ERIN HEARS FOOTSTEPS: DA INVESTIGATORS SET UP CAMP

By Juan Montoya
The source was breathless on Thursday.
"The (Cameron County District Attorney Office) DA investigators are in JP Erin Hernandez Garcia's office and they asked everyone to leave when they looked at the office files," he said.
Of course, once a story gets told and retold there's always some crema added for good measure to make the chisme even more delicious.
We asked around and learned that indeed, an investigator from the DA's office had been probing through judge Hernandez-Garcia's files. But we were also told that investigators periodically show up at her office as they seek to document evidence for the ongoing probe into her office.
There are at least two lines of inquiry into the JP's office.

One, of course, is her issuance and sale of allegedly illegal waivers to couples allowing them to circumvent the state-mandated 72-hour waiting period between the county clerk issuing the marriage license and the performance of the ceremony by JPs such as her.
That issue is awaiting a Texas Attorney General's opinion on her interpretation of the law where she holds that a JP court is a family court under Texas law, a view that practically no one but she holds. Under that interpretation, she sold at least 13 such waivers that we know of. Of course, after she sold the couples the waivers, she married them at the standard JP cost of between $150 to $250.
Another line of inquiry pertains to the arrest and charging of one of her clerks who was allegedly taking money in return for allowing defendants who had been granted community service instead of paying a fine.
Friends close to the clerk who was arrested and jailed on the three counts have said that she has hired an attorney to defend herself on the charges and that when it's all said and done, both JPs and some of their staff may end up on the wrong side of the witness stand in a court room.
Additionally, they say that the alleged scheme of which Cantu was charged actually stemmed from practices perpetrated by the office holder and the JP staff.
When the investigation was launched, sources say that the clerk had been involved in a scheme whereby those who were referred to that office for performance of community service hours were offered to make a cash payment instead. Now, this gets serious because some of the violations for which the defendants were fined were generated form traffic offenses involving the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept., and county constables, among others.
The clerk resigned when she was told she was being investigated.
Now, however, friends say that she is ready to tell all if the DA's office tries to prosecute her on the charges and is not afraid where the chips may fall.
"You all should get your facts straight," she wrote this blog. "I never ever touched money. I never stole anything, but now that investigators are on everyone's case I will clean my name and heads will roll from several offices," she wrote.
"I am not hiding, everyone better well remember my name from Constables office, to JP 2-1 and JP2-2. I was accused not of stealing but of a non-approved community service...Hold up ladies and gentleman, there will be a grand finale and the real rats will be exposed.
I NEVER ROBBED! But I know who is been doing it and now that I have nothing to loose I will fight to clear my name...No, people, Mrs. (JP Hernandez) Garcia didn't report 'the wrong doing' I know who did and why."
The source of the reports that there was some hanky-panky going on in Erin's court said that apparently they were made public when the clerk did not resign from her position after the new JP took over in November 2012 despite pressure being put on her so the new office holder could give the job to another person.
That person turned out to be Cynthia Lopez Rodriguez, they say. Cynthia Rodriguez is the sister-in-law of Sylvia Rodriguez, the administrative assistant to JP 2-1 Linda Salazar whose office is next to Erin Garcia's. Cynthia Lopez Garcia is married to Sylvia's brother Ernie Rodriguez whose family hold the court house coffee shop contract.
Apparently, her friends allege that when the clerk did not cave in to the pressure to quit so that Rodriguez could take her place, she was made a patsy for the drummed-up charges.
In fact, some county employees says that there had been a Hernandez cult being nurtured on the second floor of the county's judicial wing that rewards those loyal to the family, especially to Erin and her father Ernie Hernandez, commissioner for Pct. 2. (He is currently under indictment on eight counts of official corruption centered about the illegal hiring of his brother-in-law Robert Cadriel. Cadriel is Ernie Hernandez's wife, Norma. She is said to be under the microscope by a joint state-federal vote fraud task force which has already seen the indictment of at least one politiquera. Both Erin Hernandez and her father Ernie Hernandez are running for re-election in the Democratic primary March 14.)
Which line of investigation were the most recent visitors from the DA's office following last Thursday?
Take your pick.