On June 10, 2019, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law to legalize state hemp production and sales as soon as the Texas Department of Agriculture adopted rules to regulate the potentially lucrative new industry. In the ensuing race to score the state’s first licenses, several hemp enthusiasts forked over tens of thousands of dollars for insider advice from Todd M. Smith, a lobbyist and the longtime number-one political advisor to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
Smith cultivates a tough-guy persona. “I AM Danger!” he once tweeted. “I don’t tolerate losing or fools—especially fools that lose.”
Smith and Miller, a real life rodeo cowboy, have been a team since the Stephenville Republican first won a Texas House race in 2000. Miller has given Smith—his top client—$1.5 million of the $6.6 million in political consulting fees he’s reported since 2000. During that time, Smith, who doubles as a lobbyist, received at least $26 million more from lobbying clients.
But in 2019 and 2020, Smith actively sought clients who were seeking to curry favor with Commissioner Miller himself as the Texas Department of Agriculture drafted those hemp rules, according to public records and interviews obtained by the Texas Observer. This sparked multiple potential conflicts of interest for Smith—who allied himself closely with Miller’s agency almost as if he were a high-ranking Ag Department employee, setting the stage for what indictments later described as a series of shakedowns.
One of Smith’s first hemp clients was Plano-based lawyer William Cavalier of the startup Green Grow Farms Texas, LLC, according to Smith’s lobbying reports. As Cavalier began building the business in July 2019, Smith told him he could better position himself to obtain a hemp license by hiring him as a lobbyist and paying him to conduct a public opinion poll on hemp that would be presented to Miller’s agency, according to a warrant issued much later for Smith’s arrest. Cavalier’s company paid Smith $26,500 for “Texas Department of Agriculture Survey Research” in August 2019, the warrant says.
By early 2020, seven hemp clients had paid Smith up to $370,000 to lobby Miller’s agency, according to Smith’s lobbying reports, which report income in ranges. This income was crucial to Smith, who declared personal bankruptcy in 2015 and has
