Ex-assistant Dallas County DA denies any wrongdoing in bribery case

A man who wants to be the next Dallas County District Attorney says he and his former boss did nothing wrong in connection with a guilty plea of a chief investigator who worked for the DA’s office.

Anthony "Tony" Robinson admitted to the government that he solicited $200,000 from Wayne Sweeney to have a failure to register as a sex offender case dismissed.

Heath Harris spent time with FBI agents as they were doing their investigation. He says the case Anthony Robinson is accused of taking a bribe over was legally dismissed on its merits and that Robinson did nothing to make that happen, adding no one got any money for anything except Robinson.

“[The FBI agents] were asking me about the dismissal. They actually showed me the dismissal and I saw where I had signed off on the dismissal,” he explained. “Someone says, ‘Hey look. We're gonna dismiss this case for this reason.’ I signed ‘Craig Watkins by H. Harris.’ I probably do that numerous times in a month.”

But Harris says Robinson never brought him the dismissal.

Wayne Sweeney is in Fort Worth's federal prison. He was convicted of selling K-2 at Hostile Pipes head shop. The synthetic drug made him millions.

A sex assault case came while Sweeney lived in Wisconsin before offenders were required to register. He had been no-billed by a grand jury on the same failure to register charge a year earlier.

“The case was dismissed based on the information that the defense attorney at that time provided to the prosecutor, who then provided it to me, and I signed off on the dismissal,” said Harris. “But as far as any money to Craig Watkins or to me or to any prosecutor, that’s bull. None of that never happened. None of that, absolutely, never happened. I don’t know anything about any money, and I told the feds that.”

Harris is sad for Robinson, who had worked for three DA’s going back to John Vance. But he is angry at the shadow cast over himself and the Watkins administration.

“Which is why that makes this even harder to stomach,” he said. “Cause we know they were watching us, so why would you do something that stupid?”

Harris says he didn’t believe the FBI agents when they came to him, even when they showed him the documents. He says it was out of character for the Anthony Robinson that he knew.