Former Tarrant Democratic chair threatens lawsuit over county judge’s ballot harvest claim

Former Tarrant County Democratic Party chair Deborah Peoples is threatening a lawsuit over county judge Tim O’Hare’s claims that she participated in ballot harvesting, she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram late Friday.

Peoples is also inviting the District Attorney and Sheriff’s Office to investigate the claims, she wrote in a joint statement with the Tarrant County Deomocratic Party on Friday.

O’Hare put out a statement Tuesday in response to Tarrant County’s top Democratic officials submitting a letter that asked the Justice Department to investigate whether O’Hare and other Republican officials had undermined minority voters by creating an election integrity task force. The letter also cited outgoing election administrator Heider Garcia’s recent resignation.

In his Tuesday statement, O’Hare wrote that he thought it was “extremely curious” the Democratic Party thought the creation of the election integrity task force was “unwarranted” because the party’s nominee for county judge this past election cycle had been “accused of orchestrating a sophisticated vote-harvesting operation in police body cam footage.”

“These Democrats doth protest too much, I think,” O’Hare continued.

In the joint statement with the Tarrant County Democratic Party, Peoples wrote that O’Hare was lying to “distract from his actions to destroy democracy in Tarrant County.”

“If the County Judge is so sure that criminal activity occurred that he can repeat it in an official statement from his office, then we invite him to work with the District Attorney and the Sheriff’s Office to investigate these claims,” Peoples wrote. “We, as we have always been, will be transparent and cooperative in any investigation since absolutely no illegal or improper activity has occurred.”

Peoples told the Star-Telegram late Friday that she has always said the claims about her harvesting ballots were not true. She says at this point she considers the claims “libelous.”

Peoples ran against O’Hare for county judge as the Democratic nominee. During the race, Republicans pushed body camera footage published by conservative news site Gateway Pundit that showed a homeless man telling a police officer that Peoples had harvested ballots.

The Sheriff’s Office did not investigate the claims. Sheriff Bill Waybourn told a crowd at an April 10 True Texas Project meeting in North Richland Hills that the incident is what inspired him to create the county’s election integrity task force.

The Democratic Party said in its statement that O’Hare resurrecting the claim was “extremely worrisome” and that the newly elected county judge was acting on his duties with “fear, lies, and propoganda, and is obviously committed to across-the-board, ongoing voter intimidation tactics in Tarrant County.”

Current Tarrant County Democratic Party chair Allison Campolo said she did not have any comments to add outside the statement when reached on Friday evening.

Representatives for O’Hare could not immediately be reached for comment late Friday.