Texas Supreme Court Halts the Deposition Meant to Unmask the Group Behind the Transgender Mailers, 15 Minutes Before It Began
The emergency order gives TENT until 10 a.m. Monday to respond, while an earlier deposition already tied the companion text campaign to a Republican women's caucus fund — which denies any involvement.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday blocked — 15 minutes before it was to begin — a Travis County deposition intended to identify who is behind the Texas Transgender Student Union, the Wyoming-registered group whose mid-October mailers purported to offer guidance to transgender students across Texas.
The court gave no reasons for its order. It acted on an emergency motion filed late Thursday by the group's lawyer, Chris Hilton, a former lawyer in Attorney General Ken Paxton's office who defended Paxton at his 2023 impeachment trial. District Judge Jan Soifer had ordered the deposition earlier this week; the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT, now has until 10 a.m. Monday to respond to the motion, according to the court's Friday order.
The mailers, addressed to the "students" of Texas households, repeatedly referenced TENT — which has no affiliation with the sender — and used a photo of TENT's members without permission. TENT says the mailers and a companion text campaign, sent less than a week apart just before early voting began, were designed to agitate voters and damage its reputation, and that it received threats of violence in the backlash that followed.
A first deposition Soifer ordered — of the messaging company Infobip — revealed that the texts were sent on behalf of the "Republican Women Caucus Fund" and an individual named John Braun, and the judge ordered that deposition made public. The caucus fund says it had "absolutely no involvement" in the texts or the mailers and is pursuing legal remedies; a Washington state senator who is also named John Braun has denied involvement as well. Infobip said it had no knowledge of a business relationship with the Wyoming group, and TENT lawyer Mimi Marziani acknowledged there is so far no evidence linking the texts and the mailers to the same sender — though she said TENT believes it now has enough information to sue some of those responsible.
The fight is widening beyond the Travis County courtroom. State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, has twice asked Paxton's office to investigate who sent the materials, and West Texas District Attorney Sarah Stogner has opened a criminal forgery investigation, saying the pamphlets appeared designed to influence the election now underway. The Wyoming group was registered in early September and lists an address linked to a Houston-area post office box.
