A Fox News host's debunked election conspiracy appears to have prompted a TX investigation

Officials in a North Texas county debunked claims made by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth — an unsubstantiated claim that appeared to spark an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

Both the Parker County Republican chair and election administrator said there was no evidence to support the Aug. 18 social media post made by television personality Maria Bartiromo, who previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Paxton’s office announced it was opening an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote” Wednesday.

In announcing the investigation, the attorney general’s office said investigators confirmed that nonprofits had booths set up outside of license offices to offer voter registration assistance, though it did not state specifically where these offices were located.

The attorney general’s office statement did not say any laws were broken.

The Department of Public Safety, which managed the state’s drivers license offices, said in an email obtained by The Texas Tribune that voter registration groups would not be allowed to recruit new voters outside those locations — a response to allegations that so far have not been proven true.

Neither the attorney general’s office nor the public safety department responded to questions about the investigation.

There are several ways to register to vote in Texas, including when obtaining or updating a driver’s license or identification card. U.S. citizens and Texas residents may also register with a volunteer deputy voter registrar. Those are individuals who must register with their local county and attend training.

Among the first questions on the state’s voter registration application is whether or not the applicant is a U.S. citizen.

There is no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens vote or are registered to vote. A 2019 attempt by the state to scour voting rolls for noncitizens was abandoned after it jeopardized legitimate voter registrations and prompted three federal lawsuits.

Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he viewed Paxton’s investigation as an act of intimidation to keep Hispanic voters from voting, adding there was nothing wrong with people providing voter registration assistance outside of drivers license offices.

"I don't think it violates anything by having them out there," Rosales said. Republicans " see the writing on the wall,” he said. “They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”

Bartiromo’s claim first made on social media cited “a friend,” who cited a friend’s wife who said there was a massive line of immigrants obtaining driver’s licenses at a DPS office in Weatherford and said there was a tent outside the office where those immigrants were registering to vote. She later repeated similar claims on her Fox Business television program.

Bartiromo did not respond to questions or a request for an interview.

Bartiromo is no stranger to spreading controversial allegations with little or no proof. She was among the first on Fox News to repeat a baseless conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its voting machines to take votes away from Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election.

Those allegations were the basis of a $787 million defamation lawsuit settlement between Dominion and Fox News. As part of the suit, it was revealed that the source of Bartiromo’s Dominion claims was an email from a Minnesota woman who, in addition to what she described as a “ wackadoodle” theory about Dominion, wrote that she was a time-traveler who talks to the wind, and that former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was actually killed as part of a weeklong human hunting expedition.

The woman’s claims were forwarded to Bartiromo by Sidney Powell, a Dallas lawyer and longtime election fraud conspiracy theorist who pleaded guilty last year for her role in an attempt to overturn 2020 election results in Georgia. A day after receiving the email, Bartiromo aired an interview with Powell that echoed many of its claims about Dominion. Text messages made public as part of the Dominion suit show that some of Bartiromo’s producers believed she was susceptible to conspiracy theories, and that GOP activists were using her to advance their agenda.

Parker County Republican Chair Brady Gray refuted Bartiromo’s claims that immigrants were lined up outside the DPS office in Weatherford. He said on social media that his party investigated the claim.

“While we are everyday registering more voters in Parker county, there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim,” he wrote on X. “The DPS office has confirmed that there have been no tents or tables and no one registering voters on their premises, and that if it were the case they would be told to leave, as it is not allowed.”

Parker County Elections Administrator Cricket Miller also denied the incident and said communication between DPS and her office confirmed there weren't even any tables or booths set up outside the DPS office.

Gray, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, reiterated there was no evidence of voter registration fraud in Parker County. However, he said he supports Paxton and others investigating voter fraud.

"I think that if you have a functioning brain and an IQ over about 40, it would be absurd for you to believe that there's no election fraud happening anywhere," Gray said.

He said the online reaction to his post on X debunking the claims was strange with people using this one instance to debunk claims of fraud elsewhere in the state.

Robert Downen contributed.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/26/texas-voter-registration-election-ken-paxton-investigation/.

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