Six Texas residents — five of whom are current or former local Frio County officials — were indicted on Wednesday in a voter fraud probe.
“The people of Texas deserve fair and honest elections, not backroom deals and political insiders rigging the system. Elected officials who think they can cheat to stay in power will be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.
According to a Paxton press release, the six individuals are charged with allegedly engaging in illegal ballot harvesting activity. Texas law specifies that only a voter can return his absentee ballot, with limited exceptions.
Among the charged persons is Rochelle Camacho, a Frio County judge who a grand jury indicted on three counts of ballot harvesting. In addition to two Pearsall City Council members, the indictments also included former Frio County Elections Administrator Carlos Segura, who was charged with one count of “Tampering with or Fabricating Physical Evidence,” according to Paxton’s office.
The state AG’s office noted that five of the named individuals were arrested last week, “with the exception of Rochelle Camacho, who will be processed at a later date.” Five of the six suspects have “ties to Democratic candidates,” The New York Times reported.
The charges stem from a series of search warrants executed last August by Paxton’s Criminal Investigation Division. The warrants were related to what the AG’s office characterized as “a multi-year election integrity investigation into credible allegations of vote harvesting” across Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar Counties.
What’s notable about the still-ongoing probe, however, is its encompassing of individuals tied to a prominent left-wing activist group.
Among those included in the search warrants carried out by state officials last year were members of The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which InfluenceWatch describes as “a left-of-center organization … that advocates on behalf of left-of-center Hispanic interests.”
According to the watchdog group, LULAC promotes “left-of-center policies including civil rights reform, liberal immigration policies, and more lenient criminal sentencing,” and “is particularly opposed to the immigration policies of the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
According to an August 2024 LULAC press release, at least five members of the group were searched as part of Paxton’s election fraud inquiry. As reported by The Washington Post, “No charges have been filed against any targets of those searches, according to [LULAC] spokesperson David Cruz, and the organization said it had not made decisions on whether to represent those who were indicted.”
Paxton’s office declined to provide The Federalist with additional details about its election fraud investigation at this time.
LULAC is one of many leftist organizations engaged in judicial lawfare against the Trump administration.
On March 31, the group filed a lawsuit challenging an executive order signed by Trump several days prior. The president’s directive included numerous provisions long-supported by election integrity activists, such as documentary proof of citizenship requirements and an elimination of former President Biden’s “Bidenbucks” order.
In its press release announcing its lawsuit, LULAC claimed Trump’s order included “sweeping and unlawful changes to the administration of U.S. elections.” The group further parroted baseless leftist talking points that the directive’s provisions would “threaten to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.”
A D.C.-based district court judge issued a preliminary injunction in the case late last month, blocking certain provisions of the order from taking effect.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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