The Texas Legislature already made one historic move with its impeachment of Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Another one is coming.
The GOP-led House of Representatives on Saturday approved 20 articles of impeachment on sweeping allegations of wrongdoing that have trailed the state's top lawyer for years, including abuse of office and bribery. The vote immediately suspended Paxton from office.
But the intraparty brawl in the nation's largest conservative state, one that even drew political punches Saturday from former President Donald Trump, is far from over. The Republican-controlled Senate will hold a trial of Paxton next, and he and his allies hope conservatives there will save him.
One member of that chamber is his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, and she could cast a vote on her husband's political future, which is now in jeopardy in part because of bribery allegations linked to his extra-marital affair.
THE SENATE
Impeachment in Texas is similar to the process on the federal level: After the House action, the Senate holds its trial.
It is yet to be scheduled.
The House needed just a simple majority of its 149 members to impeach Paxton, and the final 121-23 vote was a landslide. But the threshold for conviction in the Senate trial is higher, requiring a two-thirds majority of its 31 members.
If that happens, Paxton would be permanently barred from holding office in Texas. Anything less means Paxton is acquitted and can resume his third term as attorney general.
Paxton bitterly criticized the chamber's investigation as “corrupt,” secret and conducted so quickly that he and his lawyers were not allowed to mount a defense. He also called Republican House Speaker Dade a “liberal.”
The Senate is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Like Paxton, he is a Republican who has closely allied himself with Trump, and he has driven Texas' right-wing political and policy push for the last decade. Patrick has yet to comment on the impeachment or the House's allegations.
The Senate will set its own trial rules, including whether to take witness testimony and what reports and documents to consider. It could also consider whether to excuse Angela Paxton from voting due to conflict of interest.
The impeachment charges include bribery related to one of Paxton’s donors, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, allegedly employing the woman with whom he had the affair in exchange for legal help.
State law requires all senators to be present for an impeachment trial.
REPUBLICAN ON REPUBLICAN
Paxton's impeachment has been led from the start by his fellow Republicans, in contrast to America’s most prominent recent examples of impeachment.
Trump’s impeachments in 2020 and 2021 were driven by Democrats who had majority control of the U.S. House. In both cases, the charges they approved failed in the Senate, where Republicans had enough votes to block conviction.
In Texas, Republicans have large majorities in both chambers, and the state’s GOP leaders hold all levers of influence.
Paxton called for Republicans to rally to his defense during Saturday's vote in a peaceful protest at the Capitol. That echoed Trump’s call for protests of his electoral defeat on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Paxton spoke at the rally in Washington that day before the insurrection.
Trump joined the fray in Texas on Saturday, posting on social media a warning to House members that “I will fight you” if they voted to impeach. A few hundred Paxton supporters came to watch from the gallery.
House Republicans didn't seem to care. Sixty of them, 71% of the chamber's GOP caucus, voted to impeach.
Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi, a Paxton ally, said the party would have to rely on the “principled leadership of the Texas Senate to restore sanity and reason.”
The move to the Senate could give Paxton's grass-roots supporters and national figures like Trump time to apply more pressure.
YEARS IN THE MAKING
The impeachment reaches back to 2015, when Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges for which he still has not stood trial. The lawmakers charged Paxton with making false statements to state securities regulators.
But most of the articles of impeachment stem from his connections to Paul and a remarkable revolt by Paxton's top deputies in 2020.
That fall, eight senior aides reported their boss to the FBI, accusing him of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul. Four of them later brought a whistleblower lawsuit. The report prompted a federal criminal investigation that in February was taken over by the U.S. Justice Department’s Washington-based Public Integrity Section.
The impeachment charges cover myriad accusations related to Paxton’s dealings with Paul. The allegations include attempts to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and improperly issuing legal opinions to benefit Paul, as well as firing, harassing and interfering with staff who reported what was going on. The bribery charges stem from the affair, as well as Paul allegedly paying for expensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home.
The fracas took a toll on the Texas attorney general’s office, long one of the primary legal challengers to Democratic administrations in the White House.
In the years since Paxton’s staff went to the FBI, the state attorney general's office has become unmoored by the disarray. Seasoned lawyers have quit over practices they say aim to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.
In February, Paxton agreed to settle the whistleblower lawsuit brought by the former aides. The $3.3 million payout must be approved by the Legislature, and Phelan has said he doesn’t think taxpayers should foot the bill.
Shortly after the settlement was reached, the House investigation began.
TEXAS HISTORY
Paxton was already likely to be noted in history books for his unprecedented request that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Biden’s defeat of Trump in 2020. He now is one of just three sitting officials to have been impeached in Texas.
Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson was removed in 1917 for misapplication of public funds, embezzlement and the diversion of a special fund. State Judge O.P. Carrillo was forced from office in 1975 for personal use of public money and equipment and filing false financial statements.
