McALLEN — Daniel J. Garcia thought about one thing as federal prosecutors made an announcement regarding a “housekeeping” matter during a status conference Tuesday.
An attorney from Rio Grande City, Garcia thought about a piece of advice he has often imparted to his clients — remain composed and control your emotions while in the courtroom.
On Tuesday morning, it was a piece of advice he had to remind himself of as he — now a criminal defendant himself — watched via Zoom as the prosecutor announced that the charges against him would be dropped.
“When I heard that, it was, at first, you know, shock. Your mind goes blank, and I was like, man, did I hear that right?” Garcia said during an interview at the McAllen office of his attorney Oscar Vega on Thursday afternoon.
He clung to that piece of advice until the hearing was over.
“Once it was done with the whole hearing, the first thing I did was hug my wife,” Garcia said.
Garcia and his attorneys — Vega and Christopher Sully — had gone into that hearing expecting to fight for the trial to proceed as scheduled later this month, even as the omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to escalate across the country.
It’s been more than two-and-a-half years since a 74-count superseding indictment was unsealed against Garcia and three other men alleging that they, along with others, participated in a bribery conspiracy regarding the $38.5 million rehabilitation of the Weslaco water plant system.
Garcia, who has vehemently maintained his innocence since the beginning, has also been the one to spearhead the most aggressive defense in the case, eager to — as Sully described it — “demonstrate” his innocence in front of a jury.
He was also dogged in pursuing legal motions to aid his case, but after COVID-19 put things on hold, he had come to oppose the latest delay due to the omicron variant.
Despite his persistence, however, Garcia said neither he nor his lawyers had any indication that the government was going to drop the charges.
It may have come as a surprise for Garcia, but in the aftermath he has had time to reflect on how being a defendant himself has given him a greater empathy for his clients.
“I actually see it now as a benefit that I’ve gone through the process — that I know how my clients are feeling. Their anxieties. Their concerns. It’s a better understanding of what they go through,” Garcia said.
“Hopefully, as I continue my career, I’ll become a better lawyer for it,” he said.
BACK TO WORK
And now that the charges have been dropped, continuing his career is his primary focus.
With the indictment hanging over his head, Garcia has been unable to practice in federal court since 2019. Many of his clients also worried he was no longer able to practice at all.
“Since I got indicted, I was not allowed to practice in federal court because it causes a conflict between myself and the U.S. government,” Garcia said.
“Federal work was a big bulk of my work,” he said.
Instead, he has spent the last several years representing clients in state court, including in criminal proceedings, divorces and personal injury cases, he said.
Furthermore, the pandemic not only affected the trial timeline, but also his practice. When Garcia investigated ways to get through the slowdown, he discovered the pending charges disqualified him from receiving COVID-19 relief funds.
“One of the questions was, ‘Are you under indictment?’” he said, referring to the application process for the Paycheck Protection Program, a zero-interest loan program offered as part of a COVID-19 relief bill approved by Congress in March 2020.
“If you were under indictment, you couldn’t qualify. So, I couldn’t even get that!” Garcia said with a wry laugh.
HUMOR HELPS
Throughout the interview Thursday, Garcia approached many of the questions with a steady sense of humor. While others may have harbored resentment or anger at having their life upended for years, Garcia is more circumspect.
Yes, he felt resentment at one point. Yes, he wondered, “Why me?” But his reactions never included doubt, he said.
Someone recently asked his wife, Jacqueline, if they had ever discussed a “worst case scenario” of what she would do if Garcia went to jail.
“And we never had that discussion. Ever,” Garcia said.
“Because it was never in our mind… or discussions about pleas, you know? I never had that discussion with Oscar. I never had that discussion with Chris,” he said.
Instead, Garcia used that time to grow closer to his family — to his wife of five years and their three children. It has allowed him to “put a lot of things in perspective” and “reprioritize” his life, he said.
UNKNOWN REASONS
As for what ultimately led prosecutors to drop the charges against him, neither Garcia nor his attorneys were willing to speculate, especially as the case continues against the remaining defendants.
“We really can’t comment on the case itself, any facts, why they arrested him, why — the dismissal, the government knows why they dismissed,” Vega said, referring to a gag order that now no longer applies to his client.
But, like Sully, Vega assured that Garcia’s innocence would have been demonstrated had he gone to trial.
“When you get a dismissal, you don’t get to hear Danny’s case. You’re never gonna get to hear it in front of a jury, the witnesses he had,” Vega said.
“But we had witnesses to confront every allegation he had. The other stuff about the other 70 counts of stuff, he had nothing to do with that,” he said, referring to the indictment.
THE CONSPIRACY
Garcia was named in only seven out of the 74 counts in the superseding indictment.
Prosecutors alleged that he used his attorney trust account, known as an IOLTA account, to launder some $90,000 in bribes.
But the bulk of the charges — and the bulk of the money — are tied to the three other men named in the indictment — and to another, Leo Lopez Jr., who pleaded guilty to federal programs bribery just days before the superseding indictment was unsealed.
Prosecutors alleged that the men conspired together to fleece millions of dollars from the city of Weslaco by helping certain companies secure the contracts for the water plant project in exchange for bribes.
Garcia was accused of using his IOLTA account to launder funds which were allegedly given to him by Lopez. Garcia would then turn around and distribute those funds to John Cuellar, who was then a Weslaco city commissioner, according to the indictment.
The indictment also alleged that Lopez received and distributed about $4.1 million in bribes to the co-conspirators.
In his March 2019 plea agreement, however, Lopez admitted to funneling more than $2.5 million as part of the scheme.
Lopez was expected to be the prosecution’s chief witness when the case went to trial; however, he died in November 2020 after a short battle with cancer.
The government’s attempts to memorialize Lopez’s testimony prior to his death were unsuccessful.
While Garcia said he had at most a passing acquaintance with the other men named in the conspiracy, Lopez was someone he knew quite well.
The pair had been friends — at least up until about 2013 or 2014, when they became political rivals, Garcia said.
Lopez, a municipal judge in Rio Grande City, had at one point supported Garcia’s run for the school board there. But Garcia declined to speak about what had fractured the friendship between them.
“There was an incident that happened that’s part of the case, that’s why we can’t really get into it,” Vega, the attorney, said.
When asked how Lopez’s death — and the loss of his testimony — may have influenced the case against his client, Vega said it hadn’t changed their defense strategy.
“For us, it didn’t change anything. For the government, it did, okay?” Vega said.
“Whether Leo Lopez was there or not there, we’re still gonna have a jury trial. For the government, it changed.”
WHAT’S NEXT
John Cuellar, the former Weslaco commissioner who was also named in the superseding indictment, ultimately pleaded guilty in August 2019 and is still awaiting sentencing.
The two other men named in the indictment — former Hidalgo County Precinct 1 Commissioner Arturo “A.C.” Cuellar and Weslaco businessman Ricardo “Rick” Quintanilla pleaded not guilty and are now set to go to trial in June, after the judge on Tuesday granted another COVID-19-related delay.
Two other men have pleaded guilty in relation to the scheme and await sentencing.
Like Lopez, former Weslaco city commissioner Gerardo “Jerry” Tafolla pleaded guilty to federal programs bribery in April 2019. Tafolla was a sitting commissioner at the time of his plea and later resigned his seat.
Former Weslaco commissioner David Fox also pleaded guilty to one count of perjury after lying to the grand jury about receiving a $2,000 bribe in exchange for his favorable votes in the scheme.
