“There’s a special place in hell for Kim Ogg,” Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis wrote on social media earlier this month.
Ellis’ post came hours after a May 2 announcement by Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare that felony charges were dismissed against the county’s former Public Health Executive Director Barbie Robinson.
The charges were filed by Teare’s predecessor Ogg, who many local leaders say repeatedly targeted public officials and political adversaries, tarnishing their reputations in pursuit of headlines, only to have the cases dropped.
The former DA has cost Harris County taxpayers at least $1.5 million in wasted legal fees and the political party she once claimed wants nothing to do with her. She’s no longer an elected official, just an attorney with an axe to grind, political experts say. So what was she trying to accomplish and what does she want to do in the future?
Ogg unsuccessfully ran for district judge as a Republican in 1995 and switched parties before a 2016 bid to become Harris County’s first Democrat DA in almost 40 years. Her devotion to the Democratic Party has been questioned since her early days on the job, exacerbated by a campaign promise to reform the county’s cash bail system, then backpedaling and supporting Republican agendas.
After getting trounced by Teare in last year’s primary, Ogg endorsed Republican Ted Cruz’s U.S. Senate campaign, saying that the senator’s shared interest in cracking down on violent crime is bigger than partisanship.
She then showed up in Austin to testify in support of the GOP-sponsored Senate Bill 9, which would require the presiding judge, instead of a criminal law hearing officer, to set an initial bond. The bill has been touted by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and opposed by many Democrats and criminal justice reform advocates.
Many of the public officials she’s targeted, including Ellis, are prominent Democrats. Rumors have swirled that Ogg is seeking a Trump appointment as a U.S. attorney.
Ogg did not respond to multiple requests for an interview but said in a public statement this month following the dismissal that she’s calling for an FBI investigation into political corruption and a cover-up by Teare’s office. She referred to Teare’s latest action as “another brazen dismissal of a public corruption case previously brought by my office — an act that represents more than just a legal decision; it is a deliberate obstruction of justice.”
“By throwing out charges that a grand jury deemed worthy of trial, District Attorney Sean Teare has not only disregarded the evidence, but he has also silenced the voice of the people and undermined the integrity of our legal system,” she said.
The Hit List
Ellis is among many who felt Ogg’s wrath while she was still in office. The former DA launched an investigation in 2020 against the commissioner for storing African art in a Precinct One maintenance shed. A grand jury refused to indict Ellis but it took more than a year for the case to be disposed of and plenty of damage occurred in the interim.
Ellis, along with Commissioner Adrian Garcia and County Judge Lina Hidalgo, was also accused by Ogg of involvement in election rigging.
The former DA made harsh allegations against the late former Congressman and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, accusing him of steering millions of federal funds toward a favored developer. She initiated a criminal investigation into former Harris County elections administrator Clifford Tatum in 2022 regarding a lack of paper ballots, but no fraud or election-related crime was discovered.
When Tatum was cleared, the Harris County Commissioners Court voted to reimburse the county official almost half a million dollars in legal fees. Casting the lone vote against the reimbursement was Commissioner Tom Ramsey, a Republican, who Ogg briefly worked for after she lost the 2024 primary to Teare. Ramsey did not respond to requests for an interview.
The Houston Chronicle reported in January that taxpayers have reimbursed $1.5 million in legal fees for local officials who were investigated by Ogg but never convicted of crimes.
Others weren’t charged criminally but said they left their positions because they feared Ogg would target them. Anaâ¯Yañezâ¯Correa said when she resigned as director of the Harris County Justice Administration Department that Ogg’s investigations into county officials “negatively impacted morale among staff” and ultimately led to employees departing.
Former Criminal Court-at-Law Judgeâ¯Darrellâ¯Jordan, and former Judge Franklinâ¯Bynum also made Ogg’s hit list. Ogg accused Jordan of official oppression because he allegedly wrongfully jailed Houston media consultant Wayne Dolcefino for interrupting proceedings in Jordan’s courtroom. Bynum was targeted for his judicial conduct and alleged bias.
Perhaps the most talked-about alleged political vendetta is Ogg’s pursuit of criminal charges against a trio of employees who worked for Judge Hidalgo. County employees Aaron Dunn, Wallis Nader and Alex Triantaphyllis were accused in 2022 of misusing official information and tampering with records connected to an $11 million COVID contract. At the time, Ogg was running for re-election.
Ogg’s office worked on the case until she lost the primary and then turned it over to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which dropped it. Former employee Triantaphyllis agreed to complete 10 hours of community service, according to Houston Public Media.
