Steven F. Hotze is a medical doctor in Houston who makes Ron Paul look liberal and sane.  He’s the evangelical minister of medicine. He practices a kind of magic medicine where no actual science is involved.  When the COVID epidemic started he announced it was no worse than the flu and if you’d come to his wellness clinic you won’t get it.

When people staring dying, he countered with the well known and highly understated fact that some people die of the flu.  He sells books and lotions and cures and all manner of crazy. But he keeps his medical license.  He is a major rightwing political activist, too.

He was totally convince that Democrats were stealing elections. So, he started his own investigation. First he hires a retired cop named Mark Aguirre to snoop around.

Aguirre becomes convinced that there’s a guy hauling off ballots in an air conditioning repairman van.  So, in mid December of 2020, he purposefully rear ends the guy at 5:00 am one morning, pulls a gun on him, makes a citizens arrest, and then proceeds to search the back of his van where, tada!, he finds air conditioning repairman tools.

Hotze funded the operation through his group called Liberty Center for God and Country, paying Aguirre — a disgraced former police captain fired in 2003 — more than $266,000 for his efforts.

Aguirre had arranged for some of his friends to drive up and witness this moment of rightwing glory, when an HPD officer pulled over to see what was going on. The driver is fine and most of the city almost drank every bar in town down to the last drop with spectacular schadenfreude.  Of course the guy is suing and criminal charges were filed against Aguirre. You can read about the whole horrifying event here.

Hotze’s attorneys long have claimed Hotze was unaware of the encounter between Aguirre and the repairman until he saw it on the news after the episode.

But then, something pretty cool happened earlier this week. It became known that —

Two days before a private investigator looking into a voter fraud conspiracy theory smashed into an air conditioning repairman’s truck and pulled a gun on him, far-right activist Steven Hotze called then-U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick and told him about the plans to have “a wreck,” court documents show.

The US Attorney recorded the call.  Hotze was asking for US Marshalls to help with the stop. Hotze then went into detail about the rear ending and the US Attorney said he had another call and hung up.

Last Friday, a Harris County Grand Jury indicted Hotze on charges of unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Another damning piece of information?  Hotze wrote the check for $266,000 two days after this incident. So, ya know, he had to know about the rear ending when he wrote the check, right? Hell, it was all over the news.