DMN Catches Abbott in Prevarication
on Fundraiser on Day of Uvalde Attack

Capitol Inside
July 28, 2022

Governor Greg Abbott's reputation for veracity suffered another self-inflicted wound on Thursday night amid revelations that he'd spent nearly three hours in Huntsville for a campaign fundraiser after describing the visit as a brief stop en route from Austin to Uvalde where 21 people died in a massacre at an elementary school earlier that day.

The Dallas Morning News reported tonight that an examination of campaign finance statements and flight records show that Abbott arrived in Huntsville at 4:52 p.m. on May 24 and stayed there for the event at a private residence two miles from the airport before leaving town at 7:47 p.m.

The piece by the Bob Garrett - the newspaper's Austin bureau chief - noted that Abbott said initially said that he'd been in Abilene for a press conference on wildfires when he heard about the rampage by a teenager gunman at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.

The governor contended at the time that he'd simply stopped in Huntsville en route from Abilene to Austin to inform supporters at the fundraiser that he didn't have time to stay because he had to get to work on the state's response to the killings in Uvalde. But a swing through Huntsville would be almost 160 miles out of the way for someone traveling from Abilene to Austin.

“On the way back to Austin, I stopped and let people know that I could not stay, that I needed to go,” Abbott said in the face of questions on why he didn't pull the plug on the fundraiser. “And I wanted them to know what happened and get back to Austin so that I could continue my collaboration with Texas law enforcement to make sure that all the needs were being met here in the Uvalde area.”

Abbott arranged a news conference between the national media in Uvalde on the day after the slayings when he parroted false claims on heroic police behavior with the state's other five highest-ranking GOP state leaders at his side along with Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw.

The governor claimed three days later to be outraged after being misled about the police response before making statements that show he didn't know what had happened for a full 24 hours after the attack. Abbott has declined to identify the source of the bad information that he passed to the public with apparent embellishment for dramatic effect. But a special Texas House investigation makes it clear that Abbott received before the briefing came from the DPS.

While Abbott controls the DPS, he's yet to acknowledge that the law enforcement breakdown in Uvalde represents one of the darkest episodes in the stories history of the state police in Texas. McCraw hasn't said whether he'd been as completely misinformed as Abbott when he didn't seek to correct any of the incorrect statements that the governor made at the media event.

The DMN revealed that Abbott flew to Huntsville in a Cessna Citation Jet CJ4 owned by Ricky Baker, who's contributed $120,000 to the governor since his first race for the state's top job in 2014. The newspaper said that Abbott raised as much as $50,000 at the Huntsville event based on review of the campaign finance report he filed with the Texas Ethics Commission for the period that ended on June 30.

The fundraiser was held at the home of Jeff Bradley, a designer and chef. Bradley reportedly took issue when the DMN sought to contact people who attended the fundraiser on the day of the shootings in Uvalde.

Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze stood by the governor's original story in the Morning News report despite the discrepancies.

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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