WIGHTMAN: A CONTINUING CLAIM FOR VETS' HONOR, BENNIES

By Juan Montoya
By his own admission, local blogger Robert Wightman admits that he was discharged from the U.S. Army based on a psychiatrist's finding that he had mental issues.
An article published in the Dallas Observer  March 2000 indicates that while in the U.S. Army, he was "transferred to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo for surveillance training, he grew ill and was hospitalized for a time with ulcerative colitis. He also became deeply depressed, but couldn't tell anyone why. "I thought I was betraying my government by lying that I wasn't gay," he says. "I couldn't tell them the truth without going to jail."
Although he told the writer that a previous Army mental exam found he had "no psychiatric disorder," his commanding officer at Goodfellow believed Wightman was malingering and ordered that he be evaluated at St. John's Hospital in San Angelo.
"The doctor who performed the evaluation, who Wightman-Cervantes says never examined him, offered this diagnosis in 1982: "It is my initial impression that the patient manifests a paranoid personality disorder." After reviewing his medical records, an Army psychiatrist determined that Wightman suffered from "atypical personality disorder (suspiciousness, self-dramatization, overreaction to minor events, angry outbursts, some grandiose ideation)."
On March 31, 1983, Wightman received an honorable discharge from the Army based on this psychiatric disorder, though he says the doctor attesting to his discharge never examined him either.
Starting in 1986, Wightman tried to change the diagnosis with the Veteran's Administration. He petitioned the military at least three times to reconsider his discharge, but the Army Discharge Review Board turned him down each time.
In 1989, he filed a federal lawsuit against the secretary of the Army, attempting to change the grounds for his discharge again. But the trial judge dismissed the case, and Wightman's appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was equally unsuccessful.
After his discharge from the service, Wightan went to law school and became an attorney. He was disbarred on Jan. 11, 2002 in the the 298th District Court of Dallas County.
The court found that: Wightman brought or defended a frivolous proceeding. The court also found Wightman took a position that unreasonably increased the costs or other burdens of a case and delayed the resolution of the case. Wightman, in representing a client, engaged in conduct engaged to disrupt a proceeding. Wightman was also found to have communicated with another party regarding a case when he knew that party was represented by counsel. The court also found Wightman made a statement that was either false or with reckless disregard to its truth regarding the qualifications or integrity of a judge. Wightman failed to timely respond to notice of the complaint from the grievance committee. He violated Rules 3.01, 3.02, 3.04(c)(2), (c)(3), and (c)(5), 3.05(a), 4.02(a), 4.04(a) and (b)(1), 8.02(a), and 8.04(a)(1) and (a)(8). He was ordered to pay $48,700.72 in attorney’s fees, which is subject to reduction."
Additionally, a few months later he was later convicted of holding himself out to be a lawyer and served a 14-day sentence as a result of his guilty plea.
So here we have a person who served at the most a year and a half during peace time now holding himself out to be a disabled veteran using the cloak of military service to game the system. Not only does he recount every mundane (and perceived) illnesses he gets treated for at the overburdened VA health system, but he can't help but make himself out to be the standard bearer of all veterans.

His recent ravings that local attorney Alex Begum was somehow involved in trying to ascertain that Wightman was claiming that his 100 percent service-related disability to get a taxing exemption on his $109,000 residence are way off the mark.

Begum has never been involved in the matter or even brooked the subject with this blog.

The information request to the Cameron County Appraisal District was made by this writer who suspected the legitimacy of the claim. The request sought the VA disability rating only, and not any specific private medical information.

The CCAD asked for a Texas Attorney General's opinion on the matter and the AG sided with Wightman on the districts' decision to withhold the information from the public. Based on whatever documentation Wightman provided the district, he continues to receive the exemption from paying taxes. Wightman fought the release of any information tooth and nail and made out our request to be an assault on the rights of all veterans.

This is not the first time that Wightman has leaned on the medical crutch to avoid paying U.S. taxpayers.
Take for instance, his claim in a lawsuit he filed against then-U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret  Spellings claiming she had violated his constitutional rights because her department had rejected his application to have his student loans forgiven because he claimed total medical disability.
Dept. of Education rules stated that if the plaintiff earned more than the poverty level, he was not entitled to have the loans forgiven.
"To put this in focus," Wightman wrote, "if a veteran returning from Iraq with a permanent disability earned one penny over the poverty level on the day of his qualifying disability, he would not be entitled to discharge his student loans."
He claimed in is petition to file the lawsuit without having to pay the filing fee ( (In Forma Pauperis) that he had "no regular employer for 18 years" even though he was a practicing attorney in Dallas before he was disbarred.
Of course, Wightman is no Iraq veteran. But that doesn't stop him from covering himself with the disabled veteran's mantle to elicit the sympathy (and financial benefit) he so badly craves.
A loan analyst with the Dept. of Education said Wightman's earnings disqualified him from having his loans discharged, which triggered the lawsuit.According to Delfin Reyes, Wightman owed the government $40,340 at the time he filed the lawsuit claiming disability and asking to have his loans forgiven even though he earned $17,053 in 2003, which exceeded the poverty guidelines of $12,120.
Nonetheless, Wightman persisted and after more than a year of threats and litigation, the U.S. Dept. of Education threw up its hands and agreed to discharge the $40,000 in student loans.
His malingering – which started in his Army days – has served him well.
Now he has the unmitigated gall to use our attempt to investigate his claim of having a total service-related disability to inject himself into the 357th District Court race between Juan Magallanes and incumbent Oscar X. Garcia. The mere fact that Garcia advertises on this blog and that he refused to get involved on Wightman's behalf when he complained of our information request is enough – in his jaundiced view – to make Garcia's character suspect.
He sates that : "I went to Oscar Garcia and Juan Magallanes with the problem. Oscar Garcia was clear - not his problem and he was going to continue to fund Montoya's work into violating the rights of veterans. Juan Magallanes response was also clear - "I will do an amici brief defending all veterans." Oscar Garcia for power had no problem throwing every veteran in the state under the bus for his own personal gain. Juan Magallanes did not have to think twice - he offered to come to the defense of all veterans."
That was enough to clinch the deal for Wightman. "Juan Magallanes for veterans. Oscar Garcia against veterans."
No, Bobby, it's you for yourself and your continuing  usurpation of the honor and need of legitimately disabled veterans for your personal benefit. The honor and respect that you are claiming by calling yourself a disabled veteran are not deserved and you know it. Excuse us if not everyone wants to live your lie.