Ex-Houston officer accused of assault in bogus fraud claim
[ A long post filled with dirt. The bottom line is the biggest county in TX has a Republ ican party run by crackpots, crooks and deviants. ]
This undated photo provided by the Houston Police Department shows Mark Aguirre. Aguirre is an ex-Houston police officer who was arrested on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020, for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for an incident on Oct. 19 in which he pulled over an air conditioning repairman and held him at gunpoint believing the man had 750,000 fraudulent mail-in ballots in the back of his truck. Police say there were no ballots in the truck, only air conditioning parts and tools. (Houston Police Department via AP)More
JUAN A. LOZANO
Tue, December 15, 2020, 5:57 PM CST
HOUSTON (AP) — A former Houston police captain was charged with assault on Tuesday after running a man off the road and holding him at gunpoint in an effort to prove what authorities have called a bogus voter fraud scheme.
Mark Aguirre claimed that an air conditioner repairman was the mastermind of a giant voter fraud scheme. Aguirre said the man’s truck was filled with fraudulent ballots when he ran his SUV into it on Oct. 19, according to authorities.
“The defendant stated (the driver) has approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand fraudulent mail ballots and is using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any databases,” according to an arrest affidavit.
Aguirre told police he and some friends set up a “command post” at a Marriott hotel in suburban Houston and conducted 24-hour surveillance on the repairman for four days, according to the affidavit. He said he then ran the man’s truck off the road, pointed a gun at him, forced him onto the ground and put a knee on his back, the affidavit said.
Police who responded to the incident searched the truck and found only air conditioning parts and tools, authorities said. Authorities did not name the truckdriver, who was not hurt.
“A lengthy investigation ... determined allegations of election fraud were unfounded and no evidence of illegal ballots was found,” Houston police said.
Aguirre told a police officer at the scene, "I just hope you’re a patriot,” according to the affidavit.
Lt. Wayne Rubio with the Texas Attorney General’s Office later told police that Aguirre had asked his office to conduct a traffic stop for his investigation and when Rubio said he couldn’t do that, Aguirre said he would do it himself and "make a citizen’s arrest,” according to the affidavit.
Aguirre, 63, has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Court records did not list an attorney for Aguirre.
If convicted, Aguirre faces up to 20 years in prison. Police have not identified any other suspects.
Police say Aguirre was paid $266,400 by Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, a nonprofit organization that is run by GOP party activist Dr. Steven Hotze.
A conservative power broker, Hotze unsuccessfully sued to stop the extension of early voting in Texas for this year’s election. He also sued officials in Harris County, where Houston is located, to limit in-person and absentee voting, making allegations without evidence that Democrats were engaged in “ballot harvesting” by gathering votes from individuals who are homeless or elderly.
Allegations by President Donald Trump and others of massive voter fraud have been refuted by several judges, state election officials, an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department and Attorney General William Barr.
Hotze was also part of a group of individuals who unsuccessfully tried to challenge the legality of drive-thru voting in Harris County.
Jared Woodfill, an attorney for Hotze, said Liberty Center had employed Aguirre’s company and around 20 investigators who were looking into allegations of voter fraud during the election.
Woodfill said he doesn’t know if Aguirre was working on the investigation at the time of the alleged assault, but that Liberty Center doesn't approve of such tactics.
“We would never endorse that, saying go pull someone over, put a gun up to their head and make them open up their truck,” he said.
Woodfill said he would be “surprised if the allegations were true. That seems out of character for any of the people that would be working under Liberty Center."
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Aguirre’s actions “crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime.”
“We are lucky no one was killed,” Ogg said. “His alleged investigation was backward from the start — first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened.”
