A former Houston Police Department captain who in October alleged without evidence a widespread ballot harvesting scheme perpetrated by Harris County Democrats was arrested Tuesday, accused of pointing a gun at a man while attempting to investigate his claims.
Mark A. Aguirre, 63, faces a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the Oct. 19 confrontation. According to the Harris County District Attorney’s office, Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of a truck belonging to an air conditioner repairman he had been surveilling, convinced the truck contained 750,000 fraudulent ballots.
Aguirre then pointed his gun at the repairman, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s back, prosecutors said. No ballots were found in the truck, which was filled instead with air conditioning parts and tools.
Aguirre told police he was part of a group of private citizens called the Liberty Center which was conducting a “civilian investigation” of the alleged scheme, which he said was operating out of the air conditioner repairman’s mobile home. Aguirre also told police the repairman was “using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any databases.”
