TX AG Ken Paxton Says Voters Loved His Criming, And That Makes It Legal

If the AG does it, it's not a crime? Where have we heard that before?

Say what you will about Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — the guy has balls.

Faced with a thousands of pages of evidence in the Texas House’s twenty-count motion to impeach him, he moves to dismiss for lack of evidence.

His wife, Texas state Senator Angela Paxton, refuses to recuse herself from his trial, even as he moves to get Democratic senators disqualified for bias.

Brushing aside evidence of a decade of corruption, he asserts the “doctrine of forgiveness” and/or the “prior term doctrine,” insisting that “Texas voters rendered their judgment by reelecting Attorney General Paxton to serve a third consecutive term. As a matter of both common sense and Texas law, that should be the end of the matter.”

And at every step of the way, the House impeachment managers respond BET.

“It flies in the face of common sense that Paxton can on one hand loudly and publicly deny the allegations against him, and even engage in a cover-up of his wrongdoing, but then on the other hand claim he cannot be impeached because the public forgave him for his bad conduct,” they wrote in response to Paxton’s latest gambit. “For the public to forgive Paxton’s bad acts, they must both know about them and be confident he committed them.”

Then they dumped a trove of embarrassing evidence on the docket showing all the grubby shit he did, and the lengths he went to in order to hide it.

For instance, Paxton and Nate Paul, the real estate developer from whom he is accused of taking bribes, shared an Uber account under the alias “Dave P.” Paxton repeatedly ditched his security detail and used the Uber account to visit his girlfriend, whom Paul had given a job to so that she could live near Paxton in Austin.

Paxton used burner phones and a secret email address to communicate with Paul.

Paxton held secret meetings with Paul about the FBI’s investigation into the developer’s finances, instructing Paul to file a public records request for information which would normally be withheld. Paxton then interceded in the investigation and revealed secret FBI materials to Paul.

And when Paxton’s own employees pointed out the myriad problems in his relationship with Paul and abuse of his office, he denied the allegations and fired them. Indeed, the need for legislative approval of the $3 million settlement in the subsequent whistleblower lawsuit sparked the House investigation which led to the impeachment. So, good luck making the “I told the voters, and they don’t care” argument at the same time you’re saying “I need $3 million to shut my own employees up.”

At the same time, Paxton’s lawyers, including Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone, who took a leave of absence to defend the AG, are arguing that impeachment is a criminal proceeding, and thus the standards of both proof and evidence apply. They’ve even gone so far as to demand exculpatory materials under Brady and Giglio, the Supreme Court cases imposing disclosure requirements on prosecutors in criminal cases.

As the House counsel notes, impeachment is “uniquely Political, with a capital ‘P,’” the “jury” of senators need not be unanimous, and the remedy is limited to removal and disqualification from office. Jeopardy will not attach if the Senate tries him for bribery, and Paxton will still be able to be prosecuted in a court of law when this is all over. In short, impeachment is clearly not a criminal proceeding, and the Senate need not comport itself like a court of law.

Which is lucky for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who’s presiding over the trial and just took $3 million in donations from PACs linked to Paxton.

TL, DR? Republicans in Texas put up with rampant corruption from this guy for years, and now that they’re finally being forced to deal with it, Paxton says he did it in the open and the voters don’t care.

[TX Trib / TX Trib / Paxton Impeachment Docket]

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