Jeff Davis County officials released body-worn camera footage to an anonymous smear site outside of Texas’s legally required process — then denied the disclosure until pressed into an admission.
The controversy centers on video from the June 27, 2025 Commissioners Court meeting. When journalist David Flash submitted a Public Information Act (PIA) request asking the county to identify who had requested the video, County Attorney Glen Eisen initially claimed there were “no responsive documents.”
After Flash asked a second time, Eisen produced only two written requests — one from Flash himself and one from the Big Bend Sentinel.
Only after a third round of questioning did Eisen finally concede that Judge Curtis Evans and Sheriff Victor Lopez had released the same video directly to BigBendTimes.org in what he described as a “live interview.”
That progression — first denial, then partial disclosure, then reluctant admission — shows the county not only broke the Public Information Act by releasing records outside of the required written process, but also tried to cover up who they had given the video to until Flash forced them to admit it.
BigBendTimes.org is not a registered media entity. Its content is largely devoted to attacking Flash, his employers, and his associates, while smearing established outlets such as the Texas Tribune and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Despite this, county officials have posed for photos published on the site, amplified it on social media, and referred to the operator only by the squatted domain name rather than disclosing the publisher’s identity.
“This wasn’t an error,” Flash said. “I had to ask three separate times before they admitted what they’d done. They broke the process, then tried to cover it up until they were caught.”
The disputed video is now circulating on BigBendTimes.org, where it is being used to intensify a libel campaign and a domain-squatting attack against BigBendTimes.com. Flash has issued a formal notice of claim and preservation demand, putting the county on notice of potential legal action.
