Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 19: Darkness on the Edge of Texas

Grifters and their victims.

         Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

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         But first, your Moment of Zen … I am on a two-week road trip through the American Southwest. (My apologies that I’ve been tardy about getting some of my posts out.) Thursday, I visited Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. It’s truly an extraordinary place, providing food, water, and shelter to the Anasazi people for over 700 years. The forbidding mesa dominated the Montezuma Valley below. The great mystery: why the Anasazi abandoned Mesa Verde about 1300 C.E.

(Mesa Verde, from the valley floor.)

(From above, Mesa Verde offered a commanding view of the Montezuma Valley.)

Saturday, August 19, 2023

1.    True the Vote Exposed as a Fraud and a Grift

         Back in the 2000s, an enterprising ideologue from Houston named Catherine Engelbrecht created a Tea Party offshoot called True the Vote. Its goal was to “restore confidence in America’s electoral process,” apparently by spewing conspiracy theories about how corrupt and mismanaged elections were. True the Vote (TTV) quickly developed a large audience on the right and an enviable donor base.

         In the wake of the 2020 election, they complained loud and long about the fraud that led Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump by 7 million votes. In 2021, True the Vote filed a formal complaint with the Georgia State Elections Board, alleging massive election fraud. These allegations were central to the thoroughly discredited movie, 2000 Mules. But when the SEB asked for the details of its investigations, True the Vote demurred. So, the SEB subpoenaed the underlying research TTV claimed to have. True the Vote’s response was curious: they asked to withdraw their complaint. (Mind you, this is after 2000 Mules became the cinematic darling of the MAGA crowd.)

         This summer, the SEB sued True the Vote for its failure to comply with its subpoenas. Put up or shut up, the Board seems to be saying. Or maybe, f*ck around and find out.  

         My take: True the Vote deserves to have its pants pulled down around its ankles for sabotaging trust in our elections. Catherine Engelbrecht has been exposed as a grifter, loaning herself money and paying exorbitant “consulting fees” to herself. Whatever initial idealism motivated its founding, True the Vote has become another scam, sucking money out of pockets and injecting poison into our politics.

2.    The Sad Saga of Abigail Jo Shry

         Abigail Jo Shry is a 43-year-old unemployed woman from Alvin, Texas. She spends her days at home, watching TV and, when the mood strikes, calling federal judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the Trump J6 case in Washington, and threatening her life and that of her family. She’s also threatened the life of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston.

         If you’re wondering whether the fact that both Chutkan and Jackson Lee are black is just a coincidence, Shry put that to rest, calling Chutkan a “stupid slave n***er” in the voicemail she left.

         Not surprisingly, her tirade drew her a visit from Department of Homeland Security agents. Shry reassured the officials that “she had no plans to travel to Washington, DC, or Houston to carry out anything she stated.” However, she warned the agents, if Rep. Jackson Lee traveled to Alvin, Texas, "then [they] need to worry."

         A federal judge ordered her to jail for a month, after hearing testimony from her father that “she sits on her couch daily watching the news while drinking too many beers. She then becomes agitated by the news and starts calling people and threatening them.”

         In a memo explaining her decision to incarcerate Shry for a month, the judge pointed out that she “has been criminally charged four times in the past year for engaging in similar conduct. On September 20, 2022, she was convicted in two separate cases (misdemeanor resisting arrest and misdemeanor criminal mischief) and sentenced to 30 days imprisonment. Recently, on July 11, 2023, she was charged with misdemeanor threat causing fear of imminent serious bodily injury.” She lives with a boyfriend, who has a pending family assault charge against him.  

         My take: I wonder what channels she’s watching.

         She is a sad person, a naïf caught up in the grifts of people like Catherine Engelbrecht. She is roadkill on their quest to destabilize our politics and destroy our faith in each other.

3.    Countdown to the Paxton Impeachment: 17 Days

         The Impeachment Trial of Kenneth Wayne Paxton is less than three weeks away. For months, Paxton’s defense team has been arguing there is “no there there” – that the House’s impeachment resolution is devoid of specifics and lacking in anything that could remotely be considered criminal activity.

         As Rick Perry would say, “Oops.” Thursday night the House impeachment managers uploaded3,760 pages of documents to the Senate Impeachment website. Your Humble Correspondent has not yet read all the documents, but others have, so check out useful summaries from Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, and KUT.

         My take: I plan to cover the Paxton impeachment as the historic moment it is, so stay tuned. The House managers have put up a lot of information; Paxton’s defenders will argue its relevance, but the senators – and the people of Texas – will sit through days of incriminating, or at least embarrassing – testimony. Mistresses! Burner phones! Remodeling bills! It will not be pretty.

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         Have a great weekend!