Former Sid Miller allies told police the ag commissioner feared the DEA, told a friend to get rid of marijuana

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A former friend of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told a Texas Ranger that in 2022 Miller asked him to dispose of three bags of marijuana cigarettes and gummies because he was afraid that the Drug Enforcement Administration might find them on his property.

At the time, the friend, Michael Hackney, was living in a motorhome on Miller’s Stephenville ranch, where Miller was licensed to grow hemp.

“I’ve got to get rid of this. I've had it at the house, and if the DEA comes, I can't get caught with this stuff,” Miller said, according to Hackney. “He says, ‘You do with it whatever you want. Get rid of it. But don't leave it here.’”

Hackney added, "He was really, really nervous about that deal."

The Texas Tribune obtained a recording of the Texas Ranger’s July 2024 interview with Hackney through an open records request to the Texas Department of Public Safety, but has not been able to confirm whether Miller was — or has ever been — under investigation by the DEA or any other law enforcement agency. He has not been charged with a crime, and a Department of Public Safety spokesperson said Miller is not under active investigation by state police. A DEA spokesperson said the federal agency could not comment on any ongoing or past investigations unless they are fully adjudicated in the courts.

In an interview with the Tribune, Miller flatly denied the accusations.

“If I had marijuana cigarettes and gummies and I thought the DEA was going to investigate me, I damn sure wouldn’t have given them to anybody else to get rid of. I’d have just gotten rid of them myself,” he said. “I would never do that and it didn’t happen.”

Law enforcement records reviewed by the Tribune show Miller entangled in a morass of accusations related to his hemp farming operation made by former associates. The records were from two separate state investigations, neither of which targeted Miller. One investigation was into bribery accusations against a top Miller aide. The second was in response to an accusation of illegal coercion that Miller made against one of his own high-ranking Texas Departure of Agriculture employees. Miller accused the employee of trying to blackmail him with threats of explicit photos.

Miller dismissed the accusations made to law enforcement as lies from a disgruntled former employee and former friend. He said DPS has never reached out to question him about the claims.

Recorded interviews conducted during both investigations revealed people close to Miller believed his hemp farm was under scrutiny by the DEA.

That included Freddy Vest, a former agriculture department director who oversaw the hemp licensing program and who Miller accused of blackmail. DPS investigated the claim but did not charge Vest with a crime.

During that investigation, Vest told officers in June of this year that a colleague had informed him three or four years ago that the DEA had contacted the agency asking for information about Miller’s hemp farm.

When Vest relayed the information to Miller in early 2022, he said Miller grew angry.

“I said, ‘Sid, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I told you I'd never lie to you, and I never hold anything back from you. … I've heard that there's been a DEA agent that is inquiring on your hemp program,’” Vest recounted to the officers.

“[Miller] said, ‘What's a DEA?’ I said, ‘Drug Enforcement Agency.’ And so he went back home. He got mad at me for telling him or that I knew about it,” Vest added to the officers.

Miller confirmed Vest told him the DEA was looking into his hemp operation, but said he was wrong.

“Freddy is a damn drama queen. He’s full of it,” Miller told the Tribune. “I checked out his story and it didn’t check out. It never happened. I never, ever talked to the DEA. They never stepped foot on my place.”

Miller, a Republican in his third-term in the state elected office, was registered to grow hemp in Texas between 2020 and 2023 — under a license granted by his own office. He was one of the hundreds of people who applied for that opportunity after state lawmakers legalized growing parts of the cannabis plant in 2019 as long as it did not contain more than .3% of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.

Miller planted 10 hemp crops at his Stephenville tree nursery through 2022, including varieties called Sweet Wife, China Blossom and ACDC, records show.

State lawmakers in May voted to ban the sale of substances containing consumable THC in Texas citing concern that they are dangerous to people’s health. At first, Miller opposed that ban, arguing it would be harmful to Texas farmers, though he ultimately supported it.

Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the ban in June, calling for a focus on regulation. Lawmakers returned to Austin on July 21 to once again tackle that issue, among others.

Scrutiny over hemp licenses  

When Hackney spoke to the Texas Ranger about Miller’s hemp business, the Ranger was investigating Miller’s close political consultant Todd Smith.

Smith was arrested in May 2021 for soliciting up to $150,000 to guarantee prospective growers supposedly exclusive hemp licenses from Miller’s office. Licenses to grow hemp are unlimited in Texas and cost $100. After the indictment, Miller told reporters that he parted ways with Smith following his arrest. He later said the investigation was politically motivated and that Smith did nothing wrong. Miller has denied involvement and was not implicated in the case.

Smith pled guilty to commercial bribery in 2024, a few weeks before his jury trial was scheduled to begin and about a week after Miller was subpoenaed to testify. Smith agreed to two years of deferred adjudication, meaning he would have to follow terms of probation but then could have his charges dismissed. A few months after Smith pleaded guilty, Miller hired Smith as chief of staff of the Texas Department of Agriculture. Smith did not respond to request for comment.

Hackney’s interview with the Texas Ranger, in which he described Miller asking him to get rid of the marijuana, is embedded in Smith’s 180-page investigative file from DPS.

“Sid shows up at my motor home and has three bags of product and by product, I mean, marijuana cigarettes that were in little cigar wrapping, gummies and so forth,” Hackney said in the interview.

Hackney responded, "What in the world is this?" he told the Ranger. But he did what Miller asked, he said.

