net
Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
