Dudegoggles and the Guajuardo Hearing

As most CJC regulars know, there was an interesting hearing in the 263rd District Court on September 21st & 22nd regarding a Motion for Change of Venue in the State of Texas vs. Alex Guajardo.  Defense counsel Justin Keiter had filed the motion in response to pre-trial publicity given to the case by the Harris County District Attorney's Office's Communications Division and elected District Attorney Kim Ogg, herself.  The hearing was a highly watched event due to the fact that Keiter had subpoenaed Ogg to testify.

Although Ogg was definitely the anticipated main attraction of the hearing, the opening act was Dane Schiller, Ogg's Director of Communications.  In my opinion, Schiller's testimony would ultimately prove to be far more entertaining and enlightening than Ogg's.  Schiller unabashedly admitted to several jaw-dropping revelations that were reminiscent of Watergate-era "dirty tricks" that he and the Communications Division employed in an effort to make Kim Ogg more likable cast the Office in a positive light.

First, a little background on the evolution of the "Communications Division" of the Harris County District Attorney's Office . . .

Back in the olden days, there was no such division that I was aware of.  During my tenure there (1999-2008), reporters usually contacted the Office when they had a story they wanted to report on, and that was usually a direct reach out to the prosecutor or staff member involved.  If I tried a high publicity case, the reporters called and talked to me.  It was simple and straightforward.  There was no media "flak" involved.  If they wanted to ask about a policy, they called the District Attorney himself.

Towards the end of my time at the Office (bear with me, it may have been right after my departure), I believe that the Office designated an official spokesperson to help coordinate media inquiries.  If my memory serves, that person was Donna Hawkins, who was a prosecutor who was elevated to that role.  She was followed by former KHOU (and KBTX in Bryan!) reporter Jeff McShan.  I'm definitely fuzzy on the timeline here because I was no longer with the Office, but I'm confident in saying the "Communications Division" was just a tiny portion of the Office, housing only one (maybe two) employees.  I believe that would be the case through the end of the Devon Anderson term.

When Kim Ogg took Office on January 1, 2017, she revamped the idea of the Communication Division.  What had previously been handled by one or two employees has now swelled to far more as the Division filled with a combination of former-Ogg campaign workers, reporters, and aspiring politicians who had failed to get elected or re-elected.   The most recent Office organizational chart I have is from December of 2021, and it listed five employees in the Communications Division and an additional four in the "Community Engagement" Division.

 

The next time Kim Ogg shows up at Commissioners' Court claiming to be defunded and begging for more money for more prosecutors, I hope you will take note of the large number of employees she's paying with her current budget to get her re-elected "promote the Office."  And that's just a list of those actually in the division.  It doesn't account for folks like Mark Goldberg, former HPD chief Clarence Bradford and some others who seem to have some fairly fuzzy lines when trying to outline their job descriptions.

Curiously, the last job that "Community Engagement Supervisor" Anna Carpenter had before being hired by the District Attorney's Office was Campaign Manager for Kim Ogg. Here's a screenshot from her LinkedIn page.

That's a really great gig to get between political seasons!  Glad we taxpayers could help out.

But I digress.  Back to the hearing . . . 

As I was saying, my dear friend Dane Schiller (whom prior to the hearing, I had never actually met in person) was the first witness called to the stand by Keiter.  If you recall, I had written this post back in January about Dane and the fact that I believed him to be exceeding the parameters of his job description by trying to poison legitimate criticisms of the D.A.'s Office with often anonymous personal attacks.  

Keiter did a great job of asking Dane a line of questions to illustrate how the District Attorney's Office under Kim Ogg (and Schiller's Communications Division) go overboard in attempting to "inform the public" with their message.  Dane was clearly comfortable on the stand, grinning from ear to ear as he answered Keiter's questions.  He acknowledged that his job as the Director of Communications his duty was to inform the public about how the District Attorney's Office worked and what was going on at the Courthouse.  He disagreed that multiple press conferences and other media leaks about individual cases were poisoning the well of potential jurors that could ultimately be sitting on those cases.

Keiter then shifted to Dane's methodology for doing his leaks and asked if Schiller had ever utilized another person's identity online to spread his message.  Dane appeared confused and denied having ever done so, qualifying the answer that he had never stolen someone else's identity.  Keiter didn't follow up by asking him if he had created a false individual altogether, like say . . . .Jake Mattius, and the questioning continued.  A few questions later, Schiller apparently thought better of his earlier answer and noted that he does sometimes post online with a "handle" that isn't his real name.

And when Keiter asked, Dane admitted that his online handle was "Dudegoggles."

