Pastor Tom Brown, St. Sen. Jose Rodriguez Testify At Recall Hearing
Mayor John Cook’s attorneys called St. Sen. Jose Rodriguez and Word of Life Pastor Tom Brown to the stand during Monday’s recall hearing. Cook’s team is trying to prove recall organizers illegally obtained signatures by circulating the petitions at churches, including Word of Life and Jesus Chapel. Rodriguez testifed that the Texas Election Code, amended by the state legislature, “prohibits a political contribution, that can include a circulation of a petition,” at a church. Rodriguez voted on the amendments to the code. Theresa Caballero, the attorney representing recall organizers, including Brown, asked Rodriguez which signatures should be cast out. “Is it your testimony that only those signatures that you say violate the texas election code, only those should be thrown out and if enough good signatures are left standing, then the election should go through,” she asked. “Yes,” Rodriguez answered.
. “When you’re talking about a corporation, including a non-profit corporation, like a church, getting involved in the political process to the point of making a political contribution…that’s where the legislature drew the line and said we’re not going to tolerate that”, he told Judge Javier Alvarez. Caballero likened the law that prohibits churches from circulating a recall petition to legislation in the south that would be meant to “disenfranchise Blacks.” “(What) if you have a bunch of crooks who want to stay in power and the base who wants to bring down the crooks meets in churches,” Caballero said.
“I don’t have any evidence and neither do you that disenfranchising people was the legislative intent in passing this code,” Rodriguez later told Caballero.
Rodriguez said that, according to the law, if a church provides anything ‘of value’ for a political purpose, then it’s against it’s breaking the election code. “if the church begins to use it’s resources, it’s papers, pens, computers…then it would be a violation of the election code,” he said. He added that a church’s premises would be considered something ‘of value’, too. Caballero presented Rodriguez several hypothetical situations. She asked if it would be illegal for a church-goer to take a recall petition to church in her purse and incidentally ask for a pen to sign it with. Rodriguez said he didn’t believe that would be illegal.
When Brown took the stand, he pled the 5th when asked if it was him who had written a message on his website inviting people to sign the recall petition at his church. Brown and his attorneys said the pastor has the right to invoke his 5th amendment right to remain silent when asked questions that could incriminate him, based on District Attorney Jaime Esparza’s prior testimony that he would consider prosecuting someone who broke the law and that he is investigating Brown for allegations of breaking the election code. Cook’s attorneys showed state documents that show Brown’s church, Word of Life, is a non-profit corporation. Despite the documents, Brown had a different characterization of the church “I do not understand our church to be a corporation, we are a religious organization,” he said. The pastor was on the stand for more than three hours, with either Theresa Caballero, or his other attorney, Stuart Leeds, sitting next to him on the witness stand. Judge Alvarez, at one point, had to tell Caballero to stop feeding Brown answers. The hearing continues Tuesday morning at 8:30 at County Court #3 on the 10th floor of the county courthouse.
