The historic impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton plunged Republicans on Sunday right into a fight over whether to banish certainly one of their very own in America’s biggest red state after years of scandal and criminal accusations that may now be at the middle of a trial within the state Senate.
Paxton said he has “full confidence” as he awaits judgment from the Senate, where his conservative allies include his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, who has not said whether she is going to recuse herself from the proceedings to find out whether her husband might be permanently faraway from office.
For now, Texas’ three-term attorney general is straight away suspended after the state House of Representatives on Saturday impeached Paxton on 20 articles that included bribery and abuse of public trust.
The decisive 121-23 vote amounted to a transparent rebuke from the GOP-controlled chamber after nearly a decade of Republican lawmakers taking a mostly muted stance on Paxton’s alleged misdeeds, which include felony securities fraud charges from 2015 and an ongoing FBI investigation into corruption accusations.
He’s just the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to have been impeached.
“Nobody person must be above the law, least not the highest law officer of the state of Texas,” said Republican state Rep. David Spiller, who was a part of a House investigative committee that this week revealed it had quietly been looking into Paxton for months.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has remained silent about Paxton all week , including after Saturday’s impeachment. Abbott, who was the state’s attorney general prior to Paxton’s taking the job in 2015, has the ability to appoint a brief alternative pending the consequence within the Senate trial.
It is just not yr clear when the Senate trial will happen. Final removal of Paxton would require a two-thirds vote within the Senate, where Republican members are generally aligned with the party’s hard right. The Senate is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has served as state chairman for former President Donald Trump’s campaigns in Texas.
Before the vote Saturday, Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz got here to Paxton’s defense, with the senator calling the impeachment process “a travesty” and saying the attorney general’s legal troubles must be left to the courts.
“Free Ken Paxton,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, warning that if House Republicans proceeded with the impeachment, “I’ll fight you.”
Paxton, 60, decried the consequence within the House moments after scores of his fellow partisans voted for impeachment. His office pointed to internal reports that found no wrongdoing.
“The ugly spectacle within the Texas House today confirmed the outrageous impeachment plot against me was never meant to be fair or simply,” Paxton said. “It was a politically motivated sham from the start.”
Lawmakers allied with Paxton tried to discredit the investigation by noting that hired investigators, not panel members, interviewed witnesses. Additionally they said several of the investigators had voted in Democratic primaries, tainting the impeachment, and that Republican legislators had too little time to review evidence.
“I perceive it may very well be political weaponization,” Rep. Tony Tinderholt, certainly one of the House’s most conservative members, said before the vote. Republican Rep. John Smithee compared the proceeding to “a Saturday mob out for a day lynching.”
Rice University political science professor Mark P. Jones said the swift move to question kept Paxton from rallying significant support and allowed quietly frustrated Republicans to return together.
“If you happen to ask most Republicans privately, they feel Paxton is a humiliation. But most were too afraid of the bottom to oppose him,” Jones said. By voting as a big bloc, he added, the lawmakers gained political cover.
To Paxton’s longstanding detractors, nevertheless, the rebuke was years overdue.
In 2014, he admitted to violating Texas securities law, and a yr later was indicted on securities fraud charges in his hometown near Dallas, accused of defrauding investors in a tech startup. He pleaded not guilty to 2 felony counts carrying a possible sentence of 5 to 99 years.
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 extra $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but soon was fired after displaying child pornography in a gathering. In 2020, Paxton intervened in a Colorado mountain community where a Texas donor and college classmate faced removal from his lakeside home under coronavirus orders.
But what ultimately unleased the impeachment push was Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
In 2020, eight top aides told the FBI they were concerned Paxton was misusing his office to assist Paul over the developer’s unproven claims about an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of his properties. The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. Paxton also told staff members he had an affair with a lady who, it later emerged, worked for Paul.
The impeachment accuses Paxton of attempting to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and issuing legal opinions to profit Paul. The bribery charges included within the impeachment allege Paul employed the lady with whom Paxton had an affair in exchange for legal help and that he paid for expensive renovations to the attorney general’s home. A senior lawyer for Paxton’s office, Chris Hilton, said Friday that the attorney general paid for all repairs and renovations.
Other charges, including lying to investigators, date back to Paxton’s still-pending securities fraud indictment.
4 aides who reported Paxton to the FBI later sued under Texas’ whistleblower law, and in February he agreed to settle the case for $3.3 million. The House committee said the probe was sparked by Paxton searching for legislative approval for the payout.
“But for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct, Paxton wouldn’t be facing impeachment,” the panel said.