Court documents filed this week revealed that the Fort Bend district attorney plans to take KP George to trial despite the county judge’s claims that he didn’t intentionally falsify a campaign finance document, and even if he had, it doesn’t amount to money laundering as alleged in the indictment.
George, who has served as Fort Bend County judge since 2019, appeared in court Thursday on the felony charges. Associate Judge Mark Hanna entered a scheduling order establishing deadlines for discovery, expert witness designations and other pretrial activities, but no motions were heard, according to a spokesman in the DA’s office.
George is also accused of misdemeanors, with prosecutors alleging he collaborated with his former chief of staff, Taral Patel, to create fake social media accounts and post racist and xenophobic messages in an effort to injure the reputation of Republican opponent Trever Nehls ahead of the 2022 election.
Patel pleaded guilty in April, admitting to online misrepresentation to sway voters, and was sentenced to probation. George barely won re-election with 51 percent of the vote. He’s running again in 2026, this time as a Republican. He has denied all the allegations, claiming through attorney Jared Woodfill that Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton is pursuing a political vendetta.
According to the Fort Bend County court calendar, George is set to appear in County Court at Law No. 5 at 1:30 p.m. August 21 on the misdemeanor charges.
George presides over the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court and sets the budget for district judges. His request for a new judge in his own criminal cases was denied in June.
George’s attorney filed a 26-page “motion to quash” his felony indictment earlier this week, claiming primarily that the charges lack specificity. Woodfill could not immediately be reached for comment.
George is charged with two felony counts of laundering between $30,000 and $150,000, which carries a potential sentence of two to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.
Prosecutors say George committed wire fraud and tampered with a campaign finance report; Woodfill says the county judge gave himself a loan, a common practice among those running for office, and later paid it back.
“The indictment parrots fragments of the statutory language but never articulates a coherent criminal act,” states the motion to quash. “It posits that by filing an allegedly false campaign finance report (the supposed ‘tampering with a governmental record’), Mr. George turned the campaign’s funds into ‘criminal proceeds’ and then committed money laundering by handling those funds in unspecified ways. This theory fails as a matter of law, for multiple independent reasons.”
In an eight-page response, Fort Bend Assistant District Attorney Charann Thompson provided the specifics George and his attorneys claim were lacking:
“On January 14, 2019, the Defendant filed a campaign finance report for the period October 28, 2018, to December 31, 2018. In it, the Defendant reported under oath that his balance as of December 31, 2018, was $399. His actual campaign account balance was $37,128.94.
Two weeks later, the Defendant transferred $30,000 from his campaign account to his personal account. On March 19, 2019, he transferred another $16,500 from his campaign account to his personal account. The Defendant used the money to pay his personal property taxes and toward a down payment on a new house. The Defendant not only concealed the campaign contributions from his January report but also concealed the transfers from the subsequent campaign finance report.”
Subpoenas issued in July to three real estate companies revealed that prosecutors are not just looking into George’s finance reports; they’re also scrutinizing his real estate transactions to determine whether he used campaign funds to buy a house. Court records show he purchased a home on Driftstone Court in Richmond for $278,000 in April 2019, shortly after taking office for the first time as the county’s top elected official.
Woodfill, a former Harris County Republican Party chair, says the accusations against George are politically motivated by Democrats, including the district attorney, who want George out of office. Fort Bend County Commissioners Court is in the contentious process of redistricting its commissioner precincts and adopting a $500 million budget. George’s party switch gives Republicans a 3-2 majority.
Middleton has said he does not intend to litigate the case in the media.
“For many good reasons, Texas legal ethics rules limit the kinds of public statements a prosecutor and defense attorney can make about a pending criminal case,” Middleton said in an emailed statement in April. “To that end, the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office has been very careful to do its talking in the courtroom and not on the courthouse steps.”
Woodfill says his client won’t accept a plea deal, even though prosecutors say they’ve never offered one. The lawyer said in May he expects that if the charges are not dropped, the case could go to trial by the end of the year. Primary elections for the county judge’s seat will be in March 2026.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
