Yesterday El Paso County District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez filed a righteous ethics complaint against El Paso Commissioner Veronica Escobar. Read yesterday’s blog which has a pasted copy of the complaint. As yesterday unfolded, a very “NOIVOUS” and dancing Escobar actually ADMITTED on no less than TWO 1150 AM KHRO talk radio shows (the Hector Montes and Paul Strelzin shows) that she INDEED received free legal services from attorney John Wenke as a Commissioner. (John Wenke represented Escobar before the ethics board on the ethics complaint Stuart Leeds and I had filed against her as a commissioner for misusing county resources in an effort to try and have court costs assessed against County Judge Anthony Cobos even after being told by the County Attorney that it legally could not be done.)
The El Paso County ethics code prohibits officials from receiving gifts over a certain amount and not reporting them. John Wenke, who does employment law, has had at least one case come before Commissioner’s court while Escobar has been on the Court. According to David Crowder’s article on newspapertree.com, Escobar is a long time, very good friend of John Wenke. Escobar says that she and her husband (Michael Pleters) socialize with John Wenke and that their friendship goes back years. However, despite this long standing, close friendship, according to David Crowder, Escobar, was in fact sitting on Commissioner’s Court in March 2007 when it approved a settlement on a case involving John Wenke.
Did Escobar disqualify herself from voting to settle Wenke’s suit, as ethics 101 would dictate? In plain English, you don’t get to vote on your buddies matters. You have to, at the very least, disclose your friendship and then should gracefully/ethically bow out. What would the public think if I were a commissioner and I voted to settle a lawsuit my good friend Stuart Leeds had brought before commissioner’s court. I daresay that if I had the temerity to be so blatantly dishonest, I would be indicted by the Feds in a heartbeat and rightfully so.
If Escobar did vote to settle the case with Wenke, how much was the settlement for? Was Wenke given attorney’s fees in that settlement? And if so, how much were they? Why didn’t David Crowder ask Escobar those questions? How could he not ask those questions?
What we do know about that lawsuit is that it was fully settled and dismissed after it was settled on April 10, 2007. The order for the dismissal was approved by the attorney for the Plaintiff (the person suing), John Wenke. It was also approved by the attorney for the Defendant (the Defendant in this case was El Paso County, Texas.) In an interesting twist, the attorney for the Defendant in that case, El Paso County, Texas, was none other than then assistant County Attorney Annabell Perez, now Commissioner Perez, Escobar’s ally on Commissioner’s Court. The lawsuit is styled, Gabrelle Navarrete, Plaintiff v. El Paso County, Texas Defendant in the 327th Judicial District Court, Cause No. 2004-085. See attachment-Dismissal Order.
Where is the FBI? Where is the FBI indeed?
Crowder, instead of giving you pertinent information like the above, spent his cyber ink inadvertently screwing Escobar in an attempt to save her. According to Gilbert Sanchez, Crowder, our neutral investigative reporter, was frantic defending Escobar during the telephone interview with him. Crowder was saying things like Wenke’s settlement was old, so who cares? More importantly, Crowder, who has as an obsession with me, kept asking Sanchez to admit that I had penned his (Sanchez’)complaint. Crowder even went so far as to say that the writing on the complaint was exactly like mine. Sanchez said that he burst out laughing at that one and asked Crowder if that was a compliment or an insult. No matter how many times Sanchez told Crowder I had nothing to do with it, Crowder, who has a very paranoid mind, could not get away from it. What is also salient is that Crowder lost sight of the fact that for the good of the public, it doesn’t matter who wrote the complaint. It is the content that matters. Did Commissioner Escobar receive free legal services? Answer: yes. Did the attorney who provided the legal services have business with the Court? Answer: yes. Does the Ethics code prohibit gifts over a certain amount and not reporting them? Answer: yes.
But it is hard for Crowder to have the power of an honest and normal perspective when he has spent so much of his life being an apologist for Escobar and her ilk and living in her anal canal.
Another Crowderism, (A Crowderism is defined as a dishonesty and bias in favor of his landlord and her friends) is when he wrote that “ethics complaints are normally confidential” insinuating that I had done wrong by publishing Sanchez’ complaint on my blog yesterday. Government records are not confidential. Ethics complaints filed with the County are government records. Therefore, ethics complaints are not confidential. However, I must thank David Crowder for providing us, albeit unwittingly, with the very important fact that Escobar was sitting on Commissioner’s Court in March 2007 when it voted to settle a suit with Wenke. This information makes Sanchez’ complaint against Escobar so much more powerful. Based on this great information, I know where to go next.
In the meantime, while Escobar is pondering in the newspapertree.com the question as to whether to ask Wenke to bill her so as to avoid questions (the question was already raised by the complaint and answered by her) there is a new round of questions.
Editor’s note: Ramons Bracamontes’ article in the El Paso Times weirdly never mentions that Escobar received free legal services from Wenke. Bracamontes in fact erroneously and dishonestly states several times that Escobar “hired” Wenke. Webster’s defines “hire” as “to engage the personal services of someone for a fixed sum.”