"He put a gun to my head"

[douglas9]

“He said, ‘Help me! Help me!’ and he stuck his hand inside his coat. When I tried to help him, he pulls out a gun. That’s when he told me to get on the ground.”

Mark Anthony Aguirre, a vigilante vote-fraud hunter, ran an air-conditioning repair truck off the road. Then Aguirre put a gun to the repairman’s head—and demanded the driver, David Zuniga, open up the back of his truck. Aguirre believed that Zuniga was smuggling 750,000 forged absentee ballots, all “voting” for Biden, enough to win Texas.

Zuniga, rightly frightened for his life, opened the back of his A/C repair truck to reveal…A/C ducts and pipes. No forged ballots.

The gunman was not some lone crazy: In October 2020, he was paid a stunning $266,400 by a right-wing Texas billionaire, Steven Hotze, who had hired dozens of vigilantes in the hope of proving that Joe Biden was trying to steal the election by stuffing ballot boxes with forged ballots.

In Houston, I met with the man who supposedly forged these 750,000 ballots, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. Harris County is better known as Houston, Texas.

https://www.gregpalast.com/he-put-a-gun-to-my-head/

[Irish_Dem]

1. The billionaires will destroy this country for tax cuts.

Their obsessive greed is pathological and dangerous.

[2naSalit]

2. As Sen. Warren has said...

There should be no such thing as a billionaire.

[Irish_Dem]

4. It becomes a monstrous addiction.

They will destroy everything to get more money than they can ever spend in a lifetime.

[Lonestarblue]

6. I agree. I did not always feel this way, but I think too many of them just cause damage for their own power.

That said, many do good things with their money, people like Soros or Gates. People like the Kochs, the Mercers, the Uileins, Theil, Norquist, etc., simply want a government that serves only them and they use their excessive wealth yo buy power, not to help people.

[Irish_Dem]

12. Yes but the bad outweighs the good.

And how the money is spent should be decided by voters and elected officials.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Not just tax cuts; they want to be the rulers with a puppet, ersatz 'democratic' government.

[Irish_Dem]

13. Yes they are addicted to both power and money.

[Scrivener7]

10. It's just another form of hoarding. Just as pathological

as those people with rat infested junk they will never use piled to the ceiling.

[Irish_Dem]

14. Yes it is a true addiction/hoarding psychopathology.

No amount of money is enough for them.
They can never fill the holes in their soul.

[PatSeg]

20. Absolutely bizarre isn't it?

The lengths they will go to have more money when they already have more than they could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes. It is most definitely a psychological disorder.

[Irish_Dem]

21. Yes it is a hoarding/addiction disorder.

And like most addicts they will do anything to get their fix.

The sad part is that we let them do it.
Because Americans love money too.

[PatSeg]

23. Yes, we not only "let them do it",

people tend to applaud them for their success, as if it is a good thing, not an addiction.

[Irish_Dem]

24. Exactly. Ruthless pursuit of vast wealth is a virtue, not a sin.

[PatSeg]

25. And of course that myth about the virtuous

pursuit of wealth was started by the wealthy and the downtrodden bought it.

[Irish_Dem]

27. Yes worshipping the dollar came from those

who are addicted to ruthless pursuit of wealth.

[PatSeg]

28. Generously spreading their own pathologies to the masses

[JT45242]

3. Shouldn't both the gunman and the billionaire be charged

That sure seems like a conspiracy to commit kidnapping or false imprisonment or something.

I hope some legal minds here can tell me what charges (would need to be federal, cause Texas you know)

[genxlib]

5. He was

https://abc13.com/steven-hotze-indictment-liberty-center-richard-aguirre-ballot-fraud-crusade/11774424/

He is also being sued in civil court by the victim

Still pending from what I can tell

[Orrex]

7. I'm sure that the billionaire will see justice in 10 or 20 years

and he'll make payment 10 or 20 years after that.

[SunSeeker]

9. I wish you were wrong.

But you're not.



Still, it is pretty clear the billionaire approved of the kidnapping/assault:

Aguirre allegedly never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.

https://abc13.com/mark-anthony-aguirre-former-houston-police-department-captain-arrested-aggravated-assault-liberty-center/8802235/

[OldBaldy1701E]

11. Nope, he is not. (n/t)

[ColinC]

16. It's also an indictment of citizens united

If the group could not set up a fund like that, they would likely have had more difficulty funneling it the way they did.

[ColinC]

15. I was just telling a friend about how the stochastic terrorists and terrorists are funded by billionaires

This is clearly one example of the latter

[Delphinus]

17. This

is truly frightening!

[róisín_dubh]

18. I'm not a violent person, I cry at the sight of roadkill...

but I'm recalling something from France, oh about 1789 or so...that might help with these problematic billionaires.

[Stargazer99]

26. It is nice to see someone else thinks France had it right

[Joinfortmill]

19. Well, the Billionaire M*Fucker was indicted

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/20/steve-hotze-houston-indicted-voter-fraud/

'GOP megadonor Steven Hotze charged after a bogus election fraud scheme led a former cop to threaten a repairman

The charges stem from Hotze’s hiring of more than a dozen private investigators to look for voter fraud in Harris County ahead of the 2020 presidential election.'

[Archae]

22. Hotze has been named as a total kook for over a decade, here:

https://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/10/775-steve-hotze.html

He's worse than we think.