Just hours after Donald Trump threatened Texas Republicans on impeaching their own attorney General, claiming he would “fight” anyone who did so…
… and despite his own threats …
… the decidedly not “Radical Left Democrats” and “RINOS” Texas House voted overwhelmingly to do the right thing.
This makes Paxton the first Texas statewide official to be impeached since 1917. He faces 20 charges. Unlike federal impeachment, a Texas impeachment immediately suspends the official from all official duties.
The Texas Senate will now hold a trial. Two-thirds is required to permanently remove and bar him from future office.
Texas has set the impeachment vote on Paxton for Saturday. They’re moving fast and getting this messy business done on a weekend where it will get reduced coverage.
If the House votes to impeach, Paxton will be removed from his position immediately until the results of his trial in the Senate. His wife is one of the states senators who will be voting on his impeachment. Considering the nature of the charges against him, her vote may be up for grabs.
On Thursday evening, a special investigative committee of the Texas Legislature officially filed charges of impeachment against state Attorney General Ken Paxton. As The Texas Tribune reports, the document includes “20 articles listing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking.”
The chair of that committee has already announced that he will call for Paxton’s impeachment. On Wednesday, members of that committee voted unanimously that the attorney general should be impeached. If it happens, it will be a first: No attorney general has been impeached in the history of the state.
Paxton has issued a response calling the legislators members of the “corrupt political establishment,” and posted a statement on Twitter in which he called on the speaker of the Republican-led House to resign for, among other things, allowing “Chinese spies” to control Texas land. He’s also declared that Texas Republicans are tools of President Joe Biden and the Washington elite, all of which should make the upcoming hearings even more enjoyable.
Before you reach for the popcorn, here’s a reminder of some of the “accomplishments” that have marked Paxton’s career.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stood in front of the Trump supporters gathered at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington and delivered a speech that made clear allusions to the Civil War. “One of the great things about the state of Texas is, we did not quit,” said Paxton. “If you look at Georgia, they capitulated, they consented. We kept fighting in Texas.” That’s not exactly a record to be brought up with pride, but then there’s little to be proud about anywhere in Paxton’s record.
Just hours after he urged Trump supporters to, like Texas, “keep fighting” and watched them march toward the Capitol, Paxton swore that it was not Trump supporters who smashed their way into the building. “These are not Trump supporters,” Paxton wrote on Twitter. Instead he blamed the insurgency on the forces of antifa. When Paxton was asked about his sources, he said he was only reporting what he heard from a “journalist,” by which he meant the fascism-friendly conspiracy site WorldNetDaily.
Paxton topped off his Jan. 6 escapades by refusing to turn over records related to his own appearance at the rally. As with so many things related to Paxton, that battle went to court, where he did what he is so good at doing: make irrational arguments and lose. But those Jan. 6 events were just one small item on the checklist of all things Paxton.
The Texas constitution states that if Paxton is impeached in the House, he will immediately be removed from office until his trial in the Senate. Should he survive that trial, Paxton could go back to misusing his office, as he has always done.
Why is Paxton up for impeachment? Take your pick.
The FBI investigation into how Paxton used his office to illegally help a donor.
The indictment for fraud that Paxton’s Republican supporters have stalled for years, in part by blocking attorneys prosecuting the case from getting paid. As the AP pointed out, it’s not many people who can avoid going to trial on felony charges for seven straight years—and they made that point last year.
The $3.3 million that Paxton had to pay out to settle a whistleblower case after a group of his own deputies raised warnings about his actions, including “abuse of office and other crimes.”
An affair with a woman he later promoted to a high-paying job in a case so tangled it’s hard to tell if it’s bribery or extortion.
Multiple reports of bribery still under investigation that have not yet been detailed.
There’s also a state bar association investigation into lies Paxton told in court in an effort to overturn the 2020 election, but it’s unlikely the Republican-led legislature was upset by that point.
Both the legislature and the voters of Texas have supported Paxton over the years as he carried on a crusade of lies and distortions, becoming the poster boy for how a state attorney general’s office could be used to prosecute a political agenda. It's impossible to briefly list all the efforts Paxton has made to sue federal agencies, from the EPA and Homeland Security to Health and Human Services. However, among the “highlights,” Paxton has:
Repeatedly had a go at overturning aspects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Tried to enact a complex system for collecting child support payments, including another failed attempt to sue the federal government that ended up going hundreds of millions over budget and left children without support payments for months.
Led the charge to try and keep COVID-19 restrictions on immigration even though he also led the charge to sue the federal government over COVID-19 restrictions.
Sued hospitals for treatment of trans youth well before other Republicans got on board with the persecution.
Sued four other states for failing to run their elections according to Paxton’s view of the law, an effort that garnered a scathing reply from the attorneys general of those states, as well as a blunt rejection by the Supreme Court, saying that Paxton had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”
Hard to believe he lost, considering that Paxton’s lawsuit included “evidence” from the debunked film “2,000 Mules.”