Aguirre was fired from the Houston Police Department in 2003 after a botched raid in which nearly 300 people were arrested in a crackdown on illegal street racing. Most who were arrested were not linked to street racing and charges were dropped. Aguirre was tried and acquitted on five counts of official oppression.
https://news.yahoo.com/ex-houston-officer-accused-assault-235733344.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_04
Ex-Houston cop hired by GOP megadonor arrested for aggravated assault while hunting fake ballots
Peter Weber
Wed, December 16, 2020, 7:33 AM CST
Police in Houston arrested a former Houston Police captain on Tuesday, charging him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly running an appliance repair truck off the road and holding its driver at gunpoint in a failed bid to find fake ballots. The former cop, Mark Aguirre, had been hired by the Liberty Center for God and Country, a conservative group led by Republican megadonor Steven Hotze, to find evidence of the widespread voter fraud conservatives baselessly believed was being carried out in Harris County, The Texas Tribune reports.
"We are lucky no one was killed," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. "His alleged investigation was backward from the start — first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened." The assault charges carry up to 20 years in jail
Aguirre told authorities he had been tailing the air conditioner repair technician for four days, aided by two other people, before forcing him off the road Oct. 19. He said he believed the technician was behind a huge voter fraud scheme and was carrying some of the 750,000 fake ballots Aguirre believed were in his possession. "There were no ballots in the truck," the Harris County district attorney's office said. "It was filled with air conditioning parts and tools." One of the people accompanying Aguirre allegedly stole the technician's van after Aguirre forced him to the ground at gunpoint, abandoning the vehicle a few blocks away.
A lawyer for Hotze told the Tribune that the Liberty Center had hired a company led by Aguirre to investigate voter fraud ahead of the election, but said Hotze "did not direct or lead any of the investigations." The Houston Police Department fired Aguirre in 2003 after a controversial raid at a Kmart parking lot, the Houston Chronicle reports. CNN's John Avlon compared Aguirre's actions to the "Pizzagate" debacle.
Hotze was one of the Texas Republicans who unsuccessfully sued to stop Gov. Greg Abbott (R) from extending early voting this year and tried to get 127,000 Harris County ballots thrown out. Earlier this year, the Tribune reports, he called Abbott's chief of staff and urged the governor to shoot and kill people protesting the police killing of George Floyd.
https://news.yahoo.com/ex-houston-cop-hired-gop-133319161.html
Background on Jared Woodfill and associates:
Police serve search warrant at office of prominent attorney Jared Woodfill
By Shelley Childers
Monday, November 12, 2018
Harris County D.A.'s serves search warrant at office of high profile attorney Jared Woodfill.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The Harris County District Attorney's Office served a search warrant at the law offices of prominent attorney Jared Woodfill Monday afternoon.
Woodfill served as chairman of the Harris County Republican Party from 2002-2014.
Woodfill was the spokesman for Campaign for Houston, which opposed former Mayor Annise Parker's equal rights ordinance.
Investigators could be seen in Woodfill's office, sorting through stacks of files and binders.
The D.A.'s says they are combing through files, searching for information pertaining to one name.
As soon as we got word of police in Woodfill's office, our 13 Investigates team dug into the case.
Our team obtained a police report filed in 2017 alleging Woodfill may have been stealing more than $300,000 from a divorce client's legal trust fund for personal use.
It's not clear if that police report is related to today's search warrant.
Woodfill has not been criminally charged in that or any other case.
Documents show Woodfill was reprimanded by the state bar two months ago for failure to take reasonable action in another divorce case.
The state bar, which oversees lawyers, ordered him to take classes in billing, trust accounts or law practice management.
All of that on top of two other civil cases in which opponents recently demanded Woodfill pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid fees.
abc13.com
‘Worst kept secret in Houston:’ Defamation suit emerges against Woodfill, Pressler
By
Johnny Kampis
-
December 19, 2017
 Paul Pressler
The attorney for a Houston man accusing former Texas state judge and lawmaker Paul Pressler of sexual molestation tells The Texas Monitor he’s received calls from other people with similar allegations.
“I’m getting a lot of responses from a lot of people,” Daniel Shea told The Texas Monitor in an exclusive interview.
Shea said he plans to include those who agree to be named in a disclosure document listing people with knowledge of facts relevant to the case.
