Paxton, Repaxtonated, Con't

Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton, having survived impeachment proceedings against him over fraud and corruption charges, is now bringing the power of his office against state House Republicans who managed his impeachment case. 

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he will file criminal complaints against the Board of Managers who spearheaded his impeachment after his home address was published in documents posted online last week.

In a news release sent Monday, Paxton cited a new state law that makes it illegal to post someone’s address or phone number online “with the intent to cause harm or a threat of harm.” It is meant to protect people from “doxing,” the practice of posting someone’s personal information online without their permission and with malicious intent.

The attorney general said he and his family have received “multiple threats of violence.” The complaints will be filed with district attorneys in the managers’ eight home counties, according to the news release.

“The impeachment managers clearly have a desire to threaten me with harm when they released this information last week,” Paxton said. “I’m imploring their local prosecutors in each individual district to investigate the criminal offenses that have been committed.”

Paxton, a Republican, was impeached in May on allegations of corruption. The Texas Senate cleared him after a two-week trial last month.

Last week, the managers who unsuccessfully fought for Paxton’s removal from office posted dozens of pages of evidence they said they were unable to release during his impeachment trial. The address of the Paxton family’s Austin home was temporarily visible on several documents. The managers pulled them offline the morning after they were published to redact them, saying they were correcting the “mistake.”

Rep. Andrew Murr, who led the 12-member Board of Managers, issued a statement late Monday that noted Paxton’s address has been in exhibits posted to the Senate’s website without incident since August. While redacted from his annual personal financial disclosures, Paxton’s home addresses are also visible on local public appraisal district websites.

“Growing up on a ranch, I was taught to keep the manure on the outside of my boots. Mr. Paxton’s baseless threats about filing criminal complaints are horse manure, and they are filling his boots full,” Murr, R-Junction, said.

Rusty Hardin, one of the private practice lawyers who prosecuted the impeachment on behalf of the managers, said Paxton’s complaints have “no merit in the law.”

“He’s going to abuse the criminal justice system to punish the people who brought him before the impeachment court,” Hardin said, calling it an abuse of power.

The Dallas Morning News asked the police, sheriff and prosecutors’ offices in Collin, Dallas and Tarrant Counties whether they’d received any complaints from Paxton. The Dallas Police Department said to reach out to the district attorney, whose spokesperson did not answer a request for comment.

A representative with the Collin County sheriff said they had not, to their best of their knowledge, received such a complaint but would not answer further questions.

“Our office will not comment on this matter. Please seek alternative sources for your story,” Sgt. Jessica Pond wrote in an email.

 

Now, we're talking Texas Republicans here. There are no "good guys" in this fight, only shades of racist, white supremacist, transphobic, antisemitic assholery to parse. Paxton trying to put other Republicans in state prison is actually fine with me. Let them fight until the cows come home.

And just maybe, Texans can throw all of them out in 2024 and 2026.

Paxton, Repaxtonated, Con't

So we know now that the badly-kept "secret GOP coordination effort" targeting Texas state senators to acquit impeached GOP state AG Ken Paxton over last weekend was 100% both absolutely real and absolutely effective. WIN THE MORNING 2.0's Mike Allen on Monday:

 

Following a secret campaign coordinated by top Trump allies, Texas state senators yesterday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of all impeachment charges, allowing him to return to his post. Why it matters: The allegations against Paxton, a close ally of former President Trump, bitterly divided the Texas GOP, Jay R. Jordan of Axios Houston and Nicole Cobler of Axios Austin report.

Behind the scenes: National Republicans organized an under-the-radar campaign of outside conservative pressure on the Texas senators designed to neutralize mainstream media coverage, top strategists tell me. This outside unofficial team operated independently of the Paxton legal operation — like "a super PAC without the money," a top GOP strategist said. Pro-Paxton forces also paid social media influencers to defend the attorney general.

The team had a "very well-defined target audience … no different than a confirmation battle," the strategist said.After winning, Paxton tweeted his thanks to the conservative news outlet National Pulse, a valued player in the under-the-radar drive.

Catch me up: Senators weighed whether Paxton illegally used his office to benefit an Austin real estate developer, and improperly fired some of his top deputies who reported him to the FBI and other agencies. Despite an overwhelming majority of House Republicans voting to impeach Paxton in May, only two of 18 Republican senators voted to convict Paxton.

So ... how did that happen?

"We didn't care what the MSM (mainstream media) said," the top GOP strategist said."We basically ignored them from start to finish. Goal was to fire up the grassroots. A story in National Pulse, Post Millennial and similar publications was more valuable than any harm an A1 NYT story could do."

 

The jury tampering was in the bag last week. Trump and his allies put out notice that anyone who didn't play ball was toast, and that limited the damage to only two GOP state senators.

