Shapnik Khan, Civitas Engineering and the money behind Taral Patel

RICHMOND, TX (Covering Katy News) — Questions are mounting about how Taral Patel can continue his campaign for Fort Bend County Commissioner, especially as his supporters walk away in droves following his eight indictments and the indictment of County Judge KP George, who is also accused of being part of a fake racism scheme to manipulate the outcome of two elections—2022 and 2024.

Last month, George was indicted for allegedly spreading fake hate messages online to manipulate the 2022 election, in which he narrowly won re-election against Trever Nehls. Patel, a Democrat, is accused of orchestrating the scheme and faces multiple criminal indictments for identity misrepresentation.

According to the Democratic Fort Bend County District Attorney and Texas Rangers, Patel is accused of stealing identities and using them to create fake social media accounts to spread hateful, racist messages designed to appear as if they came from his political opponents. Many of the messages contain offensive remarks directed at the South Asian community in Precinct 3, where Patel is running.

To understand Patel’s continued viability as a candidate, many are following the money—and that’s exactly what is happening now.

Following the Money

Patel’s most vocal supporter, Shapnik Khan, and his firm, Civitas Engineering, are being investigated by award-winning reporter Wayne Dolcefino.

Khan is involved with a political action committee, Fort Bend United, and has guided $33,000 to Patel’s campaign. If Patel takes office in January, he can return the favor because he’ll have the sole authority to award Civitas millions of dollars in engineering contracts during his time as commissioner.

Fort Bend United & Civitas

Khan and Fort Bend United have gotten into trouble before when they produced a voter guide, with endorsements, that appeared to be from the Democratic Party but was not. It created so much concern among Democrats that Houston Public Media felt compelled to do a story and warn voters. One county staffer called it “gutter politics.”

“Fort Bend United lists its biggest contributor as controversial developer Andy Schatte and his wife,” Dolcefino reports. “Schatte was indicted for bribery and wire fraud in 2008, accused of giving gifts to City of Houston employees for contracts. The charges were eventually dropped.”

“Civitas Engineering is an offshoot of another company with a history of corruption. It (Civitas) just opened last year, the remnants of another engineering firm called KIT Professionals, which apparently racked up more than $109 million in contracts in the City of Houston, “Dolcefino reported. “The founder of KIT Professionals was convicted of kickbacks, a scheme to use fake companies to make his bids look lower.”

Khan is a partner at Civitas and has an unorthodox arrangement given that he’s not an engineer and he’s not a lawyer. His value is that he’s an aggressive huckster who is so tight with Patel that he refers to him as “my little brother.” That relationship could generate millions for Civitas should Patel be elected, given that Meyers seems to be uninterested in doing business with the company and its troubled past. To date, Meyers has not awarded any contracts to Civitas and does not appear to be planning to do so in the future.

Khan likely hopes that, in January, his “little brother” Patel will sit in the seat that decides who gets engineering contracts for roads and bridges across the county’s four precincts. If Patel is elected, he alone will decide who builds and repairs roads in Precinct 3, the most densely populated portion of the county with plenty of older neighborhoods that will need road repairs and replacement.

Keeping Democrats in Line by Deceiving Them

The problem for Patel is that Democrats are walking away from him en masse; The issue is so embarrassing that several weeks ago Patel removed his endorsement page from his campaign website. Even Khan recently posted how his support of Patel has hurt his social status.

“It’s the first time in my life that I feel I have no friends,” I posted.

But still, Khan has ramped up his campaign to get Patel elected by posting fake stories about Meyers’s positions on hot-button issues that matter to Democrats, like abortion.

Informed voters know that county commissioners have no authority over abortion; The United States Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is governed by states, not counties. But that has not stopped Khan from going online and falsely claiming that Meyers has an anti-abortion scheme ready to hatch if he’s re-elected.

Meyers has served for more than a quarter-century as Precinct 3 Commissioner and has never unleashed such a scheme, but that’s not stopping Khan from selling that untruthful message to Democrats who may be thinking about skipping over Patel’s name when they vote in November.

Through his nonprofit, Meyers has donated to organizations that help women who are pregnant but need financial assistance in order to keep their baby. His charity has also funded organizations that rescue women and children from abusive homes who must escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

“Commissioner Meyers’s issues are not partisan. They are about doing what’s best for the county, and he’s played a key role in building a safe, secure, and business-friendly county,” said Precinct 3 spokesperson Dennis Spellman, who also owns this publication .

Spellman says Khan’s disappointments are only “enabling Patel’s bad behavior and harming the county.”

“Patel has destroyed Fort Bend’s reputation on the global stage by untruthfully telling the worldwide media that this is a racist place. Commissioner Meyers is attempting to attract global commercial investment from all over the world to provide tax relief and great jobs for our residents, but great companies will avoid Fort Bend after reading Patel’s fictitious claims that we are racist,” he said.

Ramping up Fear and Deception

Still, Khan’s campaign of manipulation continues. Last week, I circulated an untruthful video implying that Meyers is taking payoffs to build a nuclear power plant in Sugar Land. Meyers is not involved in any plans for a power plant in Sugar Land and opposes its location near the Sugar Land Airport.

Meyers’s only connection to atomic energy is an appointment he has accepted from Governor Abbott to serve on a working group that’s examining the possible future use of carbon-free advanced nuclear power, a safer alternative to the plants used today.

It’s believed that advanced nuclear has numerous secondary benefits, such as eliminating spent atomic fuel rather than storing it for thousands of years and producing radioisotopes that cure cancer. Its electric generating process also produces enough heat to desalinate water and help solve one of the state’s biggest future problems: water to support overwhelming residential growth. Khan did not share any of that information in his video but did show nuclear bombs exploding with children running in fear.

Just as Patel’s fake racist posts created fear in the community, Khan’s video is doing the same by showing pictures of nuclear bombs exploding with the words “Sugar Land” superimposed over mushroom clouds.

Another Civitas Partner with a Past

Khan is not the only partner at Civitas Engineering who is not an engineer. Fort Bend County State Representative Ron Reynolds is listed as the company’s vice president. Reynolds was re-elected by Fort Bend voters despite losing his law license for barratry. He famously won the race while sitting in jail.

“Right now, there is not a single public official in Texas who owes more fines to the Texas Ethics Commission for campaign misconduct: $77,000,” Dolcefino reports about Reynolds.

But having Reynolds and Khan as part of the team seems to be a winning formula for Civitas.

“In recent months, Fort Bend County has started sending money Civitas’s way, ignoring the scandal that brought the founder down. Two bridge repair engineering contracts worth almost half a million dollars,” Dolcefino reported. “We asked to see how Civitas was chosen and who evaluated their proposal. We found out there was no scoring.”

The owner of Covering Katy News is employed by the Fort Bend County Precinct 3 Commissioner’s Office.

See Dolcefino’s report here: