Drake
EDINBURG — Alleged Edinburg cattle thief and 2024 presidential candidate Phillip Drake is once again a wanted man.
Drake did not show up for his mid-October court date, and a judge revoked his bond and issued a writ ordering his re-arrest onTuesday.
The Edinburg rancher was scheduled to be arraigned on two counts of theft of cattle and two counts of theft of property between $30,000 and $150,000, charges related to what authorities describe as a monetarily significant scheme to scam business partners. That scheme landed Drake in jail three times in 2021 and 2022. Undeterred, he has since announced plans to run for president of the United States as an independent, describing allegations against him as baseless. In a court document filed the afternoon of Oct. 17, the day the arraignment was supposed to happen, Drake asked the court for a continuance, saying that he had been in a car accident while driving through Georgia to appear for his court date.
“My driver side front wheel locked up causing me to run off the road,” he wrote. “This caused damage to the right front side of the undercarriage of my truck causing the brakes to be inoperable.”
Even without the car trouble, Drake was not ready for his arraignment. A judge in September had reset it to that October date after Drake’s attorney quit, claiming they hadn’t been paid. Drake said then that he was securing funds for an attorney based on a piece of property he owned, and his motion for continuance indicated he was still working on that.
“The land in which I have for sale has yet to sell so I have no choice but to get a loan on the property,” he wrote. “This will not be an issue, it just takes some time.”
Court documents do not indicate whether Drake has secured legal representation since then.
In his motion for continuance, Drake acknowledged that he was filing the motion “last minute” (it was filed after he was supposed to be arraigned) and said that he’d just returned to an area with service.
“Thank you and God bless. I apologize to the court for the inconvenience,” he wrote.
