A Republican prosecutor in West Texas has opened a criminal investigation into pamphlets sent to Texas homes purporting to come from a transgender rights organization.
Sarah Stogner, district attorney for Loving, Reeves and Ward counties west of Odessa, told the Texas Tribune that her office is investigating the mailers as a potential forgery, but said the scope could expand as more information comes in. Counterfeiting is a state prison crime under Texas law.
Stogner said she felt the mailers — which were marketed as a resource guide for LGBTQ+ students from the Texas Transgender Student Union, a recently formed group in Wyoming — were an obvious attempt to agitate voters ahead of the November midterm elections.
“If this ends up being legal, that’s everything that’s wrong with our current political climate,” Stogner said.
The origin of the letters is currently unknown, Stogner said. The student union listed as a sender was formed as a limited liability company in Wyoming in September, records show. The group’s address on the mail was listed as a Houston-area post office box.
The pamphlets were addressed to household “students” and included sections encouraging LGBTQ+ youth to seek help from several advocacy groups if their parents are not supportive of their gender identity.
The brochures repeatedly reference the Transgender Education Network of Texas, drawing criticism including threats of violence, a lawyer for the organization said Thursday. TENT officials say the organization had nothing to do with the letters and believe it was an attempt to influence the midterm elections and damage the group’s reputation.
“These messages were deliberately disseminated in a manner calculated to cause maximum harm to TENT and create confusion and conflict among the Texas electorate,” a TENT spokesperson said in an email.
Mimi Marziani, one of TENT’s attorneys, said the brochure adopted the “look and feel” of the actual TENT materials, but mixed resources with information the group does not support — including information about the legal process for minors to be recognized as adults.
Stogner said his constituents are angry and concerned about their children being “exposed” to the contents of the mailers. She also said that if the pamphlets were sent out to motivate conservatives to vote, that effort would be doomed to failure.
“If we were truly concerned about children and their safety, no one would be sending propaganda to spread this message further in television commercials, in text messages, or in writing,” she said. “If we are really trying to protect children, we will focus on putting pedophiles in prison. »
Stogner’s investigation follows two letters from state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, asking Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate the origin of the mailers as well as a series of text messages also referencing TENT.
While Leach’s first letter, motivated by the texts, asked Paxton to investigate potential violations of a state law relating to student-organized groups and material taught in public schools, his second letter asked to discover the identity of the sender.
“Since sending this letter a week ago, I have received new information raising the possibility that the communications and associated toolkit did not originate from the group under whose name they were sent,” Leach wrote.
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