The suit from Gareld Duane Rollins filed in Harris County on Oct. 18 alleges that Pressler molested him repeatedly over the course of 35 years. He said he met Rollins as a teenager when he began attending First Baptist Church, where Pressler held volunteer leadership roles. The suit alleges that Pressler enrolled Rollins in Bible study and began molesting and raping him in his master bedroom study.
The suit also names Pressler’s wife, Nancy, his law partner Jared Woodfill, the First Baptist Church of Houston, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and its president, the Rev. Paige Patterson, claiming the others helped cover up the alleged molestations. Rollins seeks $1 million in damages.
A psychiatrist’s report included in the case file says Rollins suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from childhood sexual trauma.
Mark Lanier, an attorney representing Patterson and the seminary, filed a motion on Nov. 17 asking a judge to move the case to Tarrant County, the location of the seminary. That motion will be heard on Jan. 16.
“If any victims decide they want to be added to the suit that can be done,” Shea said.
Shea had strong words for the 87-year-old Pressler, calling his alleged molestations the “worst kept secret in Houston.”
“He’s been very blatant and very careless over the years running after young boys and picking them up from these various church youth Bible study groups,” Shea said.
Pressler filed a formal response to the lawsuit with the court on Nov. 17 in which he “generally and categorically” denied “each and every allegation” contained in it, Baptist Press reported.
Pressler’s attorney, Edward Tredennick, did not return The Texas Monitor’s emailed request for comment.
He previously told Texas Tribune that Rollins’ long arrest record for charges that include driving under the influence, forgery, and possession of a controlled substance show that the complainant’s story should be questioned.
“Mr. Rollins is clearly a deeply troubled man, with a track record of multiple felonies and incarceration, and it is the height of irresponsibility that anyone would present such a bizarre and frivolous case — much less report on it,” Tredennick told the outlet.
The Tribune said Tredennick wouldn’t provide further comment or respond to specific questions.
Pressler repeatedly vouched for Rollins when he was being considered for parole on his various crimes. Pressler noted in a 2000 letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole that he was offering to be actively involved in helping someone’s rehabilitation for the first time “because I really believe in Duane.”
Two years later, Pressler successfully helped Rollins gain parole after pledging to “be personally involved in every bit of Duane’s life with supervision and control,” including employing him at the law firm he shares with Woodfill.
Woodfill initially represented Pressler in the case, telling Quorum Report, which first reported on the lawsuit, that “it’s simply Mr. Rollins making up things to extort money from the Southern Baptist Convention. There’s no credibility…he’s taking a shotgun approach. We’re not paying a dime. We’ll fight it tooth and nail.”
Shea sent The Texas Monitor an amended complaint in which he added a defamation claim against Woodfill, and said the statement of the lawyer is also imputed to his client, Pressler.
Shea said the Southern Baptist Convention isn’t named in the lawsuit, therefore Rollins couldn’t be trying to extort money from it.
“This is what happens when you decide you’re going to fight a lawsuit tooth and nail. You end up with your teeth and nails digging a hole for yourself,” Shea said. “Let them squiggle and wiggle and raise all the hell they want to, but the point is that this is a legitimate lawsuit and it’s going to go forward.”
Woodfill did not return a call from The Texas Monitor seeking comment placed to his law office. His attorney, Albertus Wiesedeppe III, did not return an email requesting comment.
Woodfill also told the Texas Tribune the lawsuit was “an attempt to extort money” and said he planned to file a counterclaim against Rollins and Shea for their “frivolous and harassing lawsuit.”
Pressler is a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention and its recent “conservative resurgence,” an effort to remove liberal influence within the church for fear it was eroding core values. He served in the Texas House from 1957 to 1959 and as a justice on the 14th Court of Appeals.