Hackney’s motorhome had been parked on Miller’s property in Stephenville for about five years at the time to help manage his horse and cattle operation, he told the Ranger. Hackney, a former calf roper, got close to Miller traveling around the country and showing horses with him. He said two had a falling out in 2023 which resulted in Hackney moving off Miller’s property. Miller said he asked Hackney to leave his property because “he wore out his welcome.”

In the interview, Hackney told the Ranger he witnessed Miller tell an employee at his nursery to make sure if they had anything illegal on the property to get rid of it. And once at Miller’s house, he said he saw Miller smoke marijauna.

Miller said he told his employees to only grow legal hemp on the property.

Reached by the Tribune, Hackney said he stood by his statements to DPS, but stressed that he only came forward because he was asked by the Rangers to interview about Miller’s relationship to Smith. He was told by DPS that his statements would be confidential.

“I did not want to hurt Sid and especially his family in any way, but I did answer my questions to the best I could with the knowledge I had,” Hackney told the Tribune.

It’s unclear whether any investigators took any further action in response to Hackney's claims. Asked about them, the DPS spokesperson initially said Hackney’s interview was included in a report that was submitted to the Travis County District Attorney’s office, and directed further questions to that office.

A spokesperson for the Travis County DA's office said they do not have a record of receiving a copy of Hackney's interview. Hours before publication, DPS sent an additional statement saying it did not send Hackney's interview to the the district attorney's office after it was determined that it "had no investigative value" to the Smith case.

A second investigation

Nearly a year after Hackney was interviewed by the Rangers, Vest, the employee fired by Miller after 10 years at the agency, got a knock on his door from two DPS agents asking to talk to him about his recent termination from the agriculture department.

In the interview, Vest said a former assistant commissioner, Walt Roberts, once told him that he accompanied Miller to a shop in Bastrop where Miller dropped off multiple garbage bags of his harvested hemp in exchange for two large garbage bags of black tubes with individually rolled joints inside.

“[Roberts] said [Miller] took his hemp down there, and what this guy was doing was spraying it with synthetic THC, turning it back into marijuana,” Vest told law enforcement.

Miller denied to Roberts he was doing anything illegal and remarked that “there’s some college kids that’d like to have this,” Vest told officers.

Roberts confirmed Vest’s account to the Tribune, adding that he felt uncomfortable being present for the exchange. He declined to answer further questions. Roberts was hired by Miller when he first took state office. Roberts has publicly disclosed he pleaded guilty for a federal felony and misdemeanor for his role in a campaign finance conspiracy in Oklahoma in 2003.

Miller denied he ever sold or exchanged his hemp in Bastrop.

Vest was interviewed after Miller reported him to DPS and accused him of threatening to expose intimate pictures involving Miller if he didn’t fire certain employees at the agency, according to a written request from Miller’s office for DPS to investigate the incident.

In a recording of that DPS interview, Vest told the officers Hackney had photos of Miller that could be incriminating.

The Tribune reviewed copies of both photos. One photo was of Miller laying next to a blonde woman on a bed smiling. Miller told the Tribune that it was a sick woman lying in a hospital bed who he took a selfie with. The other photo was a screen shot of what appeared to be Miller’s own Facebook story post of a woman naked on a bed, but only her backside is visible. Vest told police this woman was Miller’s wife. Miller told the Tribune he was unaware of this photo. Miller's wife did not respond to a request for comment.

Vest told Miller about the photos in May, but didn’t tell him who had them, despite Miller’s repeated requests for more information, according to a recording of their conversation that Miller secretly recorded and sent to DPS.

When Miller fired Vest and reported him to DPS, he submitted his audio recording and a transcript of the conversation as evidence. The Tribune obtained copies via an open records request.

When Vest tells Miller about the photos, Miller asks where the photo came from and tries to guess who has copies of the photos, according to the recording shared with DPS.

In that recording of Miller and Vest’s conversation, Vest said that he had known about the photos for a while, but had previously convinced the person not to publicize them. But the person was more recently considering making them public and wanted Miller to fire Smith and another agency head.

Hackney told the Tribune that he never intended to release the photos.

Vest insisted in his DPS interview that neither he nor Hackney ever directly threatened Miller. He had tried, he said, to get Miller away from Smith for years.

“I didn't show these [photos] to anyone to extort anything out of Sid or anything,” Vest told the officers. “And since I was terminated, I haven't. It's not a vendetta for me against Sid Miller.” Vest declined an interview with the Tribune.

The agents said in the interview with Vest that there was no evidence that Vest tried to blackmail Miller and closed the case. Vest was never charged with a crime. Miller told the Tribune he is still considering further legal action.

Political storms

Miller is gearing up to run for reelection for a fourth term next year. So far, he’s garnered at least one primary challenger: Nate Sheets, founder of Nature Nate’s Honey Company.

Miller previously served in the Texas state House from 2001 to 2013. Since he was first elected agriculture commissioner in 2014, he’s repeatedly weathered political controversies and criticism.

Miller has frequently faced backlash for posting misleading and false information on his political social media pages.

In 2016, Miller came under fire for using state funds to travel to Oklahoma to receive what he called a “Jesus shot,” an injection that a doctor in Oklahoma City claimed could take away all pain for life.

Miller later reimbursed the state for the trip and Travis County prosecutors did not pursue charges.

In 2017, the Texas Ethics Commission fined Miller $2,750 for sloppy campaign accounting. The next year, the ethics commission fined Miller $500 for using state funds to travel to a rodeo in Mississippi after an investigation found the primary purpose of the trip to Jackson was personal.

Kate McGee is continuing to report on issues related to the Texas Department of Agriculture. If you have a tip reach out at mcgee@texastribune.org.

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