State Sen. David Paxton and the House Committee on Investigating Cascaded Corrupt Practices in the State Attorney General’s Office

The allegations of corruption and abuse of office were described in 2020 by several of his top aides, who requested an investigation of Mr. Paxton. The aides who spoke up either resigned or were forced out or fired. Four of them sued over their firing. The Justice Department stated in February that the inquiry had been taken over by investigators in Washington, after the FBI opened an investigation.

An impeachment would result in Mr. Paxton temporarily removing himself from office due to the need for a trial on the charges in the State Senate. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday. The Senate could reconvene to hold the trial afterward, though the timing remains highly uncertain.

A lawyer in the office of Mr. Paxton has said that the process of issuing the articles of impeachment had been lacking and that the issues raised had been aired during the campaign.

Texas law allows impeachment only when conduct has been committed since the election, Mr. Hilton said. Most of the allegations in the articles of impeachment involve conduct that occurred before then.

Many of the articles focused on Mr. Paxton’s purported use of his office to benefit a particular donor, Nate Paul, a real estate investor in Austin who has given $25,000 in political contributions to Mr. Paxton. Those included using the office to intervene in a legal dispute that Mr. Paul was having with a nonprofit, and hiring a lawyer on contract to work for the attorney general’s office, at Mr. Paul’s request and over the objections of senior staff members at the attorney general’s office, in order to look into a federal inquiry of Mr. Paul.

Many of the charges related to the various ways that Mr. Paxton had used his office to benefit Mr. Paul, the committee said, and then fire those in the office who spoke up against his actions.

The report about Mr. Paxton was already widely known from the allegations made in the lawsuit. The first official judgement on those allegations was rendered by the House committee on Thursday, and they said they were sufficient to start the process of removing him from office.

David Spiller, Republican member of the investigating committee, told the House on Saturday that the Attorney General blatantly violated laws, rules and procedures. He said that as a body, we should not be involved in that behavior. Texas is better than that.

According to legal filings in the case, the four aides had also relayed their concerns to the attorney general’s office; several weeks later, they were all fired. The aides said Mr. Paxton retaliated against them.

Mr. Paxton is aligned with and endorsed by former president Donald Trump. He has also mounted frequent legal challenges to actions by the Biden administration, and has been at the forefront of Republican-led states’ attempts to challenge the president’s efforts to ease some restrictions on migration on the U.S. southern border.

The Republican-dominated Texas House has scheduled a vote on the impeachment of the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, for Saturday at 1 p.m.

Before he became the attorney general in 2015, Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. worked as a lawyer and state legislator, serving in both the State House and Senate. His spouse won a seat in the State Senate after becoming a political force.

The process in Texas’ Senate will be fair and just and I look forward to a quick resolution. He has allies in the Senate that are more conservative.

Mr. Paul, a wealthy real estate investor in Austin, had contacted Mr. Paxton after his home and offices were raided by federal agents in 2019. Mr. Paxton took the unusual step, against his staff’s vociferous objections, of authorizing a state investigation of the F.B.I.’s actions. He appointed an outside lawyer who referred to himself as a special prosecutor to do it, though investigators for the House committee said that he had no prosecutorial experience. F.B.I. officials have not commented on their investigation.

J. David Goodman and James Dobbins reported from Texas to New York. In New York, David Montgomery made a report.

The Current Session of the Tex (Texas) Paxton Impeachment Committee. Rep. Terry Canales, 76, and Rev. John Smithee

The associate director at an Austin nonprofit stood beside his bicycle and argued with the other side. He held a cardboard sign that said, “IMPEACH!!!” He did not think the impeachment vote would be a big deal.

There were a small number of opponents and supporters of Mr. Paxton outside of the Capitol. “What he’s doing is the right thing, and the speaker is doing the wrong thing,” said a 76-year-old retired information systems manager from Austin, who declined to give his name.

“You keep hearing, ‘Why now?’” said Representative Terry Canales, a Democrat whose father, when he was a state representative, presented articles of impeachment against a district judge in 1975, the last time such a vote was taken. “There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing,” Mr. Canales said, pounding the lectern at the front of the House chamber.

“If I’m ever going to be a part of any impeachment proceeding that actually results in the impeachment of an officer, I don’t want to look like a Saturday mob out for an afternoon lynching,” said Mr. Smithee, After he completed his remarks, a large portion of the public gallery erupted in applause.

Another Republican opponent, John Smithee, tried to offer an alternative for Republicans who might be on the fence: Vote no on Saturday, and come back for a “one-day hearing” where evidence could be fully presented and Mr. Paxton would have a chance to defend himself.

