www.youtube.com – FOX 7 Austin – 2024-11-01 17:50:01
SUMMARY: Late one night outside Meel Lobo’s restaurant in North Austin, a man recorded escalating violence between two women, which led to a gun incident. A male involved snatched a gun from a friend and confronted another man, resulting in shots fired. One man fell to the ground, and soon after, security arrived. Austin Police reported one death and one critical injury, highlighting the location as high crime, with incidents of violence increasing this year. The witness expressed sorrow for the families involved and noted that reckless behavior with firearms often leads to tragic outcomes.
Austin police are conducting a homicide investigation after an altercation between two people escalated into a deadly shooting.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was reported by a former friend to have asked him in 2022 to dispose of marijuana cigarettes and gummies to avoid DEA detection. The friend, Michael Hackney, lived on Miller’s ranch where Miller legally grew hemp. Miller denied the allegations. Investigations into Miller’s hemp operations revealed internal accusations but no charges against him. His former aide Todd Smith pled guilty to commercial bribery related to hemp licenses and was later rehired by Miller. Another former employee alleged Miller exchanged hemp for THC-laced products, which Miller denied. Miller is running for reelection amid ongoing controversies.
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A former friend of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told a Texas Ranger that in 2022 Miller asked him to dispose of three bags of marijuana cigarettes and gummies because he was afraid that the Drug Enforcement Administration might find them on his property.
At the time, the friend, Michael Hackney, was living in a motorhome on Miller’s Stephenville ranch, where Miller was licensed to grow hemp.
“I’ve got to get rid of this. I’ve had it at the house, and if the DEA comes, I can’t get caught with this stuff,” Miller said, according to Hackney. “He says, ‘You do with it whatever you want. Get rid of it. But don’t leave it here.’”
Hackney added, “He was really, really nervous about that deal.”
Recording of Michael Hackney’s interview with a Texas Ranger in July 2024
The Texas Tribune obtained a recording of the Texas Ranger’s July 2024 interview with Hackney through an open records request to the Texas Department of Public Safety, but has not been able to confirm whether Miller was — or has ever been — under investigation by the DEA or any other law enforcement agency. He has not been charged with a crime, and a Department of Public Safety spokesperson said Miller is not under active investigation by state police. A DEA spokesperson said the federal agency could not comment on any ongoing or past investigations unless they are fully adjudicated in the courts.
In an interview with the Tribune, Miller flatly denied the accusations.
“If I had marijuana cigarettes and gummies and I thought the DEA was going to investigate me, I damn sure wouldn’t have given them to anybody else to get rid of. I’d have just gotten rid of them myself,” he said. “I would never do that and it didn’t happen.”
Law enforcement records reviewed by the Tribune show Miller entangled in a morass of accusations related to his hemp farming operation made by former associates. The records were from two separate state investigations, neither of which targeted Miller. One investigation was into bribery accusations against a top Miller aide. The second was in response to an accusation of illegal coercion that Miller made against one of his own high-ranking Texas Departure of Agriculture employees. Miller accused the employee of trying to blackmail him with threats of explicit photos.
Miller dismissed the accusations made to law enforcement as lies from a disgruntled former employee and former friend. He said DPS has never reached out to question him about the claims.
Recorded interviews conducted during both investigations revealed people close to Miller believed his hemp farm was under scrutiny by the DEA.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller denies accusations against him to Texas Tribune reporter Kate McGee.
That included Freddy Vest, a former agriculture department director who oversaw the hemp licensing program and who Miller accused of blackmail. DPS investigated the claim but did not charge Vest with a crime.
During that investigation, Vest told officers in June of this year that a colleague had informed him three or four years ago that the DEA had contacted the agency asking for information about Miller’s hemp farm.
When Vest relayed the information to Miller in early 2022, he said Miller grew angry.
“I said, ‘Sid, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I told you I’d never lie to you, and I never hold anything back from you. … I’ve heard that there’s been a DEA agent that is inquiring on your hemp program,’” Vest recounted to the officers.
“[Miller] said, ‘What’s a DEA?’ I said, ‘Drug Enforcement Agency.’ And so he went back home. He got mad at me for telling him or that I knew about it,” Vest added to the officers.
Miller confirmed Vest told him the DEA was looking into his hemp operation, but said he was wrong.
“Freddy is a damn drama queen. He’s full of it,” Miller told the Tribune. “I checked out his story and it didn’t check out. It never happened. I never, ever talked to the DEA. They never stepped foot on my place.”
