Senator's Son Faces Revenge Porn Charge
6 Years after UT Probe in Coed Texting Case
Capitol Inside
February 14, 2024
A Republican state senator had sufficient cause for epic anger and embarrassment on Wednesday when Fox News ran with a story about his son being arrested for alleged violations of the Texas revenge porn law in connection with threatening and obscene texts that a former girlfriend received from him.
Word about Matthew Schwertner's criminal case began to spread inside the statehouse beltway in Austin on Tuesday. The conservative spoof site Current Revolt appeared to break the story with copies of court documents that were filed in Travis County.. Fox News blew it wide open tonight after picking up a report that the network's affiiate in Austin carried first.
Fox News quoted the local station as saying that the younger Schwertner was charged with "suspicion of harassment and felony threat to publish" visual material involving intimate behavior without the consent of the subjects who were depicted.
The suspect's father - State Senator Charles Schwertner of Georgetown - voted to outlaw revenge porn in 2015 and supported subsequent revisions designed to put more teeth in the law. Schwertner the solon - in a bizarre twist - had been accused in 2018 of sexual harassment in a case that a female student at the University of Texas at Austin initiated after getting sexually explicit text messages from Schwertner's phone.
But UT conducted an internal investigation that eventually cleared the senator of the inappropriate behavior that he insisted he had not committed. The probe found that Schwertner did not send the lewd texts even though they came from a cell phone that belonged to him.
"I do not condone sexual misconduct of any kind," the lawmaker said at the time. "The University of Texas has closed their investigation because I did not send the offensive text messages in question."
The elder Schwertner has been the subject of rumors on infidelity involving a Hispanic state representative who's a Democrat. The senator's wife is Hispanic. His son - ironically perhaps - stands accused of calling the ex-girlfriend a "poor Mexican" who should "learn some morals and find God" in when she advised him that she'd reported the behavior to the Austin police.
According to police reports, the 21-year-old Schwertner broke up with the woman in July and contacted her six months later with a request for her to return gifts that he'd purchased her before he called off the relationship.
He supposedly contacted her again after she'd ignored him for several days in January with a text with a photograph that showed the two in an intimate position. Schwertner the suspect threatened to send the picture to her mother and sisters. He reportedly told her that he'd been saving the photo "in case you acted like a 2-year-old - according to the allegations in the case.
The Legislature adopted the revenge porn law almost nine years ago with unanimous votes in the House and Senate. The measure was sponsored by a pair of Democrats in then-Senate member Sylvia Garcia of Houston and State Rep. Mary Gonzalez of Clint in the House when tensions were still high after revelations of sexual misconduct in the movie industry, corporate America and the political arena that ignited the #MeToo movement.
Revenge porn is a Class A misdemeanor that's punishable by up to one year in jail and fines up to $4,000 for first offenses.
Schwertner the father was charged with drunk driving a year ago late one night during the regular session. But the senator refused to take a breath test - and the charges were dropped in July.
Schwertner is among the Senate's most powerful and effective members as the Business & Commerce Committee chairman. Schwertner, who's a surgeon, had served as the Health & Human Services Committee chairman before Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick stripped the prestigous post from him after the coed texting fiasco.
more to come ... |
