Warrants detail allegations that led to search of Democratic candidate for Texas House

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Texas authorities who seized the cellphone of a Democratic candidate for the Texas House and searched the home of a legislative aide this week were investigating allegations that a longtime Frio County political operator had illegally harvested votes for multiple local races in recent years, court records obtained by The Texas Tribune show.

Those races include the 2024 Democratic primary campaign of Cecilia Castellano, the candidate whose phone was seized, the records show. An investigator with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office claims in a sworn affidavit that the aide, Manuel Medina, a former chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party and chief of staff to state Rep. Liz Campos, D-San Antonio, was recorded discussing a scheme to collect votes for Castellano with the Frio County operator.

No one has been charged in connection to the probe, and Castellano and Medina condemned the investigation as a political attack in interviews with the Tribune on Saturday. Latino rights advocates have decried the raids as a “disgraceful and outrageous” effort to intimidate Latino voters. The League of United Latin American Citizens on Friday said it will ask the U.S. Justice Department to scrutinize the state’s actions.

Authorities searched the homes of at least five other Latinos, according to Texas LULAC’s state director. All work on Castellano’s campaign.

“I feel like I’ve been violated,” Castellano said in an interview with the Tribune. “This political tactic is because the Republicans are vying for this seat. They want full power of the House. And we are not going to give up. We are going to continue to work hard.”

Medina, who also spoke with the Tribune Saturday, described the tactics the attorney general’s office used issuing the search warrant.

“I’ve been on campaigns for 30 years and never in my life could I have ever imagined anything that I do that would merit them breaking down my door and pointing six assault semi-automatic weapons in my face,” Medina said.

Castellano is running for the seat of state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde. King’s district is the top Republican target in the Texas House this year, as Republicans seek to ensure that they have enough votes to pass a school voucher bill next legislative session.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, carried King’s district by 6 percentage points in 2022. But King, one of the most moderate members of the House, ran unopposed. Castellano’s Republican opponent this year is former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr.

Paxton’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment Saturday. His office on Wednesday issued a news release saying it had executed search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar Counties.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in that statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

His investigators may have to explain the probe in greater detail soon.

On Friday, a Bexar County district judge granted Medina a temporary protective order and set a Sept. 12 hearing date. The order directed authorities to immediately seal the materials they seized from his home and stopped them from sifting through the records until the court holds a hearing.

Agents “rummaged” through Medina’s home for seven hours, taking papers, documents, family photos, almost 65 cellphones and 41 computers, Medina’s lawyer wrote in a court filing.

“There are hundreds of these search warrants that have been filed across the state over the last few years,” Medina said, pointing to Paxton’s pursuit of election fraud. “This is an abuse of power. I think it’s incumbent on me and all of us to fight back.”

The Tribune obtained 12 search warrant affidavits related to the probe. They do not include the warrants for Medina’s home and Castellano’s phone, but the documents do mention Castellano and Medina. The bulk of the records focus on a woman described in the documents as someone who “has been working for candidates in Frio County for the past 25 to 30 years collecting mail ballots.” The Tribune is not naming the woman because she has not been charged with a crime.

The investigation from Paxton’s office began in 2022, when the local district attorney referred the case to the state. The inquiry was prompted by a complaint from the loser of a Democratic primary runoff for a Frio County office.

The losing candidate told a state investigator that she had been told by others that the winner had hired the woman to collect ballots. The losing candidate then got all applications for mail-in ballots through an open records request and compared the alleged harvester handwriting to other applications that were not signed, concluding that the woman had filled out several mail-in ballots without disclosing that she had assisted, according to the affidavit.

The alleged vote harvester was helped by two other women, the losing candidate told the investigator. The main suspect charged candidates between $1,500 to $2,500 to collect the applications, mail ballots and sometimes drive voters to vote, the losing judge told the investigator, according to the affidavit. She received payments through her daughter’s Cash App, the losing candidate said. The affidavits do not indicate that the losing candidate provided any proof of the schemes.

The investigator obtained Cash App records for the account that showed the winning judge and another local candidate had paid the daughter close to the date of the election in 2022 — “in some instances, [adding] a note to the payment which stated, ‘election,’” according to the affidavit.

The affidavits say that the alleged harvester helped candidates in multiple local Frio County races in recent years by filling out mail-in ballots for voters and then taking the ballots to the post office. The investigator in most cases does not detail what specifically those allegations are based on — or bases the allegations on information learned third hand.

But the investigator says in the filings that several voters said in interviews she “either influenced their vote, prepared their ballot, and/or took possession of their carrier envelope to mail their ballot.”

The investigator wrote that every carrier envelope reviewed in 2022 lacked a signature from the alleged harvester.

He wrote investigators “also observed that several voters who had voted by mail did not appear to be eligible for assistance.”

State law says that anyone who helps a voter fill out their mail-in ballot must sign the ballot, write their address, describe their relationship with the voter and disclose whether they received any compensation for helping the person vote. It’s also a crime to help fill out a ballot for someone who is not eligible to receive help.

To vote by mail, a Texan must be 65 or older on Election Day or be unable to vote in person due to illness or be away from their county throughout the entire election period or be expecting to give birth soon or be confined in a jail yet eligible to vote.

In October 2023, agents executed a search warrant on the alleged harvester’s house, taking her cellphone and documents associated with elections for which she allegedly harvested mail ballots.

Ahead of this year’s March primary, the attorney general’s office conducted surveillance on the woman, her accused helpers and a county employee for about a week in February, according to court documents.

Castellano and Medina’s involvement is alleged to have begun in early 2024. The affidavits say that the attorney general’s office investigator “obtained a witness recorded conversation” between the woman, Medina and a third person on Jan. 19.

“Further review of the recorded conversation shows Medina acting as a third party to provide compensation to [the alleged harvester] for vote harvesting services for an intended candidate identified as Cecilia Castellano,” the document says.

The affidavit does not include any direct quotes from the conversation detailing the alleged scheme, or say how the investigator obtained the recording.

“The vote harvesting services that [the woman] and Medina agreed to are for [the woman] to complete [applications for ballots by mail] for voters and then make contact with the voter when they receive the mail so that she can collect the mail ballot,” the affidavit says. “Based on this conversation, [the investigator] concluded that the vote harvesting services to be performed involve [the woman] being in the physical presence of an official ballot or a ballot voted by mail, intended to deliver votes for Castellano.”

The investigator alleges in the affidavit that in other elections the woman used sample ballots to show the voters who to vote for while filling out their mail-in ballots, though he does not say how he knew that.

The investigator says in court documents that the woman told Medina that they would not win the election if they did not go after the elderly and disabled. The woman agreed to help Castellano’s campaign in exchange for “compensation,” the affidavits say. The conversation is paraphrased by the investigator in the filing; the documents do not directly quote her saying that.

Castellano finished in first place in the primary race, and then won the subsequent runoff in May.

Castellano told the Tribune Saturday that she had met that woman once — to drop off material before the woman went door-knocking — but did not know about the meeting referenced in the court documents. She said she had not yet received the affidavit for the warrant that agents used when they knocked on her door and rang her doorbell at about 6 a.m. Tuesday, waking her up.

Initially skeptical whether they were legitimate employees for the attorney general, Castellano said she asked them what the situation was about but they told her they had no information and gave her a phone number for a sergeant in charge.

“All I know is that we’ve run a very strong campaign, we’ve worked very hard,” Castellano said. “We’ve literally done truly grassroots campaigning.”

Terri Langford contributed reporting.

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