Texas county election head who was targeted by Sidney Powell quits after lynching threats

[Norbert]

Heider Garcia announced he is resigning as head of elections for Tarrant County, Texas — home to the city of Fort Worth — after a flood of death threats provoked at least in part by a pro-Trump attorney pushing conspiracy theories about him, reported The New York Times on Tuesday.

"Mr. Garcia oversees elections in a county where, in 2020, Donald J. Trump became only the second Republican presidential candidate to lose in more than 50 years. Right-wing skepticism of the election results fueled threats against him, even though the county received acclaim from state auditors for its handling of the 2020 voting," reported Neil Vigdor. "With Mr. Trump persistently repeating the lie that he won the 2020 election, many of his supporters and those in right-wing media have latched on to conspiracy theories and joined him in spreading disinformation about election security. Those tasked with running elections, even in deeply Republican areas that did vote for Mr. Trump in 2020, have borne the brunt of vitriol and threats from people persuaded by baseless claims of fraud."

"Mr. Garcia detailed a series of threats as part of his written testimony last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he urged to pass better protections for election officials," said the report. "He testified that he had repeatedly been the target of a doxxing campaign, including the posting of his home address on Twitter after Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, falsely accused him on television and social media of manipulating election results."

Among the threats he received were messages calling him a "traitor," a Twitter user urging people to "hunt him down," and one person who wrote online, “Hang him when convicted from fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out his mouth.”

Will anything be done about this? I have my doubts.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/texas-county-election-head-who-was-targeted-by-sidney-powell-quits-after-lynching-threats/ar-AA1a1XP0?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3f23f8af71a54d6f8db8275e9618d6a5&ei=37

[Celerity]

1. Ironic. A MAGAt using the word maggots.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Heider%20Garcia%20-%20Tarrant%20County,%20TX.pdf

On the evening of November 3, 2020, we announced Election Night results around midnight, and at that time, without late absentees and provisional ballots included, Donald Trump was winning by 2,168 votes. Fast forward 15 days, to the day official results that were canvassed. Even though countywide races down the ballot were all won by republican candidates with margins between 4 and 10%, the Presidential race
went for Joe Biden by 0.22% (1,826 votes out of 838,968). That 0.5% variation is within the error margin of any poll or statistical analysis. So, with a set of results that was virtually identical to the election night report, we had gone from no questioning, no threats and no doubt to distrust, discord, and concerns for personal safety.

So, what happened in those 15 days? Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani made baseless accusations of voter fraud and manipulation of election results. In their statements the accused Smartmatic, one of my former employers, as one of the two main actors of “the steal”, and from there the conspiracy theories about Tarrant County just spiraled out of control. But it was not indirect references, it was also direct
accusations from Ms. Powell herself:

• On the Lou Dobbs show she stated “…we know that one of the Smartmatic people went to Tarrant County, Texas and turned that county blue”

• On Twitter she posted “Gee whiz! I wonder how #TarrantCounty Texas went #blue so easily after hiring a #Smartmatic guy?!”, with a picture of me included.

• On a separate post on Twitter, she stated “And #Tarrant County just went #blue?! What a coincidence! #ImpoundTheMachines #DominionVotingSystems #Smartmatic What could possibly go wrong with company called #Dominion?”

This campaign went beyond her, other personalities also referred to Tarrant County and me:

• Michelle Malkin did a segment in Newsmax about Tarrant County and went as far as to claim that I was a “Venezuelan born operative” that had fled the country
.
• The Gateway Pundit website put out a piece pointing directly at me asking “Does ANYONE believe this actually happened?”

• Texas State Representative Steve Toth tweeted “Meet Heider Garcia of SmartMatic as he’s grilled in the Philippines over voter fraud. He now runs election in Tarrant County Texas What could go possibly wrong?”

• A Senatorial candidate in Florida tweeted first that “I want more intel on him ASAP” and later that “I need more on Heider Garcia”.