And that was when things got fun.

The Houston Chronicle's website makes it really easy to click on a person's online handle and have every single comment they've ever written on the Chronicle website show up in chronological order.  As soon as Dane confirmed his online handle under oath, that's exactly what reporters began doing.  None of this was a surprise to me, as noted above, I had accused Dane of being "Dudegoggles" way back in January.  But reporters, like Keri Blakinger and Nicole Hensley were soon publishing on Twitter and other locations some of Dudegoggles' greatest hits, including one where he called judges "clowns" and clearly blamed them for the "crime wave" that Kim Ogg and Crimestoppers have been trying to sell to the general public.

Keiter had the opportunity to ask him about all of these posts.  He also asked him if other members of the Communications Division had online handles where they attacked enemies of the office as well.  He specifically asked if Anna Carpenter was known for posting on Twitter under the handle of "ShePersisted."  Schiller indicated that he didn't know, but that's okay.  I know.  I know because when not being blasted by "Dudegoggles," I've been blasted by "ShePersisted."  ShePersisted and I have some mutual friends on Twitter, so it didn't take long to figure out who she was.  

So rude, Anna. So rude.

The childish antics of Dane Schiller and Anna Carpenter would be no different than those of thousands of other online trolls who bash each other with insults and dishonest statistics online each day, except for the fact that they are doing this as part of their taxpayer-funded jobs.  At some point one has to wonder what exactly smearing critics, bashing judges, and trying cases in the media has to do with the job of being a prosecutor.  The answer, quite simply, is absolutely nothing.  And while we are on the topic of things that aren't in a prosecutor's job description, neither are mandatory appearances to register voters in the name of the elected District Attorney.

Anyone who has half a brain realizes that neither the Communications Division nor the Community Outreach Division have a damn thing to do with criminal prosecution.  They are simply a taxfunded re-election committee that operates year-round for candidate Kim Ogg.  It gives a job to cronies who, in return, do everything they can to keep their boss employed.

So, what does Kim Ogg have to say about this?  As I mentioned above, she was supposed to be the main attraction in the Guajardo hearing, but she was far more polished than Schiller in her responses.  She spent all of about fifteen seconds pretending to be cordial towards Keiter before losing her patience with him. (NOTE:  I get it, Kim.  I was Keiter's chief once.  Trust me, I get it.).  But although she failed to keep her cool, often responding with smart-ass quips to Keiter's questions or pretending not to understand them, she didn't unabashedly admit to pulling childish tricks like Schiller.  Interestingly, she claimed to not know that Schiller was posting anything as "Dudegoggles" on the Chronicle website -- something that no one in the courtroom believed at all.

What Keiter did with Ogg's testimony was far more interesting, however, as he sought to get the elected District Attorney to acknowledge that she had a relationship with Houston Crimestoppers that she utilized to create a campaign against sitting criminal court judges.  Ogg refused to make such an acknowledgment and characterized her press conferences and involvement with Crimestoppers as nothing more than good old-fashioned crime fighting.

Keiter pointed out misleading information that Ogg had signed off on in an amicus brief opposing bail reform, where she had made untrue representations in a Federal case.  Keiter pointed out speaking engagements Ogg had tried to get for Crimestoppers to get her message of dangerous judges out.  Keiter showed Ogg at a press conference about his client.  He did a good job of illustrating that in Ogg's version of criminal justice, it is more about hype than results in a courtroom.  He also pointed out that her Office's success in the courtroom didn't exactly live up to the hype Ogg was promoting outside of it.  

Whether or not Keiter's Motion to Recuse will be granted won't be answered immediately.  Judge Martin said she would rule on it in November.  Win, lose or draw, I think Keiter did a good job of accomplishing what he sought to prove.  Kim Ogg's Communication and Community Outreach Divisions were shown to be spin machines that distanced Ogg from her own office's failures.   Losses in trial, missed deadlines to get people indicted, and motions to hold defendants at no bond were glossed over by a PR machine designed to shift the blame to someone else while scaring the public about how dangerous Houston had become.

And if in the process of doing all of that public blameshifting, a Defendant's rights to a neutral jury got compromised, so be it.

One of the best moments in the hearing was when Keiter read Kim Ogg's acceptance speech from 2016 back to her.  He noted that she promised the defense bar fairness and "evidence-based prosecutions" in her administration.  He asked her if she still agreed with that promise.  She said that she did.

No one in the courtroom believed her.

When you have true evidence-based prosecutions, you don't need hype.  

You don't need spin.

And you damn sure don't need Dudegoggles.