Judge KP George
A Fort Bend District Attorney’s Office fraud investigator stood in front of a jury Thursday — wielding a Sharpie and poster board — and said the numbers looked clear to him.
When he first ran for Fort Bend County judge in 2018, KP George solicited money from donors and pledged that the money would be used for his campaign. Instead, the investigator, John Bohannon, said bank records showed money moving out of campaign accounts into George’s personal finances. The funds became cashier’s checks that paid for a new home, property taxes and HOA fees, Bohannon said.
“What he told his donors wasn’t true,” Bohannon said. The longtime law enforcement officer felt it amounted to a crime.
Bohannon’s testimony kicked off a highly anticipated money laundering trial that could send George to prison.
George, the county judge since 2018, is accused of moving tens of thousands of dollars from his campaign accounts and using the money for personal expenses, including to buy a home and pay property taxes.
Prosecutors allege the transactions involved more than $45,000 in campaign money and violated state law governing political funds. George has denied wrongdoing, arguing the transfers were legitimate reimbursements for personal loans he had made to his campaign — something his legal team says is common in political campaigns.
The charges stem from transfers prosecutors say occurred in 2019, after George was first elected to be the county’s top executive. He was indicted on two counts of money laundering, each a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted.
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On cross-examination, Bohannon said that the money laundering investigation started after public integrity investigators had already started looking into allegations that George and his former chief of staff, Taral Patel, had misrepresented their identities online to influence elections.
Patel pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge last year and could be called as a witness in the money laundering case.
George’s attorneys have argued the prosecution is politically motivated.
Attorney Jared Woodfill implied Bohannon conducted a narrow investigation and failed to look into George’s historical campaign records from races prior to 2018, when he ran for Congress, county treasurer and school board.
“You’re missing a whole lot of information,” Woodfill said, including a definitive answer about whether George had loaned himself money.
Bohannon testified that he didn’t look at all of George’s campaign finance reports dating back to 2009, because reports that old weren’t available. He acknowledged he didn’t know if there were loans made in those campaigns.
Woodfill suggested that George might have made inadvertent mistakes.
We’ll see about that. The first day also included testimony from the woman who agreed to be George’s campaign treasurer but testified that she did not fill out any reports for him.
The next day had more expert testimony about the alleged fraud.
Betty Chi, a certified fraud examiner with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office, spent much of the day walking jurors through public records, bank statements and campaign finance reports that she said showed campaign money flowing into George’s personal finances in 2019.
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Chi told jurors she first began looking into George in late September 2024.
She said she started with information anyone could access, including Fort Bend Central Appraisal District records, county clerk records, George’s campaign website and social media.
Through those records, Chi testified, she found that George and his family owned four homes purchased after 2019, including one house that had been fully paid off within about two years.
At the time, George’s salary as county judge was about $150,000 a year, she said. His wife worked as a school teacher. Based on that income and the family’s apparent real estate purchases, Chi said something did not add up.
“The math just didn’t really work out for me,” Chi testified.
She told jurors that the amount of cash the family appeared to have put into real estate was difficult to square with what looked like a typical two-income household with children.
After sharing those concerns with supervisors, Chi said she was eventually authorized to open a formal financial crimes investigation and begin reviewing bank records.
Once investigators obtained those records, she testified, they traced two online transfers totaling about $46,500 from George’s campaign account into his personal savings account in early 2019.
Chi said the money later moved through George’s personal accounts and was eventually tied to a cashier’s check issued to a title company on the same day a deed of trust was signed for one of his home purchases.
She testified that investigators later confirmed through title company records that the money was used toward the home purchase.
Put simply, Chi told jurors, the records showed campaign money leaving a political account, entering George’s personal finances and then being used in connection with a house.
There’s more, so read the rest. I don’t know how long this trial is expected to last, but I’ll check in at least once more before the jury renders a verdict.