The Battle of the Texas Reformers

A feud between two of Texas’ most prominent justice reformers—Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg and Judge Lina Hidalgo—has exploded into a bitter court case.

Harris County DA Kim Ogg

The tussle between Ogg and Hidalgo centers on an argument over alleged improper financial dealings, but it could have a wider impact on the political landscape this fall.

Two of Hidalgo’s aides have been charged with felony misuse of official information and tampering, in connection with contracts and allocations made by the city’s commissioners court.

Earlier this week, the aides filed a motion to disqualify the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and remove them from the case on the grounds of conflict of interest, reported the Houston Chronicle.

Ogg has engaged in a “months-long, highly public feud” with Judge Hidalgo, while she “continually demanded that Judge Hidalgo vastly expand the District Attorney’s budget,” lawyers for Hidalgo’s Chief of Staff Alex Triantaphyllis, one of the defendants, claimed in the motion documents.

Harris County, the third most populous county in the United States, is home to Houston, the largest city in Texas and fourth largest city in the United States.

Ogg was first elected in 2017, and has won national renown as an advocate of reforms. A Democrat, she is up for reelection in 2024.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo

The Stanford-educated Hidalgo was elected judge in 2018, becoming the first woman and first Latina to serve in that post, and is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, She is running for re-election this year.

The two women butted heads last month, when Hidalgo charged that Ogg was using the investigation of her staff members as a backroom political tactic to push her out of office. She claimed that Ogg was leaking out-of-context information and was intentionally misleading the public.

Hidalgo Chief of Staff Triantaphyllis was charged along with current and former Hidalgo office aides William Nader and Aaron Dunn in April,  The Hidalgo staffers were charged following accusations that Democrats on the County commissioners court improperly awarded a vaccine outreach contract to a vendor on political grounds.

Triantaphyllis, Nader, and Dunn, were identified by DA Ogg’s office after emails and external communications were obtained that allegedly show the staffers inappropriately communicating with the owner of Elevate Strategies weeks before she applied for and was awarded an $11 million covid outreach contract by the commissioners court.

Ultimately, in September, Hidalgo canceled the contract with Elevate Strategies after Republican pushback.

Nader and Triantaphyllis argue that Ogg’s public fight with Hidalgo’s office, Ogg’s previous advisory role to the judge, and the DA’s disputes over funding for their own operations facilitated through the same process being investigated constitute a disqualifying level of apparent conflict of interest.

They called for an “unbiased attorney” to be appointed to take her place.

Hidalgo told Houston Public Media in May that she believed that the DA would seek her own indictment in the coming weeks, where she described Ogg as using investigations as a tool to harm her political opponents like Hidalgo, and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who was also investigated by the DA Ogg’s public corruption unit during his re-election campaign in 2021.

A grand jury declined to charge Ellis with any crime related to the investigation.

DA Kim Ogg’s dispute with Lina Hidalgo hinges on the accusation that the contract awarded to Elevate Strategies was politically motivated. Notably, a collaborative investigation from the New York Times and The Marshall Project reported in April that DA Ogg had donated $500,000 of seized asset forfeiture funds controlled by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to Crime Stoppers of Houston, an organization Ogg previously served as executive director.

This summary was prepared by TCR Justice Reporting intern Audrey Nielsen