Shea famously sued the Catholic Church last decade, arguing a letter that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would soon become Pope Benedict XVI, sent to all Catholic bishops in 2001 constituted a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Shea and his co-counsel Khan Merritt said the document for dealing with sex abuse cases ordered bishops to handle the matter internally rather than go to law enforcement with the claims.
https://texasmonitor.org/paul-pressler-jared-woodfill-defamation-suit/
In April 2018, the Houston Chronicle reported that Paul Pressler was accused by Toby Twining and Brooks Schott of sexual misconduct in separate court affidavits. [26] Both men said Pressler molested or solicited them for sex. The accusations were filed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Gareld Duane Rollins Jr. claiming he was regularly raped by the Conservative leader. Rollins met Pressler in high school and was part of a Bible study Pressler led. Rollins claims he was raped two to three times a month while at Pressler's home. [27] According to the Chronicle, Pressler agreed in 2004 to pay $450,000 to Rollins for physical assault. [28] Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson is also named in the suit, for helping Pressler cover up the abuse. [29]
In the 2018 Chronicle report, Toby Twining was a teenager in 1977 when Pressler grabbed his penis in a sauna at Houston's River Oaks Country Club. Pressler was a youth pastor at Bethel Church in Houston but was ousted in 1978 after church officials received information about "an alleged incident." Attorney Brooks Schott also stated in an affidavit that he resigned his position at Pressler's former law firm after Pressler invited hime to get into a hot tub with him naked. Brooks also accused Jared Woodfill, Pressler's longtime law partner who from 2002 to 2014 was chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, of failing to prevent Pressler's sexual advances toward him and others claiming his indiscretions were well-known at the firm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pressler_(Texas_politician)
Former Houston attorney says Paul Pressler solicited him
By
Johnny Kampis
-
April 13, 2018
An attorney who briefly worked for the Woodfill Law Firm says Paul Pressler invited him to join him naked in a hot tub, in an affidavit filed this week in federal court.
The affidavit was attached to a civil suit Gareld Duane Rollins has brought against the former judge and Texas state lawmaker, that accuses Pressler of raping and molesting him over 35 years. Pressler denies the claims.
There is a hearing on Monday that could move the case back to state court in Harris County.
In the affidavit, Brooks Schott, who now lives in Spokane, Washington, said he met Jared Woodfill, Pressler’s former law partner, while in his third year of law school at Willamette College of Law in Salem, Oregon. Schott said he visited Houston at the suggestion of his father, who had the occasion to preach at a church in The Woodlands, where Matt Woodfill, the brother of Jared Woodfill, served as pastor.
After a visit in March 2016, Jared Woodfill offered Schott a job after graduation. He took the Texas Bar Exam that July and began a clerkship at Woodfill Law Firm the next month. After receiving his passing score on the bar exam, Schott became a junior associate that November.
Schott said he was introduced to Pressler at a political event, and Pressler subsequently invited Schott to have lunch with him. Schott said he was wary of joining Pressler for lunch because he had previously been asked to make a copy of a settlement agreement between Pressler and Rollins.
Rollins and his mother, Margaret D. Duryea, sued Pressler over similar allegations in 2004 in Dallas County District Court, with Daniel Shea as their representative. That case was settled and the proceedings sealed. Shea is the plaintiff’s attorney in this case, as well.
Despite those reservations, Schott attended at the urging of Woodfill, the affidavit says. Schott said that Woodfill told him “Pressler was a ‘hero of the faith’ and a ‘great man.’”
Schott visited the then 85-year-old Pressler’s house to pick him up and says Pressler answered the door with no pants on, saying he was running late and had trouble dressing due to poor health. Schott says Pressler gave him a tour of his house, and after learning he had Danish ancestry, told a story about going swimming naked in Denmark with other young men in his younger days.
“At lunch, Pressler told me about his ranch and all of its amenities including a ten person hot tub,” Schott wrote. “Pressler then told me that ‘when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub completely naked.’ He then invited me to go naked hot tubbing with him at the ranch. This invitation was clearly made in anticipation that I would engage in sexual activity with him on the pretext of a hot tub experience. It was clearly a solicitation.”
Schott said he told Pressler he wasn’t interested, and that he informed Woodfill Law Firm office manager Ken Kennedy of the encounter. Schott said in the affidavit that Kennedy told him that Pressler had acted inappropriately toward other young men.