Miller, a Republican in his third-term in the state elected office, was registered to grow hemp in Texas between 2020 and 2023 — under a license granted by his own office. He was one of the hundreds of people who applied for that opportunity after state lawmakers legalized growing parts of the cannabis plant in 2019 as long as it did not contain more than .3% of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.
Miller planted 10 hemp crops at his Stephenville tree nursery through 2022, including varieties called Sweet Wife, China Blossom and ACDC, records show.
State lawmakers in May voted to ban the sale of substances containing consumable THC in Texas citing concern that they are dangerous to people’s health. At first, Miller opposed that ban, arguing it would be harmful to Texas farmers, though he ultimately supported it.
When Hackney spoke to the Texas Ranger about Miller’s hemp business, the Ranger was investigating Miller’s close political consultant Todd Smith.
Smith was arrested in May 2021 for soliciting up to $150,000 to guarantee prospective growers supposedly exclusive hemp licenses from Miller’s office. Licenses to grow hemp are unlimited in Texas and cost $100. After the indictment, Miller told reporters that he parted ways with Smith following his arrest. He later said the investigation was politically motivated and that Smith did nothing wrong. Miller has denied involvement and was not implicated in the case.
Todd Smith was rehired by Miller as chief of staff of the Texas Department of Agriculture. Credit: Social Media
Smith pled guilty to commercial bribery in 2024, a few weeks before his jury trial was scheduled to begin and about a week after Miller was subpoenaed to testify. Smith agreed to two years of deferred adjudication, meaning he would have to follow terms of probation but then could have his charges dismissed. A few months after Smith pleaded guilty, Miller hired Smith as chief of staff of the Texas Department of Agriculture. Smith did not respond to request for comment.
Hackney’s interview with the Texas Ranger, in which he described Miller asking him to get rid of the marijuana, is embedded in Smith’s 180-page investigative file from DPS.
“Sid shows up at my motor home and has three bags of product and by product, I mean, marijuana cigarettes that were in little cigar wrapping, gummies and so forth,” Hackney said in the interview.
Hackney responded, “What in the world is this?” he told the Ranger. But he did what Miller asked, he said.
Hackney’s motorhome had been parked on Miller’s property in Stephenville for about five years at the time to help manage his horse and cattle operation, he told the Ranger. Hackney, a former calf roper, got close to Miller traveling around the country and showing horses with him. He said two had a falling out in 2023 which resulted in Hackney moving off Miller’s property. Miller said he asked Hackney to leave his property because “he wore out his welcome.”
In the interview, Hackney told the Ranger he witnessed Miller tell an employee at his nursery to make sure if they had anything illegal on the property to get rid of it. And once at Miller’s house, he said he saw Miller smoke marijauna.
Miller said he told his employees to only grow legal hemp on the property.
Reached by the Tribune, Hackney said he stood by his statements to DPS, but stressed that he only came forward because he was asked by the Rangers to interview about Miller’s relationship to Smith. He was told by DPS that his statements would be confidential.
“I did not want to hurt Sid and especially his family in any way, but I did answer my questions to the best I could with the knowledge I had,” Hackney told the Tribune.
It’s unclear whether any investigators took any further action in response to Hackney’s claims. Asked about them, the DPS spokesperson initially said Hackney’s interview was included in a report that was submitted to the Travis County District Attorney’s office, and directed further questions to that office.
A spokesperson for the Travis County DA’s office said they do not have a record of receiving a copy of Hackney’s interview. Hours before publication, DPS sent an additional statement saying it did not send Hackney’s interview to the the district attorney’s office after it was determined that it “had no investigative value” to the Smith case.
A second investigation
Nearly a year after Hackney was interviewed by the Rangers, Vest, the employee fired by Miller after 10 years at the agency, got a knock on his door from two DPS agents asking to talk to him about his recent termination from the agriculture department.
In the interview, Vest said a former assistant commissioner, Walt Roberts, once told him that he accompanied Miller to a shop in Bastrop where Miller dropped off multiple garbage bags of his harvested hemp in exchange for two large garbage bags of black tubes with individually rolled joints inside.
“[Roberts] said [Miller] took his hemp down there, and what this guy was doing was spraying it with synthetic THC, turning it back into marijuana,” Vest told law enforcement.
Miller denied to Roberts he was doing anything illegal and remarked that “there’s some college kids that’d like to have this,” Vest told officers.
Roberts confirmed Vest’s account to the Tribune, adding that he felt uncomfortable being present for the exchange. He declined to answer further questions. Roberts was hired by Miller when he first took state office. Roberts has publicly disclosed he pleaded guilty for a federal felony and misdemeanor for his role in a campaign finance conspiracy in Oklahoma in 2003.
Miller denied he ever sold or exchanged his hemp in Bastrop.