“Kim Ogg is a dirty cop,” Hidalgo said at a press conference in February, accusing the former DA of abusing her power, even though Ogg isn’t actually a police officer. Ogg responded by saying Hidalgo isn’t a lawyer and she didn’t think the judge understands the legal system. Hidalgo also said publicly that she didn’t know “what the f— she threatened you with” when commissioners appeared to support Ogg’s office taking over a re-entry program for people with criminal histories.
Political experts say Hidalgo, a Democrat, and the Harris County Commissioners Court retaliated against Ogg’s actions by rejecting then-DA Ogg’s pitch for more prosecutors.
The county judge’s office was reimbursed almost $900,000 in legal fees related to the dismissed cases in Hidalgo’s office. Again, Commissioner Ramsey cast the lone vote against the reimbursement. Hidalgo did not respond to requests for an interview last week.
Each of Ogg’s attempts at criminal charges against public officials was thwarted, some by jurisdictions other than Harris County. Ogg says the latest dismissal occurred because Teare’s office is covering up corruption to help his political supporters.
Ellis tells a different tale.
“For years, former DA Kimâ¯Ogg used the courtroom to settle political scores and advance her extreme agenda,” Ellis said. “She consistently weaponized prosecutions with a double standard, consistently attacking and defaming Black and brown officials. One by one, those cases collapsed: dismissed by judges, rejected by grand juries, or abandoned when real prosecutors reviewed the facts.”
Officials with Teare’s office said Ogg left a massive backlog of cases that they’re trying to dispose of swiftly while also thoroughly weighing the charges. Ogg’s supporters have pointed out that she was the DA during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when court proceedings halted, thus justifying the case backlog.
However, she added more cases in her final days on the job, knowing she wouldn’t be around to prosecute them. She was defeated in a March 2024 primary and didn’t leave office until the end of the year.
Kim Ogg’s Struggle to Find a Political Home
Ogg began her legal career in 1997 working for former District Attorney Johnny Holmes. She was appointed as the first director for Houston’s Anti-Gang Task Force in 1994 and ran as a Republican for a judge’s seat in ’95. She worked as the executive director of Crime Stoppers of Houston for many years prior to being elected DA.
Crime Stoppers Director of Victim Services and Advocacy Andy Kahan did not respond to a request for an interview.
County employees commented last week that Ogg is a “political windsock,” struggling to find a party. She’s always pushed conservative agendas, but there’s speculation that she clashed with Republicans in the 1990s because of her sexual orientation. In a 2017 interview with the LGBT publication OutSmart, Ogg said she was “gay-crucified” while running as a Republican in the mid-1990s. During the 2016 campaign for the DA’s office, Republican and then-incumbent Devon Anderson labeled Ogg a “liberal, pro-choice lesbian.”
The Harris County Democratic Party admonished Ogg in 2023 for not keeping her promises to eliminate cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses and weaponizing her office to harm political opponents. Some say the admonishment ended her political career. Teare handily defeated her in the 2024 primary, securing more than 78 percent of the vote, and went on to narrowly win the general election against Republican Dan Simons.
Several county officials have pointed out that Ogg appears to favor “going after” people of color, Democrats, and those who have challenged her politically. The “witch hunts” waste taxpayer money and appear to be self-serving rather than actually weeding out corruption in county government, Ellis said.
“It has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars — money that could have funded efforts to make our communities safer and healthier through violence interruption programs, flood protection, or living wages,” he said. “These costly witch hunts eroded public trust and distracted from the real work of keeping our communities safe.”
Referring to the accusations made against Hidalgo’s staffers, Ellis added that “it has been well-documented that Ogg hired her friend Rachel Hooper, the top lawyer for the Texas Republican Party, to architect a hollow investigation against three civil servants to forward her political agenda.” Hooper has been linked to Texas House candidate and former chair of the Harris County Republican Party Jared Woodfill — who Harris County unexpectedly stopped investigating for fraud charges one month after Hooper was hired, the Texas Tribune reported last year.
Democratic Party leaders say that during Ogg’s tenure, when a criminal case that did not involve a political adversary was dismissed, Ogg politely conceded, issuing a brief statement saying she respected the decision. But when Ellis’ case was dismissed, she issued a two-page open letter to County Attorney Christian Menefee outlining her outrage that the 14 counts of potential civil charges were not investigated.
“It was clearly a political play and clearly a double standard in how she responded to that grand jury ruling versus what she normally does,” said a county employee who asked to remain anonymous. “I think she’s got a vendetta and I think she’s ladder-climbing in the Republican Party.”
Harris County Democratic Party Precinct Chair Cameron “Coach Cam” Campbell, a former football standout at the University of Houston and unsuccessful U.S. representative candidate, led the charge to admonish Ogg in December 2023, when Harris County Dems voted 129 to 61 to say they didn’t support her behavior, alleging that she was abusing her power to pursue vendettas against political opponents.