Schott resigned from the Woodfill Law Firm in May 2017. In the resignation letter included with the affidavit, Schott writes that his reputation in the legal community was damaged by the incident with Pressler and he scolds Woodfill for making him encounter Pressler at a subsequent political luncheon.
In an email chain between Schott and Woodfill following the alleged solicitation, Woodfill wrote that Pressler “has never made any inappropriate comments or actions toward me or any one I know of” and “I am shocked you would even allude to the fact that I somehow deceived you with respect to someone I have known since 1995 and has always been appropriate with me.”
Schott argues in the affidavit that the case should be remanded back to state court. It was removed from that jurisdiction on March 12 at the urging of defendants Southern Baptist Convention and First Baptist Church of Houston. They argued the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1871, required that the case be sent to federal court.
“I believe that what happened to me involves attorney misconduct and further, reveals that there is widespread knowledge about Woodfill and Pressler in the Harris County judicial community,” Schott writes in the affidavit. “Consequently, it is my opinion that what happened to me is pre-eminently a state judicial responsibility such that retention of federal jurisdiction would arguably disturb the balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities.”
Shea filed on April 3 another affidavit that identifies an unnamed married man in his 50s from New York who says Pressler groped him as a teenager. The man said that during a retreat in Houston in the 1970s, Pressler asked to share a bunk with the then 17-year-old and rubbed his feet against his. The man also claims that Pressler groped him in a sauna at Houston Oaks Country Club.
https://texasmonitor.org/former-houston-attorney-says-paul-pressler-solicited-him/
Attorney Jared Woodfill and Former Judge Paul Pressler are Recent Examples of the Bible State of Texas Politicians Caught in Sex, Lies and Corruption
By justicefortexas
Posted on July 20, 2019
Documents recently made public show that in 2004, Pressler agreed to pay $450,000 to another former youth group member for physical assault. That man, Duane Rollins, filed a new suit last year in which he demands more than $1 million for decades of alleged rapes that a psychiatrist recently confirmed had been suppressed from Rollins’ memory.
THE LIST OF MEN ACCUSING A FORMER TEXAS STATE JUDGE, FORMER TEXAS REP. AND LEADING FIGURE OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION PAUL PRESSLER OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT CONTINUES TO GROW.In separate court affidavits filed this month, two men say Paul Pressler molested or solicited them for sex in a pair of incidents that span nearly 40 years. Those accusations were filed as part of a lawsuit filed last year by another man who says he was regularly raped by Pressler.
Pressler’s newest accusers are another former member of a church youth group and a lawyer who worked for Pressler’s former law firm until 2017.
Toby Twining, 59, now a New York musician, was a teenager in 1977 when he says Pressler grabbed his penis in a sauna at River Oaks Country Club, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. At that time, Pressler was a youth pastor at Bethel Church in Houston; he was ousted from that position in 1978 after church officials received information about “an alleged incident,” according to a letter introduced into the court file.
Brooks Schott, 27, now a lawyer in Washington state, says in an affidavit that he resigned his position at Pressler’s former law firm after Pressler in 2016 invited Schott to get into a hot tub with him naked.
He also accuses Jared Woodfill, Pressler’s longtime law partner and the head of the Harris County Republican Party until 2014, of failing to prevent Pressler’s sexual advances toward him and others, which Schott says were well-known among the firm, the documents state.
IN 1989, AFTER THE FBI RAN A “ BACKGROUND CHECK” ON JUDGE PRESSLER, HIS NAME WAS “WITHDRAWN” AS PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH’S CHOICE TO HEAD THE OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS. PUBLIC STATEMENTS AT THE TIME DECLARED THE WITHDRAWAL TO BE ABOUT ISSUES OTHER THAN ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUALLY PREDATORY BEHAVIOR, BUT ONE WONDERS IF THERE WAS MORE TO THE STORY.
