Prosecutors say former Houston police captain Mark Anthony Aguirre said he believed the man was carrying fraudulent ballots.
Prosecutors say Aguirre received more than a quarter of a million dollars from a private group called the “Center for Freedom for God and the Country” to investigate alleged voting schemes in the Houston area.
CNN has contacted Hotze to comment.
Instead, prosecutors say the victim was an “innocent and ordinary” air conditioner.
“Aguirre threw his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out,” the statement, which described the Oct. 19 incident, said. “When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre aimed a gun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s back, an image captured on camera carried by a body of a police officer “.
Responding authorities found no ballots inside the vehicle, only air conditioner parts and tools, prosecutors said.
The Liberty Center group had paid Aguirre more than $ 260,000, according to prosecutors, and received about $ 211,400 the day after the incident.
He was arrested Tuesday and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, according to prosecutors. He is currently in Harris County Jail on $ 30,000 bail.
“He crossed the line from dirty politics to committing a violent crime and we’re lucky no one died,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “His alleged investigation was delayed from the start: first a crime was alleged and then he tried to prove it happened.”
Prosecutors’ statement on Aguirre’s arrest came a day after the Electoral College voted to assert Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.
Despite the announcement of election results by the media and government officials, outgoing President Donald Trump has continued to claim that widespread electoral fraud occurred during the 2020 elections and raised hundreds of millions of dollars. for an alleged legal defense fund, despite official certifications former Vice President Joe Biden won the presidential election.
CNN’s Ashley Killough contributed to this report.