--bite me..
private jet based in Austin, Texas, flew to a small airport about 20 minutes from a well-known private inpatient mental health center in Ohio, then returned to Austin the next morning (yesterday) landing hours before James Talarico reappeared in public after almost two weeks of being 'missing' that his campaign blamed on the flu.
#austin
Public flight tracking confirms the aircraft's flight between Austin and Butler County Regional Airport (HAO) in Hamilton, Ohio.
#Ohio
Rumors started circulating that Talarico's absence was due to a mental health breakdown, according to numerous sources, and his campaign flew out to retrieve him when the online chatter became too big to contain.
he plane is N750MF, a Cessna Citation X operated by Jet Linx Aviation and based in the Austin area.
TFlight data shows it left Austin for Hamilton, Ohio, on October 8 and returned the following morning, landing in Austin around 10:23 a.m. local time.
THamilton's airport is a short drive from the Lindner Center of HOPE in Mason, Ohio - which is a private, nonprofit facility offering inpatient, residential, and outpatient psychiatric care for adults and adolescents.
TThis is the same center that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo checked herself into in 2023 and spent seven weeks at for mental health treatment. It cost about $88,000.
Talarico, who's running against Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, had not held an in-person campaign event in Texas since around September 26.
On September 30 he joined a Hispanic Business Council event virtually and said he had gone to urgent care in Dallas the night before:
Then he went 'missing.'
Campaign spokesman JT Ennis repeated the flu excuse and said Talarico would return to the trail over the weekend. He didn't.
On October 9, after the plane landed, Talarico appeared at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
Ennis posted video and wrote that Talarico was "still alive and meeting with voters at ACL today."
But people aren't buying the flu excuse saying the schedule doesn't match the timeline, and the flight from Austin to Ohio is too much of a coincidence.