The Republican supporters of Mr. Paxton raised questions about fairness and due process during the proceedings. People on the investigating committee complained that they weren’t given enough time to make a decision or if they were told to rely on testimony from other people rather than look at the evidence alone.

The committee itself did not consider evidence directly. Instead it relied on testimony from its investigators, who had collected documents and interviewed employees of the attorney general’s office and others as part of their investigation, which began in March.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/27/us/texas-paxton-impeachment/the-current-session-of-the-texas-legislature-has-been-packed-with-gop-conflict

The Texas Capitol Has Been Packed With Gop Conflict: Rep. Jeff Leach and the Republicans Against Impeachment

Less than an hour before the impeachment was to begin, Mr. Trump warned Texas Republicans not to go ahead with it, even though he explicitly threatened them. “I will fight you if it does,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Free Ken Paxton!”

“For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest conservative AG in the country,” Mr. Cruz wrote on Saturday. “I understand that people are concerned about Ken’s legal challenges. But the courts should sort them out.”

The Texas Capitol was the site of the vote to oust the sitting governor, James E. Ferguson, in 1917, which came after a four-hour proceeding before a packed gallery.

The chair of the House investigating committee closed his meeting before the vote and urged his colleagues to impeach. He said the evidence was compelling and that it was enough to justify going to trial.

The final vote was 121 members in favor of impeachment — a bipartisan coalition that included nearly every Democrat and a majority of the chamber’s Republicans — and 23 against, with two abstaining. The board in the front of the chamber lit up in green when they voted. It went well beyond the 75 necessary.

After voting for impeachment, Representative Jeff Leach said it was a hard thing to do.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/27/us/texas-paxton-impeachment/the-current-session-of-the-texas-legislature-has-been-packed-with-gop-conflict

The Current Session-of-the-Texas-Legislature-Has Been Packed With Gop Conflict

The Senate trial does not require Gov. Greg Abbott to appoint an interim attorney general. A spokesman for his office did not respond to a request for comment on what he intended to do.

The Senate trial will be presided over by the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, an arch conservative aligned with many of Mr. Paxton’s supporters. Mr. Patrick is not going to make a big deal out of public comments this week. A two-thirds vote is necessary to convict in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 19-to-12 advantage.

Mr. Paxton was presented as a corrupt public official by his fellow Republicans, who introduced the 20 articles of impeachment. They did so in reference to Mr. Paxton’s actions, which they said in many cases amounted to crimes, and contrasted them with the integrity of those who stood up to him, many of them conservative Republicans.

Mr. Paul also provided other benefits to Mr. Paxton, the articles of impeachment said, including giving a job to a woman described during the impeachment proceedings as Mr. Paxton’s “mistress,” and providing expensive home renovations, including countertops valued at around $20,000.

He was elected to a third term last year even after the alleged offenses were prominently raised during the campaign, including by Republicans who ran against him in the primary election. He claims the more moderate Republican leadership in the House acted together with the Democrats to oust him.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/27/us/texas-paxton-impeachment/the-current-session-of-the-texas-legislature-has-been-packed-with-gop-conflict

Reply to Comment on ‘Irregular Investigation of the Phelan-Phelan Action” by J. Murr and John Smithee

The crowd of Mr. Paxton’s supporters crammed into the House gallery to watch the proceedings in silent protest. There were no attempts to disrupt the vote.

Mr. Murr, with his distinctive curling mustache, parried many of the attacks on the process by returning to the seriousness of the charges against Mr. Paxton. In his closing remarks, he said that the government wouldn’t tolerate corruption, bribery, abuse of office, retaliation, and all related charges. I am confident that you can not defend these most serious and grave official wrongs.

Representative John Smithee, another Republican, took on the role of arguing against impeachment, focusing less on the accusations and more on the ways in which he viewed the process as unfair. He said that not enough evidence had been presented and that lawmakers had not had enough time to consider such a consequential decision.

Representative Ann Johnson, a Democrat and former prosecutor, laid into Mr. Paxton from the floor on Saturday, saying he had broken laws that could lead to jail time. She said that senior members of Mr Paxton’s staff were compelled to speak up about his behavior because of their integrity. One employee observed that Mr. Paxton wanted his friend and donor to take care of the renovations to his home.

The speaker of the House kept the proceedings fairly low-key while urging decorum at the start. But because he was seen as having allowed the proceeding to take place at all, Mr. Phelan has come under withering and sustained attack from national Republican figures, particularly those allied with Mr. Trump. After the impeachment vote, Mr. Trump personally vilified Mr. Phelan. What is our country going to do? Mr. Trump asked on his social media network, Truth Social.