Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teetered on the brink of impeachment on Thursday after years of scandal, criminal charges and corruption charges that have been met with largely silence in the state’s Republican majority so far.
In a unanimous decision, a Republican-led House investigative committee He spent months quietly looking at Paxton He recommended the removal of the state’s chief attorney. The state House of Representatives can vote on the recommendation as early as Friday. If the House impeaches Paxton, he will be forced to leave office immediately.
The move marks a remarkably abrupt collapse for one of the GOP’s most prominent legal warriors, who in 2020 asked the US Supreme Court to overturn President Biden’s victory. Only two officials have been impeached in Texas’ nearly 200-year history.
Paxton has been under investigation by the FBI for years over accusations that he used his office to help a donor and was indicted on separate charges of securities fraud in 2015, but has not yet been prosecuted.
Unlike in Congress, impeachment proceedings in Texas require immediate removal from office until a trial in the Senate. That means Paxton faces being ousted by GOP lawmakers just seven months after he easily won a third term over rivals — including George P. Bush — who urged voters to reject the dubious incumbent but discovered that many knew nothing of Paxton’s group. of alleged misdeeds or dismissing the accusations as political attacks. Republican Governor Greg Abbott could appoint a temporary replacement.
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Two of Paxton’s defense attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Paxton indicated that the investigation that emerged up until this week was a politically motivated attack by the “liberal” Republican Speaker of the House, who also accused him of being drunk on the job.
Chris Hilton, a senior attorney for the attorney general’s office, told reporters ahead of Thursday’s panel vote that what investigators said about Paxton was “false,” “misleading,” and “full of inaccuracies large and small.” He said all allegations were known to voters when they re-elected Paxton in November.
Impeachment proceedings require a vote of two-thirds of the state’s 150-member House of Representatives, where Republicans have an 85-64 majority.
In a sense, Paxton’s political peril arrived with dizzying speed: House Republicans didn’t reveal they were investigating him until Tuesday, followed the next day by an extraordinary public exposure of his alleged criminal acts as one of the most powerful figures in Texas.
But for Paxton’s critics, who now include a growing share of his party in the Texas Capitol, the rebuke was seen as years in the making.
In 2014, he admitted violating Texas securities law for failing to register as an investment advisor while soliciting clients. A year later, Paxton was indicted by a grand jury on felony securities charges in his hometown near Dallas, where he was accused of defrauding investors in a tech startup. He has pleaded not guilty to two criminal charges that could carry a prison sentence of five 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 additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree who later appointed his son Paxton to a high-profile job but was soon fired after he tried to prove his point by showing child pornography at a meeting.
What unleashed Paxton’s greatest danger was his relationship with another wealthy benefactor, Austin real estate developer Nate Ball.
Several of Paxton’s top aides said in 2020 that they had become concerned that the attorney general was abusing his office’s powers to help Paul over unsubstantiated allegations that an elaborate plot to steal $200 million of his estate was underway. The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he was not charged and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing. Paxton also told the staff that he had been having an affair with a woman, who, it was later revealed, had worked for Paul.
Paxton’s aides accused him of corruption and they were all fired or resigned after he reported it to the FBI. Four sued under Texas whistleblowing laws, accusing Paxton of wrongful retaliation, and in February agreed to settle the case for $3.3 million. But the Texas council must agree to pay the damages, and Phelan said he doesn’t think taxpayers should foot the bill.
Shortly after the settlement was reached, the House investigation of Paxton began. The investigation was a rare check of Paxton in the state capitol, where many Republicans have long taken a silent stance on the accusations that followed the attorney general.
That includes Abbott, who in January was sworn in to Paxton for a third term and said the way he handled the job was “the correct way to run the attorney general’s office.”
Only twice has the House of Representatives resigned a sitting official: Governor James Ferguson in 1917 and State Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975.
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