Documents recently made public show that in 2004, Pressler agreed to pay $450,000 to another former youth group member for physical assault. That man, Duane Rollins, filed a new suit last year in which he demands more than $1 million for decades of alleged rapes that a psychiatrist recently confirmed had been suppressed from Rollins’ memory. Rollins also claims the trauma pushed him to the drugs and alcohol that resulted in multiple prison sentences.
At the time of the earliest allegation, in 1977, Pressler was still a relatively minor figure in Southern Baptist circles. His rise to power in the Southern Baptist Convention began only after his ouster from Bethel, according to his memoir and court records.
In the years after, Pressler worked at Houston’s First and Second Baptist churches, was a state representative and served for 14 years as a justice on Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals. During that period, the SBC moved toward a literal interpretation of the Bible and condemned homosexual behavior.
Pressler was also asked in 1989 to head President George H.W. Bush’s Office of Government Ethics, though his nomination was later withdrawn.
Affidavits for Twining and Schott were submitted this month as part of the suit filed by Rollins against Pressler and eight other defendants, including Woodfill, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Houston’s First and Second Baptist churches. In 2016, a psychiatrist concluded that Rollins had suppressed memories of years of rapes and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as “a direct result of the childhood sexual trauma he suffered,” court records show.
Rollins and his attorney, Dan Shea, say they initially were not allowed to keep a copy of the 2004 settlement. Shea said the new suit was filed in part because of concerns that Pressler, now 87, might stop making the monthly $1,500 payments he agreed to send Rollins until 2029.
An attorney for Pressler did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. A woman who answered the phone at Pressler’s home said he was unable to talk.
ROLLINS V. SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH (4:18-CV-00775), DISTRICT COURT, S.D. TEXAS (REMANDED TO STATE COURT)
Affidavit of Brooks Schott
Case Remanded to State Court
A CHURCH YOUTH GROUPTwining says he met Pressler at a Houston-area church in the late 1970s, when Pressler was a youth pastor and a prominent Texas state judge. His affidavit does not name the church, but Pressler was a youth pastor at Bethel at the time, according to court documents, Bethel officials and Pressler’s memoir.
Pressler “led the group in prayer and, in the manner of evangelical thinking, invited individuals to commit their lives to Christ,” Twining wrote. “At this time, I looked up to Paul Pressler — he was my first youth group instructor, an eminent state judge and a trustworthy older friend.”
Later that year, Twining said, he started attending an annual men’s retreat at Pressler’s ranch near Austin, where “young men of high school and college age comprised the majority of participants and a weekend stay over was the norm.”
On one such retreat, Pressler told Twining there was a shortage of beds and asked if the two could share a bunk bed, according to the affidavit.
“I preferred to sleep alone and assumed that Pressler, as the retreat’s host, was politely inconveniencing himself as well,” Twining wrote. “One night that weekend, Pressler told me he was cold and then he unexpectedly rubbed his feet against mine under the covers without asking. … It struck me as odd, but it was over as soon as it began so I did not say anything and shrugged it off. However, in retrospect and in light of what follows, I now believe Pressler had designs on me early in our acquaintance.”
By 1977, Twining was preparing for his sophomore year at the University of Houston and Pressler’s youth group was regularly meeting on Sundays, according to the affidavit. It was normal for the young boys and men to meet Pressler at the River Oaks Country Club, Twining said.
Now 59, with a wife, two children and a music career that includes teaching stints at the University of Maryland and New York’s Tisch School of the Arts, Twining said he still vividly remembers one night in August 1977, when he rode alone with Pressler to River Oaks Country Club.
“Nothing seemed out of the ordinary,” he wrote. “Normally four to twelve of my peers would car-pool to the club…. On the way, I noticed I was his only passenger and asked him who else was going. Pressler told me that we were the only two. I remember that I felt disappointed and that I suspected nothing.”
Twining then recalls entering the sauna at the club with Pressler alone.
“I remember being the first to go in and sit down,” Twining wrote. “Pressler followed, but instead of taking a seat, he halted in front of me. At that moment, he reached out suddenly and grabbed my penis, pumped it, then pulled back his hand quickly.”
