Texas Senate Laces Up Steel-Toed Boots To Kick AG Ken Paxton In The Jimmies
Texas Senate Laces Up Steel-Toed Boots To Kick AG Ken Paxton In The Jimmies
No step on snek!
Texas’s wildly corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton had a rough morning as his impeachment trial kicked off in the state Senate. Every single one of his pre-trial motions failed, and he didn’t manage to get a single one of the the twenty impeachment articles against him dropped. But he did get a supportive tweet from Don Jr., so it’s not a total loss!
After Paxton engaged in years of florid corruption, his fellow Republicans finally balked at having to approve a $3 million legal settlement to shut up whistleblowers from Paxton’s own office. So instead of cutting a check, they drafted articles of impeachment including not just the ways he’d abused his office to benefit Nate Paul, a real estate developer, but also his years-long campaign of obstruction to fend off state securities fraud charges. Then they charged him with bribery and detailed Paxton’s alleged extramarital affair — which is not great when your public brand is defender of the faith against heathen liberals.
Paxton responded by calling the Texas House speaker a drunk, which somehow failed to win him support. The vote to impeach him passed the House 121–23 in favor, before being passed to the Senate where his wife Angela Paxton is a senator. Sen. Paxton refused to recuse herself, but was barred from voting in the proceeding. She will, however, be counted for the purposes of determining whether any impeachment article receives the two-thirds majority needed to convict, boosting the threshold at 21 votes in the 31-member body.
Since then, Paxton filed multiple motions to disqualify Democratic senators from the “jury” and to dismiss the charges on the theory that the conduct occurred prior to the last election, and so the voters have already zeroed out Paxton’s corruption account by re-electing him. (Yes, for real.)
The trial got underway this morning with a minor victory for the defendant as his onetime ally Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the proceeding, ruled that Paxton could not be compelled to testify. The House impeachment managers had intended to call Paxton, who responded that he would not “bow to their evil, illegal, and unprecedented weaponization of state power in the Senate chamber” and “dignify the illegal House action by testifying.”
Other than that, it was a total rout for Paxton. The Senators rejected Paxton’s motion to exclude all evidence from before his current term as AG on a vote of 22-8, and nixed a bid to toss all the articles 24-6. An up-or-down vote on each article yielded similar results, with only one count falling below the 21-vote total which will be needed to convict him. That was Count 8 for disregard of official duty by using the settlement offer to conceal his wrongful acts. But other than that, the tea leaves are not good for Paxton, with only six Republican Senators voting with him on every motion.
If the body votes to convict on any count, it will move to determine whether Paxton should be removed from office. And with 20 counts, the math for Ol’ Kenny is not looking great.
On the plus side …
And if Don Jr. says you’re going to pull through just fine, you’re probably going to get the chair umm, go through some things.
Catch Liz Dye on Opening Arguments podcast.
If you are shopping on Amazon anyway, this link gives us a small commission.
"Swamp"
Capitalized. One of their ten words.
Turns out, randomly grasped straws do not make an adequate floatation device.
And that picture above could substitute for a definition of the word "smirk" in any dictionary and leave no inquirer uncertain of its meaning. He ought to be ejected, forcibly, from office for that look on his face alone.