Vest was interviewed after Miller reported him to DPS and accused him of threatening to expose intimate pictures involving Miller if he didn’t fire certain employees at the agency, according to a written request from Miller’s office for DPS to investigate the incident.
In a recording of that DPS interview, Vest told the officers Hackney had photos of Miller that could be incriminating.
The Tribune reviewed copies of both photos. One photo was of Miller laying next to a blonde woman on a bed smiling. Miller told the Tribune that it was a sick woman lying in a hospital bed who he took a selfie with. The other photo was a screen shot of what appeared to be Miller’s own Facebook story post of a woman naked on a bed, but only her backside is visible. Vest told police this woman was Miller’s wife. Miller told the Tribune he was unaware of this photo. Miller’s wife did not respond to a request for comment.
Vest told Miller about the photos in May, but didn’t tell him who had them, despite Miller’s repeated requests for more information, according to a recording of their conversation that Miller secretly recorded and sent to DPS.
When Miller fired Vest and reported him to DPS, he submitted his audio recording and a transcript of the conversation as evidence. The Tribune obtained copies via an open records request.
When Vest tells Miller about the photos, Miller asks where the photo came from and tries to guess who has copies of the photos, according to the recording shared with DPS.
In that recording of Miller and Vest’s conversation, Vest said that he had known about the photos for a while, but had previously convinced the person not to publicize them. But the person was more recently considering making them public and wanted Miller to fire Smith and another agency head.
Hackney told the Tribune that he never intended to release the photos.
Vest insisted in his DPS interview that neither he nor Hackney ever directly threatened Miller. He had tried, he said, to get Miller away from Smith for years.
“I didn’t show these [photos] to anyone to extort anything out of Sid or anything,” Vest told the officers. “And since I was terminated, I haven’t. It’s not a vendetta for me against Sid Miller.” Vest declined an interview with the Tribune.
The agents said in the interview with Vest that there was no evidence that Vest tried to blackmail Miller and closed the case. Vest was never charged with a crime. Miller told the Tribune he is still considering further legal action.
Political storms
Miller is gearing up to run for reelection for a fourth term next year. So far, he’s garnered at least one primary challenger: Nate Sheets, founder of Nature Nate’s Honey Company.
Miller previously served in the Texas state House from 2001 to 2013. Since he was first elected agriculture commissioner in 2014, he’s repeatedly weathered political controversies and criticism.
In 2016, Miller came under fire for using state funds to travel to Oklahoma to receive what he called a “Jesus shot,” an injection that a doctor in Oklahoma City claimed could take away all pain for life.
Miller later reimbursed the state for the trip and Travis County prosecutors did not pursue charges.
In 2017, the Texas Ethics Commission fined Miller $2,750 for sloppy campaign accounting. The next year, the ethics commission fined Miller$500 for using state funds to travel to a rodeo in Mississippi after an investigation found the primary purpose of the trip to Jackson was personal.
Kate McGee is continuing to report on issues related to the Texas Department of Agriculture. If you have a tip reach out at mcgee@texastribune.org.
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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article presents a factual, investigative report on allegations involving Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller without adopting an overt ideological stance. It details accusations from multiple sources, Miller’s denials, and related investigations, maintaining a neutral tone throughout. The coverage includes balanced perspectives and official statements, focusing on documented events and law enforcement records rather than editorializing. While the subject is a Republican politician with a history of controversy, the article refrains from partisan framing and simply reports the facts, consistent with The Texas Tribune’s nonpartisan editorial approach.
SUMMARY: Glass panels have fallen multiple times from the under-construction 55-story ATX Tower in downtown Austin, raising safety concerns. On July 28, Ryan Companies found a broken glass panel—the fourth such incident this year—and alerted authorities, ensuring no injuries occurred. A covered walkway was installed as a safety measure. The City of Austin’s Development Services Department is working closely with the contractor, conducting site visits and investigations. While causes, including high winds, are being studied, no penalties have been imposed yet. Council member Zo Qadri demands accountability and potential city council action to ensure public safety amid ongoing risks.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-07-30 19:23:00
The Texas Senate has passed SB 5, a bill banning THC products, for the second time, following Gov. Greg Abbott’s veto of a similar bill (SB 3). Abbott has proposed legalizing THC for adults 21+, but the GOP-led legislature opposes legalization and supports the ban, citing health and safety concerns, especially for children. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick strongly advocates the ban, condemning loopholes exploited by retailers selling potent THC products marketed to youth. The bill bans production, sale, and possession of most THC products except CBD/CBG. Opponents argue it harms businesses and patients, but Patrick highlights expanded medical access through the Compassionate Use Program. The Texas House plans to pass the ban, deepening the rift with Abbott.
