It could be a quick end for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Here's Friday's news.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced Thursday night he will not run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, allowing Republicans to breathe easy and opening a clear path for David McCormick to take on Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) next year.
Mastriano made the news official during a Facebook Live event mere months after he lost the state's gubernatorial contest to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) by nearly 15 points.
"At this time, we have decided not to run for the U.S. Senate, but to continue to serve in Harrisburg," Mastriano said. "I know for some that will be disappointing. For others, it won't be disappointing because you're like, 'Who's going to fill his seat? Who's going to be our voice in Harrisburg?'"
"We need to beat [Casey]. While I have decided not to run, someone else will decide to run, and someone else will win the primary next year and be the nominee. Whoever is that nominee, I will support them," he continued. "We hope you will too because I don't want any other Republican candidate to go through what we went through last year when our own party betrayed us."
A bid by Mastriano, a hard-line conservative who won former President Trump's endorsement in 2022, would not have been greeted kindly by many top Republicans, who believe that in losing the governor's mansion, he hurt the party in congressional contests and in state legislature races, including the GOP's loss of the state House.
Mastriano’s decision means the road is wide open for McCormick, who narrowly lost the state's GOP Senate primary last year to Mehmet Oz, to nab the party’s nomination to take on Casey.
McCormick has yet to decide on whether to launch a second straight Senate bid, but he is expected to do so later this summer or in the fall as establishment GOP forces line up behind him.
“I thank Doug for his years of military and public service and his dedication to Pennsylvania,” McCormick said in a statement. "I am seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate because Bob Casey has consistently made life worse for Pennsylvania families over the past 18 years, and our state deserves better."
"We need a Republican nominee who can build a broad coalition of Pennsylvanians to defeat Bob Casey and improve the lives of Pennsylvania families," he added.
The potential candidate-in-waiting has remained in the news throughout the year with the rollout of a book and an ongoing book tour. He has also kept up meetings across the state with party leaders, including at the county level.
Among those pushing for him to run is Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who has made clear he believes McCormick is the type of candidate who can win a primary and a general election matchup against the three-term Senate Democrat with a legendary name in Pennsylvania politics.
“[McCormick] would be a candidate that I think unites Republicans in Pennsylvania and he’d be a very strong candidate in the primary and the general,” Daines said in March.
In addition, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is run by allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has also signaled its backing of the former Bridgewater Associates CEO.
The Pennsylvania Senate contest is widely expected to be one of the most expensive on the 2024 map, with sources telling The Hill the nominee is expected to need at least $100 million for the potential brawl. McCormick could dip into his own bank account to help fund his efforts, though he is not expected to do so after he dropped $14 million into last year’s primary contest in only five months.
Casey won his seat in 2006 by defeating then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). He has also handily won reelection twice, having most recently defeated then-Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) by a 13-point margin.
Democrats had been salivating at the possibility of Mastriano entering the race. Shapiro’s team last year spent $3 million to boost Mastriano in a seven-candidate field and ensure he would be their general election opponent.
“Tonight Mastriano threatened that he and his supporters will continue looming over Republicans in Pennsylvania, which will make their Senate Primary dynamics in even messier — and guarantee whichever candidate emerges will be badly damaged and out of step with the voters who will decide the general election," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement.
Mastriano’s performance last year also seemed to turn off former President Trump, who reportedly was opposed to him entering the race and did not plan to endorse him in a potential Senate bid.
Trump, of course, spoke harshly of McCormick during his Senate bid last year, likening him to former Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who voted to convict the president in his second impeachment trial over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and called him a “liberal Wall Street Republican.”
A Texas House of Representatives investigative committee recommended impeachment for embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Texas House Investigative Committee unanimously voted 5-0 to adopt articles of impeachment for Paxton on Thursday, according to FOX 4.
A vote on the recommendation could come as soon as Friday.
Paxton would be forced to leave his position immediately if impeached.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Paxton's office for comment.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teetered on the brink of impeachment Thursday after years of scandal, criminal charges and corruption accusations that the state's Republican majority had largely met with silence for years until now.
In an unanimous decision, a Republican-led investigative committee that spent months quietly looking into Paxton recommended impeaching the state's top lawyer. The state House of Representatives could vote on the recommendation as soon as Friday. If the House impeaches Paxton, he would be forced to leave office immediately.
The move sets set up a remarkably sudden downfall for one of the GOP's most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden's victory. Only two other officials in Texas’ nearly 200-year history have been impeached.
Paxton has been under FBI investigation for years over accusations that he used his office to help a donor and was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, but has yet to stand trial.
Unlike in Congress, impeachment in Texas requires immediate removal from office until a trial is held in the Senate. That means Paxton faces ouster at the hands of GOP lawmakers just seven months after easily winning a third term over challengers — among them George P. Bush — who had urged voters to reject a compromised incumbent but discovered that many didn't know about Paxton's litany of alleged misdeeds or dismissed the accusations as political attacks. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott could appoint an interim replacement.
Paxton has suggested that the investigation that came to light to week is a politically motivated attack and said the Republican House leadership is too “liberal” for the state.
Chris Hilton, a senior lawyer in the attorney general’s office, told reporters before Thursday's committee vote that what investigators said about Paxton was “false,” “misleading,” and “full of errors big and small.” He said all of the allegations were known to voters when they reelected him in November.
Impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the state's 150-member House chamber, where Republicans hold a commanding 85-64 majority.
In one sense, Paxton's political peril arrived with dizzying speed: House Republicans did not reveal they had been investigating him until Tuesday, followed the next day by an extraordinary public airing of alleged criminal acts he committed as one of Texas' most powerful figures.
But to Paxton's detractors, who now include a widening share of his own party in the Texas Capitol, the rebuke was seen as years in the making.
In 2014, he admitted to violating Texas securities law over not registering as an investment advisor while soliciting clients. A year later, Paxton was indicted on felony securities charges by a grand jury in his hometown near Dallas, where he was accused of defrauding investors in a tech startup. He has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts that carry a potential sentence of five to 99 years in prison.
He opened a legal defense fund and accepted $100,000 from an executive whose company was under investigation by Paxton's office for Medicaid fraud. An additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but was soon fired after trying to make a point by displaying child pornography in a meeting.
What has unleashed the most serious risk to Paxton is his relationship with another wealthy donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
Several of Paxton's top aides in 2020 said they became concerned the attorney general was misusing the powers of his office to help Paul over unproven claims that an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of his properties was afoot. The FBI searched Paul's home in 2019 but he has not been charged and his attorneys have denied wrongdoing. Paxton also told staff members that he had an affair with a woman who, it later emerged, worked for Paul.
Paxton's aides accused him of corruption and were all fired or quit after reporting him to the FBI. Four sued under Texas' whistleblower laws, accusing Paxton of wrongful retaliation, and in February agreed to settle the case for $3.3 million. But the Texas House must approve the payout and Phelan has said he doesn't think taxpayers should foot the bill.
Shortly after the settlement was reached, the House investigation into Paxton began. The probe amounted to rare scrutiny of Paxton in the state Capitol, where many Republicans have long taken a muted posture about the accusations that have followed the attorney general.
That includes Abbott, who in January swore in Paxton for a third term and said the way he approached the job was “the right way to run the attorney's general's office.”
Only twice has the Texas House impeached a sitting official: Gov. James Ferguson in 1917 and state Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975.