U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz Posts Video as Texas Early Voting Gets Underway Warning Federal Election Law Violators in the Southern District

On Monday, October 19, 2026, the day Texas early voting began, U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz posted a video and a text post on the official X account for the Southern District of Texas. The text post states the election date and says, “If you violate federal election law anywhere in the Southern District, I will hunt you down and prosecute you.” The post is stamped 11:00:03 UTC; the account bio identifies it as Reitz’s official account as U.S. Attorney.

What the video contains

Source: the video file attached to the post, transcribed by machine. Points are paraphrased, because the machine transcript is not a word-for-word record.

• Reitz speaks to the camera about election integrity and names civil and criminal District Election Officers who will assist and advise election monitors at polling locations, working with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
• He describes standard operating procedures with the Texas Secretary of State and Texas Attorney General for investigating federal referrals, and coordination with DHS, the FBI and the Civil Rights Division.
• He says state and local officials administer elections, directs administration complaints to them before federal officials, and calls his own role a federal backstop.
• He lists what enforcement means to him: eligible voters only, no foreign influence or NGO involvement, no fraud, and a line about local election administrators.
• He ends with the hunt-down-and-prosecute line and the November 3 election date.

Verification notes

• Press accounts (Democracy Docket, Yahoo News) report the administrators line as calling them crooked; the wording was not ear-confirmed here.
• Democracy Docket’s roundup of the following week matches the video on the hunt-down line and the coordination agencies.
• Yahoo News describes the visual setting; not checked against the frames here.
• Not checked here: the appointment date, Sen. Padilla’s letter to Reitz, and criticism from Common Cause Texas. Press search turned up no reply from Reitz and no related charges.