Ogg’s Office Lies Again
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Twice in the last week the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has been caught in a lie.
It is time for voters to ask what Kim Ogg is really hiding.
The false statements attempt to conceal the truth about Ogg’s fired white collar crime consultant Amir Mireskandari. Mireskandari has admitted taking $120,000 as part of a plan to get a city ordinance passed for poker clubs like Prime Social. Lawyers for Prime Social have detailed other cash payments they say Mireskandari picked up under the guise of making contributions to Democratic politicians through a political action committee he was involved in creating.
Attorneys for Houston’s biggest poker club say they were raided and falsely charged with money laundering just months after they fired Mireskandari’s business associate. The DA’s fraud division, where Mireskandari once worked, was in charge of the poker investigation.
Ogg eventually dismissed the charges after what she described as “conflicts of interest.” Ogg has refused to detail the ethical conflicts in her office.
The FBI public corruption office is now investigating the potential shakedown as Ogg digs a deeper hole into the credibility of the office.
First, Ogg’s office denied Mireskandari was involved in any criminal investigations in public statements. We know that’s false. District Attorney emails involving Mireskandari are being kept secret because they name targets and victims of criminal investigations.
Second, Ogg’s office claims they have none of the written reports Mireskandari was supposed to create under his consulting agreement, but claim the reporting was only required in the contract signed in February 2019.
That’s false too.
In the contract signed with Mireskandari just days after Ogg took office, Mireskandari was supposed to write status reports weekly detailing the hours. He never did it. Even once.
Mireskandari was a big campaign fundraiser for Ogg when she ran for District Attorney and while in office Mireskandari was running political action committees raising money for other Democratic politicians in clear violation of the DA’s own policy.
“These repeated false statements from the office of the District Attorney are disqualifying,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “I am saddened to say Ogg must face these questions publicly and honestly or step down. The criminal justice system in Harris County deserves the highest ethics.”
Dolcefino Consulting has now expanded our investigation, asking for communications Mireskandari may have had with the Harris County Attorney’s office. County Attorney Vince Ryan filed a lawsuit against Prime Social after the raid, accusing the club of being a public nuisance even though no one had been charged with a crime in the place in the time it was opened. Dozens of other poker clubs are allowed to operate without any intervention by the County Attorney.
This botched raid cost more than 100 people their jobs, threatened marriages, cost defendants tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and Prime Social lost revenue. The club had more than 11,000 members at the time of the raid.
Prime Social has announced plans to reopen but hasn’t yet announced a date. The bigger question is this. What else is the District Attorney hiding?
“Kim Ogg dismissed these charges knowing that we were about to blow this thing wide open. She refuses to admit Mireskandari was involved in criminal investigations, or that she failed to police his work,” says Dolcefino. “Ogg also refuses to detail what other conflicts of interest were exposed in her office.”
“The District Attorney is damaging the credibility of her office every day she remains silent,” says Dolcefino. “Why should a jury believe prosecutors when the boss is concealing the truth?”
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