Somehow, through all this, Texas voters still put Paxton in office by a wide margin. That includes returning him to office in 2020 despite three felony indictments and a public investigation by the FBI. Paxton has the biggest selling point of any Republican candidate: He knows how to hate the right people. So don’t be surprised if being impeached is not his last act.
How can Democrats win the messaging war? It turns out there's actually a science to it, as strategic communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio tells us on this week's episode of "The Downballot." Shenker-Osorio explains how her research shows the importance of treating voters as protagonists; how Democrats can avoid ceding "freedom" to Republicans by emphasizing "freedoms," plural; and why it actually makes sense to call out "MAGA Republicans" (even though, yes, it's all Republicans).
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.
A horrific mass killing in Texas has opened new sores in the national debate over illegal immigration and crime.
Five people, including a young boy whose age has been reported as 8 or 9, were killed Friday in Cleveland, Texas. The shooting in the small community about 45 miles north of Houston happened after neighbors reportedly told a man to stop shooting in his yard and he became enraged.
The alleged shooter has been named as Francisco Oropeza, 38. As of Monday afternoon, law enforcement agencies have been unable to apprehend Oropeza, despite a massive manhunt.
The case has taken on political power for reasons beyond the gruesome nature of the killing.
Oropeza is a Mexican national who appears to have been in the United States illegally. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have confirmed that he was deported on at least four previous occasions stretching back more than a decade.
His previous deportations, those officials said, took place in March 2009, September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016.
That record, and the terrible crime of which he stands accused, has outraged those who want a stricter border policy.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, noted that seeking to illegally reenter the United States having previously been deported is a felony.
“Had we prosecuted him for that felony, he would not have been able to kill” his alleged victims, Judd said.
Judd also made a wider point about border policy under President Biden.
“When you hear people like [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas say the border is not open, you have to look at this particular case … If somebody was able to reenter this country five different times despite being deported, that clearly shows the border is, in fact, open.”
Liberal advocates hit back, arguing that, historically, immigrants commit crime at lower rates than native-born Americans — and that attempts to draw a cause-and-effect line between immigration policy and the latest killing are raw demagoguery.
It’s a point that finds support from some independent observers.
Rhetoric linking illegal immigration and violent crime “has been used for a long time,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.
“None of the social science data confirms that is true and it quite often shows the opposite — that neighborhoods with a lot of immigration are safer,” said Zelizer. “But politically it has been very powerful. It creates the idea of an enemy coming from outside who is now inside.”
The political battle is only growing more intense.
“This illegal alien brutally murdered 5 individuals in an ‘execution-style’ shooting,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) tweeted Monday. “He was previously deported and has been arrested numerous times. Why was he in our country roaming around freely?”
Biggs called for the impeachment of Mayorkas.
Kari Lake, the defeated GOP candidate in last November’s Arizona gubernatorial election, tweeted, “How do we continue to let these criminals into the country?”
At Monday’s media briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterized the events in Cleveland as “yet another shocking, horrific act of gun violence.”
Jean-Pierre noted that while President Biden was “praying” for those affected, “the president believes prayers alone are not enough.”
The press secretary noted Biden’s desire for Congress to pass stricter gun-control legislation — a long-held wish that has almost no chance of being fulfilled anytime soon.
Continuing the political back-and-forth, the Republican National Committee tweeted within minutes of Jean-Pierre’s opening remarks that she did “not mention” that Oropeza is “an illegal immigrant who has been deported FIVE TIMES.”
The atrocity in Texas arises at an especially febrile time when it comes to debates about the border.
Encounters between unauthorized migrants and Customs and Border Protection agents at the southwestern border hit their highest figure ever recorded last December, at more than 252,000.
The figure declined significantly in January and February, to fewer than 160,000 in each month. But in March, the most recent month for which data is available, those encounters rose again, to almost 192,000.
It is widely expected that those numbers will surge once Title 42 ends in less than two weeks. That Trump-era policy, continued under Biden, was used to quickly expel migrants and is expected to end on May 11.
Immigration has long been one of Biden’s weakest political issues and Republicans are sure to want to press their advantage on the topic as the presidential campaign heats up.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in mid-April, just 27 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s handling of immigration — tying for the lowest approval number in any of the 11 issues tested in that survey.
Advocates of a stricter immigration policy see the shooting in Texas as evidence of how badly the current policy is falling.
“It’s just another example of what happens when we fail to enforse our laws, when you fail to enforce the border,” said Ira Mehlman, the media director of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors a stricter immigration system. “Virtually nobody is deported anymore.”
But Mehlman distanced himself from a controversial statement from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, which referred to the victims of the Cleveland shooting as “five illegal immigrants.”
“It doesn’t matter what the immigration states of the victims is,” Mehlman said. “Nobody should be killed for asking a guy to stop shooting in his backyard.”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.