SALAZAR SENTENCING DELAYED TIL A WEEK BEFORE XMAS; IS THERE A FEDERAL INDICTMENT IMMINENT AGAINST HIS BOSS?

By Juan Montoya
It'll be Dec. 18 before former Cameron County Pct. 2 administrative assistant Raul G. Salazar is sentenced on his convictions on two counts of official misconduct and tampering with a government document.
Visiting Judge Federico Hinojosa informed the defendant and the Cameron County District Attorney's Office that the sentencing – originally scheduled for today – would be postponed until a week from today due to a heavy court schedule.
Salazar was convicted by a six-woman jury on November 15.
Since Salazar was tried on the three misdemeanor counts together, the maximum time that Hinojosa can sentence him to is one year. When multiple counts are tried together, the sentencing is always to the benefit of the defendant. Unless Salazar cuts a deal with the court, he will serve the sentence in a Cameron County jail.
Salazar was the administrative assistant to Pct. commissioner Ernie Hernandez, who it was learned during the trial, was also the target of a state investigation into the illegal hiring of Roberto Cadriel, his brother-in-law through his wife Norma.
During the trial, testimony from several witnesses indicated that Cadriel – a convicted felon – was not eligible for employment with the county because he could neither read nor write, could not operate a computer, and was unable to pass the Civil Service examination all county employees must pass.
Several witnesses said that a Human Resources female employee was ordered to take the exam for Cadriel after he tried and failed twice with score sin the low 30s. When the woman took the exam for him, he scored an 86.
After he couldn't get the position he sought initially (animal control, that is, dog catcher), witnesses and Cadriel himself testified that a copy of the answers to a written test for security officer were given to him before he took the exam. He scored a 96 and was placed as a non-commissioned security guard at oen of the bridges at the Cameron County International Bridge System.
And even though his boss Ernie Hernandez denied any role in his hiring, Cadriel testified on the stand that it was the commissioner who told him to go see Salazar at his commissioner's office to help him apply for a job wiht the county. Cadriel said Norma, his sister and the commissioner's wife, helped him fill out the co9unty application.
Then, during the trial, numerous state witnesses said Hernandez and Salazar pressured them through conversations and phone calls urging them to "move the application along," and get Cadriel hired.
Cadriel resigned – as did then-HR director Robert Lopez after media inquiries about his hiring began.
Hernandez told the local daily that he knew nothing about Cadriel being hired or resigning until he read it in the online version of the Brownsville Herald.
However, at the start of his assistant's trial, Hernandez – on the advice of his attorney – took the Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination and refused to testify on his behalf. Hernandez said that he was afraid that  some of the testimony he gave to a grand jury (three hours in all) might contradict the testimony he gave during Salazar's trial and he refused to take the stand.
This comes on the heels of a guilty plea in federal court by Sonia Solis, a politiquera who was working in tandem with Tomasita Chavez, a well-known Hernandez vote-harvesting machine operative. Solis pleaded guilty of voting five times using fraudulent mail-in votes and claiming the voters were disabled.
She is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court February 5 and court observers say that the woman may have agreed to cooperate with a joint state-federal investigation into voting fraud that centered around the Hernandez voter-harvesting machine.
In Solis' case, the fraud occurred during the runoff race between Erin Garcia Hernandez – Ernie's daughter who eventually won the runoff for JP 2-2 based on the alleged fraudulent votes – and her opponent Yolanda Begum. Begum is one of three candidates challenging Erin Hernandez for the position in the March 2014 Democratic primary.
During the Salazar trial, members of the U.S. Attorney's Office were seen in court listening to the testimony.