What followed in the next 4 to 6 weeks was a terrible time of threats and concerns for the safety of my family, my staff and myself. I’ve included in this testimony screenshots of all the items I preserved from back then, and I can tell you this is just a sample, there were far more posts and messages than I can recall. As you can imagine, it was deeply concerning to read things like “HUNT HIM DOWN”, “@heidergarcia needs to leave Texas and the U.S as soon as possible”, “hang him when convicted from fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out his mouth” or “What’s his address”.


And if that sounds bad, the worse was yet to come.
On November 22, 2020, a twitter account posted my home address as a response to Sidney Powell’s tweet (I have redacted my address from the screenshot of the tweet attached).

We were lucky enough that my wife saw it as we were going to bed, and we were able to report it and have it taken down
within 2 hours. Can you imagine the level of stress this put on us? I could not sleep that night, I just sat in the living room, until around 3:00 a.m., just waiting to see if anyone had read this and decided to act on it. The next days were the thanksgiving break, I spent those days installing security cameras around my house and preparing response plans with my wife for worse case scenarios.

All this information was turned over to the District Attorney’s office and the Tarrant County Sheriff. The Sherriff was fantastic at coordinating support and patrol around our neighborhood, and as far as I understand, providing the information to the Intelligence team to assessfor credible threats. The DA’s office reviewed the messages and concluded that there were no elements there that constituted actual threats, and that there was no action that could be taken. To this day, not a single person or entity has been held accountable for the impact this whole situation had on my family and myself.

After all of this, where are we in June of 2022? Fraud theorists are still around, and the perceived threat level is still, in my opinion, high. We have received so many public records requests (FOIA, PRR, ORR, etc.) that we are asking our Commissioners Court to approve a new position for our department, so that we can have a full-time employee exclusively dedicated to preparing records for being released and addressing requests from the public. We have spent 18 months turning this office inside out, sharing public records, welcoming watchers, participating in public events, and providing answers to the public.

[SunSeeker]

2. He should sue Sydney Powell for defamation.

But he'd have to get in line behind all the other people suing her for defamation.

[FeelingBlue]

7. Maybe someone with money...

Would be willing to step forward and cover the cost of suing Powell into the truth.

[ShazzieB]

9. Get in line is right.

Defamation of character is that woman's middle name. When someone commits defamation on the scale she has, it's not possible to appropriately compensate all the victims, unless the defamer is a bilionaire.

In a just world, she Rudy, and the other chief spreaders of the Big Lie would be required to issue repeated public statements that it was, indeed, a Big Lie, along with public apologies to all of those whose lives they all but destroyed. Deliberately causing such a huge amount of terror, stress, and misery for so many people should be a criminal offense, not just a tortious one.

[SunSeeker]

12. I hope Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss get Giuliani's last penny.

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/election-workers-lawsuit-rudy-giuliani-ruby-freeman-wandrea-shaye-moss/85-59e649e6-c537-4824-a838-5216da875fa1

[ShazzieB]

13. Omg, yes!

I'm rooting for them SO hard.

[DFW]

10. I'd swear out a criminal complaint about conspiracy/ incitement to commit murder

THAT might have a little more punch than one more defamation lawsuit. There are probably enough of those filed against Powell to keep her tied up in litigation for her next three incarnations.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Authoritarians push out good people any way they can & install their toadies. . . nt

[Scrivener7]

4. That's the problem. This next election is going to be a mess.

And when trump goes looking for his 11,000 votes, someone is going to give them to him.

[2naSalit]

6. +1

[LiberalFighter]

5. In a state that went for the idiot? Wow!

[hatrack]

8. I'm sure a civil case and a tasty cash settlement will solve this problem!!

.

[MagickMuffin]

11. This is how you kill democracy, intimidation, doxxing campaigns

These losers can’t win at the ballot box so invent lies outta whole cloth and the idiots will follow suit.

I never met Mr. Garcia, but knew Steve Rayborne who was a decent guy. He assured me several times that the voting machines could not be hacked. I’m sure Mr. Garcia was only doing his job. Tarrant County was Woke AF in Nov 2020.

I was so thrilled Tarrant County went for Joe Biden!