From bad to worse, a possible three-day suspension for campaigning too early quickly became a permanent disqualification for the Yaman Desai and Whitney Langston campaign yesterday.

The campaign withdrew their DQ appeal from the Student Government Judicial Court last night after e-mails obtained by The Daily Texan, and The Horn shortly after, revealed that Desai encouraged agent Ainee Athar to lie to the Madison and Antonio campaign’s webmaster.

“It is true that Desai asked me to pretend I was part of the Madison-Antonio campaign to get an invoice,” said Athar. “But it is also true I responded with, ‘No I’m not going to lie for you.’”

Over the weekend, Desai and Langston filed complaints against opposing candidates Madison Gardner and Antonio Guevara for failing to report campaign purchases at fair market value and failing to disclose the design and consulting fees for their website. Gardner and Guerva filed a counterclaim of misrepresentation, resulting in an investigation by the Election Supervisory Board. After being found guilty of Athar misrepresenting herself as an official University entity, the Appellate court placed an injunction on their disqualification until their hearing.

“I stated I was an election supervisory representative at UT,” Athar said. “While that can potentially be interpreted as me saying I’m a university official, that was never my intention and my e-mail signature clearly says I’m a student at UT. I admitted this mistake but was never trying to deliberately mislead anyone.”

During their appeal, in which Athar was absent from, Desai and Langston claimed to have had no contact with her until Feb. 19, and had no knowledge of the Feb. 15 e-mail sent by Athar asking Garner and Guerva’s webmaster to send her information. However, Athar did indeed receive an e-mail from Desai prior to the 19th:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Yaman Desai wrote:

The disclosure is due today at 4:30 pm, so it should be on the UTSG.org site after that. You should be able to call them and just ask for the info. If that doesn't work, we might be able to ask the esb to look into at and force Madison to produce some record. Try calling and saying that you're with Madison's team/a friend and he asked you to call because he needs a copy of the invoice and you need it sent to you so you can print it. It's a bit of a longshot , but it's worth a try.

After Athar revealed her contact with Desai to The Daily Texan, Desai and Langston withdrew their appeal and left the Judicial Court at 10:40 PM. In response to their disqualification, Desai publically posted on his Facebook:

“I want to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported our mission. We were unable to be successful, but I still believe the vision we have for Student Government and for our campus. I hope that all of you continue to fight for the things we believe in, and continue to fight to MAKE TEXAS YOURS.”