DA Kim Ogg Uses “Monitoring” Company To Track Political Rival

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Taking that well-worn adage to heart in the digital age often means keeping tabs on your enemies for any mention of their name to see how you might be able to use their weaknesses and missteps to your own advantage. 

And it’s no secret that District Attorney Kim Ogg’s biggest political enemy is Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Indeed, Ogg’s hatred burns so hot that some have observed that it's an almost fatal attraction level obsession. The Texas Tribune ran a whole feature story about Ogg’s acrimony for Lina Hidalgo. Even the far-left journalists at the Texas Signal know what’s up.

But the thing about private quarrels when you are in public office is that you need to make sure your seething and sleuthing happens on your own dime—not the taxpayers’.

Today, a Houston Watch public records investigation has revealed exclusively that Ogg’s office enlisted the services of a company called “Meltwater” that provides a “monitoring solution” and promises to help its clients “outperform your competitors” by leveraging the company’s “intelligence platform.”

For example, a monitoring “digest” was sent electronically on July 18, 2022 to Dane Schiller, Ogg’s communications director—and a man derisively dubbed “Great Dane” for what prosecutors in the office described to Houston Watch as his “puppy like doting” after the District Attorney. It included the results of a “search” of the “intelligence platform” of any mentions of Judge Hidalgo in the media—including broadcast and print media, social media, and even blogs.

This monitoring raises obvious questions that Houston Watch is trying to answer for you. How much is all of this “monitoring” costing Harris County taxpayers? And who else is Kim Ogg tracking? And why is this man, a former naval intelligence officer, using an “intelligence platform” to monitor Lina Hidalgo? How else are they keeping tabs on the private life of the county’s top executive?

After all, Ogg’s office notoriously does not track things like indictment deadlines that keep repeat violent armed robbers in jail or 911 records that could help lead to a guilty verdict in a case where a scorned lover fired a hailstorm of bullets into a crowd, striking a young child celebrating her freedom on the Fourth of July. Why track your political enemies more closely than you track the information needed to secure convictions? 

Houston Watch called Meltwater and they told us that their tracking and monitoring packages start in the thousands of dollars. We followed up with the Harris County District Attorney’s office and asked them to disclose what other types of tracking tools they are using to gather information on Judge Hidalgo and who else they are “monitoring” through the Meltwater “intelligence platform.” The District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to our request for more information.