Photo: Montinique Monroe
A mass text message claiming to be from the Political Action Committee (PAC) Texans for Conservative Leadership supporting Dade Phelan was recently sent out. Turns out, it was a fake. This was likely an attempt to influence the Texas House Speaker race.
Tony McDonald, a lawyer representing Texans for Conservative Leadership, spoke to KTRH about the fraudulent text and explained that this was essentially an attempt to create a phony duplicate of the TCL PAC and use their influence to sink public support for Rep. David Cook (R–Mansfield), who is Phelan's primary challenger in the House Speaker race.
McDonald said, "There is some fraudster who is trying to mislead Texans in support of Dade Phelan, and they're pretending to be Texans for Conservative Leadership."
McDonald also says that this is a sign that supporters of Phelan are getting more desperate and are turning to dirty tricks in order to keep him in power. He said, "This is desperate. To say that conservatives are supporting Dade Phelan, and they're opposing Cook, that's nonsense."
According to McDonald, this likely constitutes criminal fraud under Texas law. He says that the case has been referred to the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton for investigation.