Anatomy of a whitewash
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Hempstead – For over a year, Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey and his prosecutors have been fighting release of records detailing their criminal investigation of the now defunct Highway 6 landfill.
Now we know why they were fighting so hard to keep you in the dark.
Dolcefino Consulting was given access to the secret investigative files after the Texas Attorney General paved the way for their release.
“John Healey and his so called prosecutors should be embarrassed at the very least, or face an investigation into their own conduct,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting.” There’s only two explanations for what I have seen, and the best one for Healey is sheer incompetence.”
Dolcefino Consulting has learned the so-called special prosecutors closed the landfill case even though the Texas Rangers had never completed a report on what they found, or even who they had talked to.
No subpoenas were issued, for records and not a single public official ever had to testify under oath. In fact, the record of any testimony to the Waller County Grand Jury is missing from the files.
Adding to the list of disturbing revelations, the Fort Bend County prosecutors cut a deal with Green Group, the garbage company that worked a sweetheart deal with former Waller County commissioners to keep any records they turned over secret, and they even gave the records back, destroying the opportunity for less compromised eyes to investigate further.
The criminal investigation was originally sparked by a complaint about violations of Texas Public Information Laws by Dolcefino Consulting, the investigative communications firm hired to investigate the landfill deal. Many of the records requested were never turned over.
Dolcefino Consulting has learned the special prosecutors were given evidence of criminal violations, but chose to ignore them. We have learned that special prosecutors even turned down an offer from a former Waller County Commissioner Odis Styers to testify in exchange for immunity.
Remember that secret trip Odis Styers and another Waller County Official took to the landfill. Receipts for the trip aren’t even in the file, and there’s no evidence prosecutors even asked to see them. And the files show no testimony by Robin German, the former Waller County election official who set up meetings with Judge Beckendorff with the garbage company. Prosecutors issued no subpoena to review hundreds of text messages between German and Beckendorff.
A Waller County jury found former public officials violated transparency laws in late 2014 but those prosecutors made no attempt to investigate further, instead they fought release of their work.
You get the point.
“This proves what landfill opponents have suspected from the start. These special prosecutors should have been called special protectors because they made sure this entire thing was swept under a big trash covered rug”, says Dolcefino. “This thing stinks as bad as that garbage dump would have.”
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