Hays DA candidate eliminates alleged coup planner from his timeline: nothing to see here! – New

This summer, on the eve of 9/11, the Hays County prosecutor hopes David Puryear hosted a fundraiser, but inspection of the Republican’s campaign finance records and social media posts curiously finds no evidence of it. Perhaps because the location of the Puryear event belongs to an alleged chief architect of the coup plot to seize voting machines across the country in 2020 and deny the surrender of the presidency.

Entrance to One Shot Distillery and Brewery in Dripping Springs features a garish mailbox fashioned to look like a shotgun shell. Nearby is a children’s play area, easily mistaken for a military obstacle course. The bar is inside a two-story building painted with a giant Texas flag, a picture of which appeared in The New York Times last December. It’s because the owner of One Shot Phil Waldron — a retired Army colonel who specializes in information warfare — has emerged as a suspected culprit in plotting to illegally install Trump as head of state following Joe’s decisive election victory Biden, while the Time reported.

Late last year, the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to Waldron regarding a PowerPoint presentation he helped develop in 2020, encouraging Trump to call a national emergency and invalidate every electronic vote across the United States, as The Washington Post reported. The proposal ended up in the hands of Trump’s chief of staff mark the meadows as well as several federal legislators. Waldron previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency under Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser for a short time, who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his covert contact with Russian officials. For his part, Flynn — a QAnon follower whom Trump eventually pardoned — had championed a course similar to Waldron’s: impose martial law and deploy the military to “relaunch” the election. trump lawyer Rudy Giulani testified in court that he is an admirer of Waldron, with whom he had “a substantial relationship”.

On Jan. 5, a day before the insurgency, Waldron briefed Capitol Hill lawmakers on his voter fraud concerns — nonsensical talking points that Trump apparently repeated — with specific recommendations to “declare the urgency of national security” and “declare electronic voting in all states”. invalid,” Reuters reported.

Waldron’s singular role in pushing for a concrete plan to overthrow the government became apparent earlier this year, when the January 6 committee obtained a copy of an executive order drafted for Trump that would have forced the Secretary of Defense to seize the nation’s voting machines and make a formal assessment of the legitimacy of the election — designed to postpone Biden’s nomination. Bernie Kerik — New York’s 9/11 police chief, later Iraq’s interior minister under President Bush, and most recently a member of Trump’s legal team — named Waldron as the mastermind of the seditionist scheme, a reported Politico.

However, none of this baggage of betrayal initially seemed to bother David Puryear in his bid to become Hays County’s next district attorney. On September 10, Puryear held a “9-11 First Responders Tribute and Cigar Smoker & Fundraiserat One Shot, with sponsorship tiers of America First at $2,500, True Patriot at $5,000, and Really Great American at $7,500 — as announced by the Hays County GOP.

According to Puryear’s recent campaign finance documents, no Truly Great Americans attended his fundraiser. Nor true patriots. For the month of September, the DA candidate recorded $4,470 in monetary contributions, in part by charging first responders to attend the tribute ostensibly in their honor.

While Puryear acknowledged in-kind donations on Sept. 10 of $450 of “cigars for fundraising” from the owner of Smokey Cigar Lounge and $388 in food and tableware courtesy of his campaign treasurer, notably missing any in-kind contributions of whiskey or craft beer from Old Shot. And for September 10 expenses, Puryear paid $2,300 to a Mexican restaurant (based in Travis County, not Hays) and $560 — with a note: “drinks for fundraising” — to Esther Schneider, who shares a name and address with Puryear’s treasurer. When asked why they didn’t just pay One Shot directly, as they did for their caterers – and thus document in their campaign finance report the distillery made infamous by national media coverage of the despicable effort by Waldron to sabotage democratic rule – Puryear’s campaign declined to comment.

Puryear’s social media is equally coy about the fundraiser held at the seditionist’s bar. His Facebook page is full of photos of public appearances – but the September 10 performance is inexplicably absent.

Kelly Higgina progressive Democrat challenging him for the seat, the the Chronicle“My concern is that Mr Puryear is either part of the MAGA/J6 movement, which is alarming, or he is cynically pretending to be part of this movement in order to take their money and get their votes, which is disgusting. We can’t really know for sure because immediately after the September 10 fundraising event there was an attempt to scrub any mention of it from the internet.”

Higgins concluded: “Mr. Puryear would love to have his cake and hide it too.”

Jordan Buckley is co-founder of the progressive Hays County 501(c)(3) Mano Amiga, which he left in January to found Caldwell/Hays Examiner. He is also the director of the Lost River Film Fest.