“I called over 100 precinct chairs, collecting signatures, and what I heard time and time again is that we knew we couldn’t trust her,” Campbell said. “Almost from day one of her being in office she began to kind of ease and backslide on some of her campaign values, promises and focus. Citizens are scared of her. We had precinct chairs who believed and agreed but would not sign [the admonishment] for fear of retribution.”
At the time of the admonishment, Ogg said the Democrats were fed a stream of misinformation and wanted her to put party loyalty over her “oath to follow the law.”
Campbell, who is Black, said he didn’t want to believe that the former DA was targeting people of color but when it was pointed out to him, he couldn’t deny the pattern.
“The list is so extensive: Turner, Ellis, Lina … yes, we are a gumbo of a city, which means our elected officials are diverse, but, wait a minute. I see a common thread here,” he said. “This is a trend. As a coach, you’re trained to look for trends within your opposing team but also within yourself, because when things go bad, you go to your favorite play. When things go bad for Kim Ogg, her favorite plays, her signature plays, are to attack a Democrat and attack an elected official of color.”
Teare (Sort Of) Responds to Threats of FBI Investigation
The dismissal of Barbie Robinson’s case wasn’t particularly surprising to those who keep an eye on Harris County politics, but Ogg’s response — calling for an FBI investigation — raised the question of how seriously county officials take the former DA’s claims.
Ogg said in her only media interview after the Robinson charges were dismissed that Teare, who was endorsed by Hidalgo and Ellis, participated in a “quid pro quo.”
Political experts dismissed Ogg’s threats as, “This is what she does.” Ogg posted a clip from Fox 26 Greg Groogan’s “What’s the Point?” segment on her X account, where fewer than 100 people follow the former DA. Public engagement on the post was limited to three commenters, all indicating support for Ogg.
“This is just the latest in a string of public corruption dismissals by DA Sean Teare,” Ogg said in the interview. “The bigger question is, who’s really behind it? He was backed in his campaign by Commissioner Rodney Ellis, by Judge Lina Hidalgo and others, all of whom could be implicated as people above the folks who got indicted.”
Here’s what Ogg told Groogan when the TV host pointed out that so far, Teare has not prosecuted any county officials through his public integrity unit.
“And you won’t, not if they’re Democratic officials or their employees. Unfortunately, Harris County government is rife with corruption,” Ogg said. “I think there’s an effort to destroy the evidence and that’s why I’m calling on the federal government, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate.”
Teare issued a statement after the Robinson’s case was dismissed but didn’t mention Ogg by name.
“Public corruption robs communities of trust in their government and undermines the basic foundations of our democracy. That is why prosecuting public corruption must be done vigorously and with the utmost integrity — devoid of politics, innuendo, or speculation,” he said.
“Our thorough, unbiased review of this case reveals that this prosecution failed to meet that standard. The people of Harris County deserve to know that when we go after corrupt public officials, our work is grounded in hard evidence, not stretched legal theories or preconceived outcomes. Moving forward, we ask the public to continue to remain vigilant and report any allegations of public corruption. We will uphold our end of the bargain by making sure we follow the evidence and let justice — not politics — be our guide.”
Courtney Fischer, a spokesperson for Teare’s office, sent the following statement when asked specifically about Ogg’s claims.
“This decision [to dismiss Robinson’s case] was made based solely on the evidence and the law. The reason no one can point to evidence of political gamesmanship is because this administration has removed politics from prosecution,” she said.
Robinson, who was appointed public health director in 2021, was charged with misuse of official information, a third-degree felony, in November 2024, and three additional felonies — tampering with a governmental record and two counts of fraudulent securing of document execution — in December. The timing implies a parting shot, as Ogg knew when she filed the charges that she wouldn’t be prosecuting them.
Hidalgo hired Robinson, who is Black, and has defended her throughout the process, saying that Robinson led a successful program that Ogg didn’t like and Ogg has a pattern of targeting those she disagrees with.
“The unfair prosecution and firing of Director Robinson is part of a pattern we’ve seen too often: public servants who challenge the status quo — especially people of color — being targeted with political prosecutions and with public haranguing by elected leaders who are all too quick to jump to conclusions when it comes to accusations against a select few,” Hidalgo said in a statement after Robinson’s charges were dismissed.
Attorney Charles Flood said Robinson is focused on rebuilding her professional career and reputation “that was unjustly tarnished.”
“As the public is aware, the charges were brought by the former District Attorney, Kim Ogg, who politically targeted individuals with cases that lacked merit,” Flood said in an emailed statement. “Ms. Robinson is thankful that the truth has come to light and that this politically driven case is finally behind her.”
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