“I froze. Shocked, stunned and utterly frightened, I had no idea what to expect next,” Twining wrote. “I was naked and trapped — miles from home — and I needed to get to safety. I somehow got out of the sauna, entered the showers and kept beyond Pressler’s reach.”
The details of Twining’s affidavit are similar to the first abuses that Rollins said he suffered at baths and a whirlpool at the University Club in Houston’s Galleria area.
ANOTHER ACCUSERBrooks Schott states in the documents that he met Pressler in 2016, after Schott was hired as a lawyer at the firm Pressler co-founded with Woodfill.
Schott says he was invited to lunch by Pressler in December 2016. He arrived at Pressler’s home, he says, where he was greeted by Pressler, who was not wearing pants. After dressing, Pressler gave Schott a tour of his office and mentioned a 10-person hot tub at his ranch.
“Pressler then told me that ‘when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub completely naked,’ ” Schott’s affidavit states. “He then invited me to go hot tubbing with him at his ranch. This invitation was clearly made in anticipation that I would engage in sexual activity.”
Upon returning to the firm, Schott said an office manager told him that Pressler had previously solicited young men at the firm. Schott then complained to Woodfill, according to emails that were filed with his affidavit.
“If (the office manager) knew of Pressler’s past inappropriate sexual behavior, I find it hard to believe that you did not know about it,” he wrote in a Dec. 9, 2016 email to Woodfill, court records show.
Woodfill responded that Pressler was no longer his law partner and that “this 85-year-old man has never made any inappropriate comments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” court records show. In a subsequent email, Woodfill said that the conduct Schott described “is unacceptable” and said he would address it with Pressler.
PAUL PRESSLERIn an email on Thursday, Woodfill responded to Schott’s assertion, writing that “the person described in Mr. Schott’s affidavit doesn’t match up with the Judge Pressler I know” and that Pressler “has not been associated with my law firm for over a decade.”
He also provided a copy of a letter from Schott, written last month, in which Schott offered to sign a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $35,000. Schott said that included the costs for his moving to Houston, preparing for the bar exam, paying off a lease when he left town and other expenses.
Schott resigned from the firm in May 2017. In his resignation letter, which was also submitted to the court, he cites Pressler’s advances as a key reason for his departure.
‘ALLEGED INCIDENT’In a January 2017 letter that was made public as part of Rollins’ lawsuit, an attorney for Bethel Church, Frank Sommerville, confirmed that the church “received information about an alleged incident involving Mr. Pressler in 1978.”
“Upon learning of the alleged incident, the church immediately terminated Mr. Pressler’s involvement with the youth group and its activities,” Sommerville wrote. “The Presslers subsequently left the church sometime in late 1978.”
In his memoir, “A Hill on Which to Die,” Pressler described the timeline of his departure from the church, writing that he and his wife, Nancy, resigned in 1979 after realizing they could not dedicate themselves to the Southern Baptist Convention while they were members of a non-SBC church.
Pressler wrote that he first attended one of the SBC’s annual conventions while it was in Houston in 1968, though merely to “hear the messages.”
He attended at least two more conventions before his departure from Bethel, and met more regularly with Southern Baptist leaders in the 1970s.
He wrote that in December 1978, “God opened the door for me to participate in changing the convention by altering my personal work situation” — a reference to his earlier appointment to the Court of Appeals, which he said allowed him more time to travel.
Later that year — and only a few months after his departure from Bethel — Pressler wrote that he was challenged by a pastor, who asked him: “Are you going to minister to 250 high-school students or 13 million Southern Baptists?”
“I realized that I needed to give up working with the young people who had been very close to my heart,” Pressler wrote. “We had seen so many trust the Lord and grow in their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
https://lawsintexas.com/attorney-jared-woodfill-and-former-judge-paul-pressler-are-recent-examples-of-the-bible-state-of-texas-politicians-caught-in-sex-lies-and-corruption/ |
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