The far-right mayor of Colleyville, Bobby Lindamood, has cemented a number of deeply embarrassing facts about himself in court records as a result of a defamation lawsuit he filed nearly seven years ago. He also owes a lot of money because he lost.

On May 4, 2015, an anonymously published “voter alert” appeared in select mailboxes across Colleyville, a once-sleepy bedroom community that in recent years has become a MAGA mecca and hotspot for hysteria over so-called critical race theory and “gender-fluidity.” The salacious voter alert, which a contemporaneous article from the Colleyville Courier described as “dirty politics,” alleged that then-candidate for city council, Bobby Lindamood, had admitted to having sex with a prostitute, distributing photos of his genitals, and sexually assaulting a drunk minor. Within days of the alert landing in mailboxes, Lindamood had filed a defamation lawsuit against his opponent in the race, then-incumbent City Council member Mike Taylor, and a handful of people he believed were responsible for the missive.

After six and a half years in court, Lindamood, now the mayor of Colleyville who has made waves for sharing QAnon memes and debunked theories about January 6, was ordered earlier this month to pay $199,750 in attorney’s fees. A 2021 filing by the defendants’ lawyers described the saga as a frivolous “publicity stunt” aimed to discredit Lindamood’s political opponents in the heated 2015 city council race. Although Lindamood claimed the alert cost him votes on election day, the 2021 filing by the parties sued by Lindamood tries to refute the claim using voter records: more people chose Lindamood than Taylor on election day—six days after the alert was distributed.

“Lindamood won the vote total on election day but lost the early vote by a large enough margin to lose to Taylor,” reads a December 2021 filing from the defendants in Lindamood’s lawsuit from the 348th Judicial District Court. “Lindamood later rode his name recognition and misplaced sympathy from people who believed [his] cries of victimhood and accusations against Taylor to victory [over Taylor ally Chuck Mogged] … in the 2016 election.”

In a 2015 statement published by LocalNewsOnly.com, a dodgy website that publishes arrest mugshots and acted as a mouthpiece for Lindamood during the election, Lindamood laid the blame for the voter alert at Taylor’s feet and described the allegations as “untrue assertions made by disgruntled family member decades ago.” His version of the story goes like this: Lindamood’s stepmother, who he claims was abusive to him, inappropriately sent select pages from a 2011 deposition stemming from a family dispute to Taylor, who Lindamood claims engaged in a conspiracy with a handful of other Colleyville residents to defame him by publishing the voter alert and dropping it in mailboxes.

This is where Lindamood’s arguments unravel. While it is true that the court documents rendered in the lawsuit demonstrate that some elements of the voter alert were indeed defamatory—most notably, the allegations that Lindamood had sexually assaulted a minor—they state that Lindamood failed to prove who published the voter alert and did not adequately established cases against the defendants. 

“Defendants did not merely challenge Lindamood’s factual allegations,” reads the December 2021 filing by the defendants’ lawyers. “They disproved them and exposed Lindamood’s causes of action as baseless, meritless and improper.”

Court documents also confirm that it was Lindamood’s own “confessed indiscretions” that formed the basis of the scurrilous voter alert: During his deposition in 2011, Lindamood had admitted to inappropriately fondling his drunk stepsister while he was married, had admitted to being been in a room with a prostitute in Las Vegas, and apparently had been accused by his now-deceased father of distributing photos of his penis to coworkers while he worked for his father. Court records state that Lindamood’s stepsister was not a minor at the time, and that Lindamood has denied both having sex with a prostitute and distributing photos of his penis. 

Nevertheless, the combination of Lindamood’s status as a public figure and his own statements under oath made it difficult to convincingly argue that describing Lindamood as a “sexual predator” who represented “ethical uncertainty” was defamatory. That’s how one of the defendants, James Fletcher described the future mayor in a Nextdoor post prior to the 2015 election. The 2018 appellate court decision made clear why what Fletcher posted is not defamatory.

“Interacting with a prostitute and fondling a drunk stepsister while married are matters that a reasonable person could deem as falling short of moral or aspirational ideals,” the decision reads. “In other words, Fletcher had factual bases upon which to insinuate that Lindamood engaged in unethical conduct … Much the same can be said with Fletcher’s use of the phrase ‘sexual predator.’” 

The 2018 decision goes on to describe in lurid detail why Fletcher had factual bases for his statements.

“Lindamood acknowledged … that his stepsister was indeed drunk when placing his hands on her breasts, when she removed her bra and threw it upon a table, when she went to lie on a couch, when he left his bed to join her on that couch, and when he pulled her shirt up and began touching her thighs,” the 2018 decision reads. “He also acknowledged, under oath, her telling him the morning after that ‘what you did was wrong.’ That led to him accusing her of being the aggressor, or as he put it, ‘you’re the one who [led] it up to that.’”

The 2018 decision also describes “another incident involving sexual activity wherein Lindamood blamed the female as the instigator.” Lindamood continued this pattern of blaming the victim in his statement to the Texas Observer.

“None of our depositions were to be shared,” Lindamood wrote via email. “They were sealed by a court order. My stepmother (who sued me multiple times after my dad died) had her attorney give those specific seven pages to Mike Taylor. Leaving out great details and clarity of several sexual innuendos presented towards me as to what led up to that 1 specific night with my stepsister.”

Lindamood went on to make several allegations of abuse, including physical abuse, against his stepmother. When Lindamood was specifically asked if he was suggesting his stepsister was intentionally tempting him—evoking the misogynistic victim-blaming seductress trope—he said “There are details of things that happened before—Yes.”

Lindamood’s stepmother did not respond to requests for comment. His stepsister could not be reached for comment.