For months, House impeachment managers and prosecutors have made big promises about the damning evidence they would present against suspended Attorney Generalย Ken Paxton.
And for months, Paxtonโs lawyers have said the impeachment managers were bluffing as they vowed to quickly prove that their client was the victim of a โkangaroo courtโ andย political witch hunt.
On Wednesday, though, the managers began to show their hand. Inย new and dramatic filings,ย they alleged that Paxton went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his relationship withย Nate Paul, the real estate investor who Paxton is accused of improperly using his office to help fight an FBI investigation โ despite repeated protests from top agency officials who warned that Paul was a โcrook.โ
Taken together, the newย filingsย made clear to senators what they could be in for during next monthโs trial โ an excruciating, well-documented accounting of Paxtonโs alleged misdeeds, including repeated attempts to hide that he was cheating on his wife, Sen.ย Angela Paxton, who will be present but not voting at his trial in the close-knit Texas Senate.
The new information was directed toward senators who will have a series of momentous decisions to make shortly after Paxtonโs trial begins at 9 a.m. Sept. 5. At the trial, senators will vote on whether to grant Paxtonโs requests to dismiss every article of impeachment before managers can begin presenting evidence.
A simple majority, 16 senators, is needed to dismiss an article prior to the trial. With 19 Republicans in the Senate โ and all 12 Democrats expected to oppose dismissing the articles โ impeachment managers would need to win over four members of Paxtonโs party to continue the trial.
Wednesdayโs revelations may make it more difficult for Republican senators to vote for dismissal, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor.
โThis was blockbuster information, and it seems like itโs just going to be the tip of the iceberg,โ Rottinghaus said. โThis is the level of detail that the House managers promised after they impeached the attorney general.โ
In the new filings, impeachment managersย outlinedย what they say was a long-running and mutually beneficial relationship between Paxton and Paul, an Austin real estate mogul who was facing a litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations, and who wasย arrested in Juneย on federal felony charges of lying to financial institutions to secure millions of dollars in business loans.
Impeachment managersย allegedย that Paxton repeatedly used his office to help Paul, forcing agency staff to write a midnight legal opinion to stave off foreclosure sales of Paulโs properties and demanding that they not assist law enforcement in investigating Paulโs businesses. At one point, Paxton allegedly provided Paul with highly sensitive information about a 2019 FBI raid at his businesses and home, among other acts that managers said shocked and alarmed top officials at the attorney generalโs office.
Managers alleged that Paul returned the favors by remodeling Paxtonโs home and employing a woman with whom Paxton was having an affair, and that Paxton concealed his relationship with both Paul and the woman by ditching his security detail and by using a burner phone, secret email accounts and a fake name on an Uber account.
They also promised to unveil much more at the trial.
โBoth the Senate and the public are not yet fully aware of how bad Paxtonโs actions really were. By the end of the Senate trial, they will be,โ lead prosecutors Rusty Hardin and Dick DeGuerin wrote in pretrial filings made public Wednesday. โAnd there will be no reasonable doubt that Paxton does not deserve the honor and privilege of being the Attorney General of the great State of Texas.โ
Paxtonโs attorneys were less impressed, repeating earlier claims that there was no evidence to support the allegations against Paxton and that senators should end the impeachment proceedings before they even begin.
โThe Texas Senate should decline to indulge the prosecution in political theater for weeks on end, trying to find the very case they have already admitted does not exist,โ Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee said in a statement. โThis whole thing has been nothing but a sham, and it should now end.โ
The new allegations could be doubly problematic for Paxton: The increasing prominence of Paxton’s alleged affair in the trial could damage his reputation as a staunch Christian conservative and could deter other senators from coming to his aid. In addition, his attorneys โ as well as his conservative allies โ have routinely said that managers lacked evidence of wrongdoing, instead framing impeachment as an attack on Paxton because of his conservative values and legal campaign against President Joe Bidenโs policies.
Even so, Paxtonโs conservative allies and donors haveย rallied behind himย โ attacking House Republicans who supported impeachment, organizing fellow conservativesย on social media, erecting billboards in his defense and routinely claiming he is the victim of a political witch hunt.
Whether the new accusations or the political pressure sways the jurors โ 30 state senators โ remains to be seen.
Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said his reaction to the latest revelations was โholy crap.โ He added he would vote to convict Paxton at this point โ but he also acknowledged senatorsโ calculus may be different.
โHereโs the scary part: Weโre talking jurors as in state senators,โ Taylor said. โThey are calculating because they are politicians, and they are people who are looking at a state thatโs still a Republican state and winning the primary is still tantamount to winning the election.โ
Paxtonโs lawyers have argued that the impeachment trial should be conducted according to some of the standards of a criminal trial. In response, House managers argued that impeachment is a political process, saying in one filing that the Texas Constitution envisions impeachment as an โaction by the representatives of the people challenging official actions that are contrary to the public interest.โ
Stephen Griffin, a constitutional law professor at Tulane University, said he โstrongly agree[s] with the House that itโs not a criminal matter.โ But that does not mean there arenโt some basic similarities, he noted, like the entitlement to due process, as shown by the ability of parties to employ lawyers and file pretrial motions.
When it comes to impeachment jurors, Griffin said, the constitutional framers knew well that they would be different from ordinary jurors because they would โconsider the judgment of the people before they vote.โ
โIf the senators are thinking to themselves, โWow, this wonโt look so good to the people back home,โ thatโs the point,โ Griffin said. โThatโs an incentive for the House managers to do the best job and submit all their evidence.โ
The new raft of allegations stirred intraparty tensions anew.
Karl Rove, the veteran Republican strategist from Texas, brought up the new accusations in aย Wall Street Journal op-edย Thursday that predicted the โend is nearโ for Paxton. Rove noted that the public has โlearned more about the Paxton-Paul relationshipโ since the House impeachment, including Wednesdayโs revelation of the secret Uber account.
โWhen he won his third term as attorney general last fall, Mr. Paxton said, โThe reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,โโ Rove wrote. โMaybe, but they might have been simply premature.โ
Paxton has clashed with Rove in the past, accusing the strategist of working against him in his 2022 primary.
Konni Burton, a former Republican state senator who now runs The Texan, a conservative media company, appeared to respond to the latest Paxton news in a number of tweets Thursday.
โConservatives need to stop twisting themselves into a pretzel defending the indefensible,โ she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. โItโs a really bad look.โ
This article was written by PATRICK SVITEKย ANDย ROBERT DOWNEN of The Texas Tribune. This article orginally appeared at : https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/17/ken-paxton-impeachment-new-allegations/