(The Center Square) – The Texas Senate on Wednesday passed for a second time a ban on THC.
In the regular legislative session, the Senate passed SB 3, filed by state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, with bipartisan support in both chambers. Gov. Greg Abbott then vetoed it in the last hour of the last day allowed by the Texas Constitution after the legislature adjourned and couldn’t convene to override it.
Next, Abbott proposed legalizing THC for adults over age 21, making it a legislative priority for the special session, which began July 21. However, the Texas Legislature, led by Republicans, oppose Abbott’s proposal and oppose legalizing THC and marijuana.
The Texas Senate next passed Perry’s second THC ban, SB 5, out of committee with bipartisan support last week. The full Senate passed it on Wednesday by a vote of 21-8.
The Texas House is also not backing down on a THC ban. An identical bill to Perry’s was filed by state Rep. Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, HB 5.
In response to the Senate again passing the THC ban, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said, “Since 2019, bad actors have taken advantage of a loophole in Texas agriculture law to sell potent, intoxicating forms of THC that have nothing to do with agriculture. These shops have rapidly spread throughout Texas, endangering the health and safety of children and families across our state, with no accountability. These products, often containing dangerous levels of THC, are marketed directly towards young people with colorful packaging and images, making THC look like candy or sweets.”
Patrick has made a THC ban his mission this year, holding multiple press conferences and posting videos on social media about why a ban is important.
A THC ban remains a legislative priority, he said on Wednesday, “because we refuse to let these rogue retailers exploit loopholes in state law to sell dangerous THC products into our communities.”
The bill has the support of every law enforcement agency in Texas, the Texas Medical Association, Texas Pediatric Society, and many families impacted by THC. Law enforcement officers oppose regulating it, arguing regulation won’t work. Current regulation related to hemp farming has already been abused and unenforced, witnesses testified, pointing out that an official list of hemp growers includes smoke shops, extract labs and closed businesses.
Abbott is standing in opposition to law enforcement and Texas families, and is paving the way to legalize marijuana, Patrick argues. Abbott has proposed regulating THC like alcohol.
Marijuana and THC products are considered Schedule 1 controlled substances by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which “considers them to have a high likelihood of being abused and no current medical use, despite marijuana being legal in some cities and states, including for medical purposes,” WebMD explains.
In Texas, marijuana for recreational use is illegal; CBD oil, an extract of the marijuana plant, is legal for medical use. In 2015, the state legislature passed the Compassionate-Use Act, authorizing qualified physicians to prescribe low-THC cannabis (less than one percent) to patients with certain conditions. It initially only applied to patients with intractable epilepsy but was later expanded to include those diagnosed with a seizure disorder, multiple sclerosis, spasticity, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, autism, cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and an incurable neurodegenerative disease, the State Law Library explains.
SB 5 allows Cannabidiol (CBD) or CBG, whole hemp seeds, hemp seed protein powder and hemp seed oil to continue being sold in Texas. Their sale is “currently legal today through the FDA,” Perry said at a hearing last week. However, “It is with almost 99% assuredly most of the [THC] products that are being sold off these retail shelves today through these hemp stores and other venues is illegal federally. We have court cases building by the week that support that.”
SB 5 bans the production, sale, and possession of consumable marijuana products that contain any cannabinoids other than CBD or CBG, including banning substances marketed as delta-8, delta-9, delta-10, THCA, and THC-O. Violators face criminal penalties ranging from a Class C misdemeanor for possession to a third-degree felony for manufacturing or distribution of THC.
Opponents of the ban say it will wipe out small businesses, tens of thousands of jobs and negatively impact veterans, seniors, cancer survivors and others experiencing chronic pain who use THC, The Center Square reported.
Patrick says they can legally purchase THC with a prescription from their doctor. The legislature also passed HB 46 to expand the Texas Compassionate Use Program, “the largest compassionate use program in America” to ensure they had access, he said.
The Texas House is expected to again pass the THC ban, setting up another showdown between the Republican-led legislature and Republican governor.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The article presents a largely factual and straightforward report on the Texas Senate’s legislative actions regarding a THC ban, detailing the positions of Republican lawmakers, the governor, and other stakeholders. While the content predominantly reflects the viewpoints and legislative priorities of conservative Republicans opposing THC legalization, it reports these without overt editorializing or strong emotive language favoring one side. The framing highlights Republican concerns about public health and law enforcement backing, as well as opposition arguments about economic and medical impacts. Overall, the article leans moderately toward conservative perspectives through its focus but maintains a largely neutral tone in presenting the facts and differing opinions.
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