Don’t be fooled by anything Cornyn says or does.
Depending on your age, you may or may not remember a huge story that made national news in July, 1999. In the small town of Tulia, Texas up in Swisher County, a drug sting resulted in the arrests of 10% of the town’s Black residents. While this story isn’t about Tulia and the events that caused and followed it, it’s important to show John Cornyn’s involvement of what happen afterwards, to understand how Cornyn lied specifically about this case to win an election.
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In 1999, a corrupt cop named Tom Coleman, after spending a year and a half undercover, executed a drug sting which accused and arrested 10% of the Black residents in that town.
When the surprise arrests happened in the early morning hours, which resulted in 46 arrests, no drugs or weapons were uncovered. More so, there was no evidence to prove that any of these individuals sold any drugs at all. No video or audio evidence, just the word of this one man, Tom Coleman.
As the case progressed.
It was unearthed that Colman was friends with some KKK members out in Ellis county and he was in trouble for perjury on an unrelated case.
Tom Coleman became briefly known as the most racist man in America who attempted an ethnic cleansing in a small little Texas panhandle town.
Unsurprisingly, the case got a lot more than eyebrow raises. Almost immediately the NAACP and the ACLU got involved. Eventually, the FBI opened an investigation as well.
These 46 people were looking at up to 90 years in prison, with no evidence, and on the word of a cop who was already in trouble for perjury. Many of the cases were thrown out right away.
Fast forward to 2002.
In 2002, then Attorney General John Cornyn announced his run for Senior Senator in Texas. His Democratic opponent, former Dallas mayor, Ron Kirk. (For those who don’t know, Ron Kirk is Black)
Between the the drug sting in 1999 and Cornyn’s race in 2002, the ACLU and other civil liberty organizations repeatedly asked Attorney General Cornyn to investigate. He would not.
Then, when Cornyn was running against Kirk and it became an election issue. Nearly 3 years after the initial arrests, while in an election against a Black man, John Cornyn finally made the call to open an investigation for civil rights violations in Tulia, Texas.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]It was superficial.
If civil rights really were of any importance to John Cornyn, he would have opened the investigation long before the media and Texas voters pressured him into doing it. He wanted to give an appearance of caring about civil liberties, but it was an act.
How do we know it was just an act?
John Cornyn won the Senate seat and Greg Abbott became the new Attorney General. Cornyn and Abbott shared history together, both serving on the Texas Supreme Court together.
Shortly after Cornyn packed his bags and headed to Washington DC, Greg Abbott quietly closed the Tulia civil rights probe. A report summary from the AG’s office cited they didn’t find racism, only sloppy police work.
However, only a few months later all of the Tulia defendants were pardoned by Governor Rick Perry. And the year after that, the 46 people from Tulia won a $5 million settlement in a civil suit against Amarillo, who organized the drug task force.
Why this matters now?
John Cornyn has a long history of saying and doing whatever it takes to climb to the top. Now that this 70 year old man is in the Senate, likely raking in millions from dark money, he’ll do and say whatever he can to stay there.
It’s time for him to go. It’s time for him to be voted out. Need to know more reasons why we should vote him out, check out, “26 Reasons John Cornyn Needs to be Voted out in 2020.”
Still Blue in Texas 