Texas House Overlooks Staffer's Deception
with Vote that Gives Lawmakers Edict Pass
DPS Report on Date Rape Drug Tale
Capitol Inside
May 25, 2021
The Texas House voted to give initial approval on Tuesday night to a measure that's designed to protect legislative staff members from lecherous lobbyists based on a narrative that flies in the face of the truth about a date rape drug tale that prompted the legislation before it was exposed as a fraud.
The House endorsed Senate Bill 2233 on a non-record vote without dissent as a measure that would force lobbyists to receive sexual harassment prevention training as a condition of their registration at the Texas Ethics Commission. But House members stopped short of including elected state leaders like themselves to the new state mandate like they'd done with a similar bill that cleared the upper chamber two weeks ago.
House Bill 4661 - the measure that would extend the requirement to legislators and statewide officers like Governor Greg Abbott - has been placed on the Senate intent calendar for a possible vote on the floor on Wednesday.
State Rep. Donna Howard - an Austin Democrat who's carrying SB 2233 in the House - said that GOP Speaker Dade Phelan had assured her that he'd have new requirements on in-person sexual harassment education for representatives and their staffs implemented immediately.
Howard, however, offered no explanation on the highly conspicuous omission of lawmakers and other elected leaders from the Senate measure that would have died at midnight without a vote on second reading. A final vote on SB 2233 on Wednesday would give the Senate the option of concuring with several minor House amendments or gambling on a conference committee that would have about one day to negotiate a compromise before a Friday deadline.
Howard said that some staffers have had the courage to come forward with recent accounts of improper sexual conduct that had exposed a "dark underbelly" of the Capitol community that lawmakers began to discover with the work of a task force that was created in the height of the Harvey Weinstein scandal several years ago. She said the measure was necessary to "ensure a safe working environment" at the statehouse.
"We have allowed a toxic culture of silence, harassment and fear to grow," Howard said. "Those who prey on the vulnerability of our staffs will not be allowed to continue to work here."
Lawmakers had made no attempt to address the culture in question, however, until an aide to GOP State Rep. Brooks Landgraf of Odessa filed a complaint with the Department of Public Safety amid the allegation that he'd drugged her and a colleague while drinking with a group of people at the Austin Club on April 1.
A 62-page DPS report that will be released this week found that one female Landgraf aide had deceived the other into believing that she'd tested positive for a central nervous depressant that's been associated with date rape. The staffer went to the police based on the incorrect assumption that her colleague had been honest with her according to the report.
DPS investigators determined that Landgraf staffer Jennifer Reeves had misled colleague Mackenzie Poston about a test for GHB that she'd made up in an attempt to hide her own infidelity as someone who was living with one man and having a romantic relationship with a male aide to a separate Republican representative. The report indicated that Reeves had spent the night with the House staffer at his apartment where they had consensual sex.
The report says that Reeves had actually gone to a minor emergency clinic to see if she'd been drugged as an explanation for her live-in boyfriend on why she seemed so heavily intoxicated when he'd been trying to track her down. But police investigators subsequently learned that the medical facility in question doesn't have the ability to test patients for GHB.
Poston's own boyfriend, a Hays County sheriff's deputy, told police that she'd thrown up at least 50 times after catching a ride home with an Uber driver. After hearing that Reeves had a date rape drug in her system, Poston went to the emergency room where she claimed to have spent several hours in excrutiating pain. Poston said that she'd "just wanted to die because it hurt to breathe, sit up, and to stand," according to the report.
But an ER doctor told Poston that her symptoms were more likely the getting drunk on the same day that she and Reeves both received the first Moderna vaccine early that morning.
“No evidence or facts obtained during the investigation support the allegation,” the police report concluded.
more to come ... |
= passed. - 
= dead