 

What we're hearing: It was made clear to Texas GOP senators that they'd face a very well-funded primary opponent in their next election if they voted to impeach.The two senators who voted to convict, Kelly Hancock and Robert Nichols, don't face re-election until 2026.

How it worked: Steve Bannon was a big Paxton backer on his WarRoom podcast.

 

Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was vital, the strategist said: "He had his people posting senators' office numbers and was giving them out on his show. Driving the senators absolutely crazy."

A few days before the vote, Trump called Paxton "one of the TOUGHEST & BEST Attorney Generals in the Country" and after the vote, Trump congratulated Paxton on his "Texas sized VICTORY."

A day earlier, Paxton posted: "I'm heading to Maine next week to sit down with @TuckerCarlson."

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, also a Trump ally who presided over the trial, received $3 million this summer from a pro-Paxton group called Defend Texas Liberty PAC. 

 

Patrick is now saying that he will order an audit into the impeachment investigation costs (also jury tampering) and the number one target is current Texas GOP House Speaker Dale Phelan. We'll see who survives he purge, but a purge is what's coming.

Trump will see to that.

Last Call For Paxton, Repaxtonated

As widely expected after Donald Trump made it clear earlier this week that any Texas state Republican senator who votes for AG Ken Paxton's removal would face political extermination, Paxton easily survived his Texas Senate impeachment trial and has been fully reinstated to office with the Texas House charges dismissed.

 

Impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted on 16 impeachment articles on Saturday, thwarting an effort to remove him from office over allegations of corruption.

"Attorney General Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. is hereby, at this moment, reinstated to office," said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican president of the Senate who also presided over the trial.

While two Republican senators broke with their party to vote for conviction on some articles of impeachment, the vast majority of Paxton's party voted to acquit him following a two-week trial and a day of deliberations behind closed doors. Four impeachment articles that had been put on hold during the trial were dismissed immediately after the acquittal vote.

Paxton had been suspended without pay from his post after he was impeached in the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives in May by an overwhelming vote.

"The attorney general is excited and ready to get back to work, and that's what he's gonna do," said Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee.

 

Only two Republicans voted to remove Paxton on any of the 16 charges he faced, meaning he never got closer than 14 of the 21 votes needed to convict him on any of the charges. Nobody wanted to tangle with Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the armed Texas MAGA mob.

Paxton, who attended just two days of the trial and was not present to witness his exoneration, was characteristically defiant.

“The sham impeachment coordinated by the Biden Administration with liberal House Speaker Dade Phelan and his kangaroo court has cost taxpayers millions of dollars, disrupted the work of the Office of Attorney General and left a dark and permanent stain on the Texas House,” Paxton said in a statement. “The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt.”

The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s Austin home and helped him carry out ­and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide.

In the end, senators were unpersuaded.

"This should have never happened," Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, told reporters outside the chamber. He criticized what he called a rushed and flawed investigation by the House.

But acquittal was not a foregone conclusion during the eight hours of deliberation, Sen. Royce West said. The Democrat from Dallas said some Republicans supported conviction but switched their votes when it became clear it did not have the required two-thirds support.

 

Retribution, I expect, will be swift for Texas House Republicans and the two Republican state senators who broke ranks. The real battle will be between Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the coming years over Gov. Greg Abbott's job...if Abbott doesn't run for a record fourth term himself in 2026.

Ultimately though, Paxton's impeachment was meaningless. We'll see if the federal case against him goes anywhere, although it hasn't in years.

Paxton Versus Paxton Versus The Stupid

In one of the most brazenly corrupt examples of state government I've seen, impeached Texas AG Ken Paxton will be tried by the state Senate, including his wife, Angela.

The wife of embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday she will “carry out (her) duties” as a state senator and not recuse herself ahead of her husband’s upcoming impeachment trial.

Angela Paxton, who represents a Dallas-area district, said Texas law compels each member of the Senate to attend the impeachment proceedings on Tuesday when the chamber meets to set the rules for Paxton’s impeachment trial.

The Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach the attorney general in an unprecedented move last month following a legislative probe that faulted the third-term Republican for a yearslong pattern of corruption, including abusing his office’s powers, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstructing justice.

“As a member of the Senate, I hold these obligations sacred and I will carry out my duties, not because it is easy, but because the Constitution demands it and because my constituents deserve it,” Paxton said in a statement, indicating that she will not recuse herself from her role representing a Dallas-area district as the legislative body convenes her husband’s trial.

In 2020, multiple top aides publicly accused Paxton of bribery and abusing his office. The aides, who also reported their allegations to the FBI, were all fired, put on leave or resigned.

The whistleblowers had accused him of using his authority to benefit political friend Nate Paul, a real estate investor who had donated tens of thousands of dollars to Paxton’s campaign. The impeachment vote had its origins in an investigation launched in March by the General Investigating Committee of the Texas House after Paxton had asked the legislature to approve $3.3 million in government funds to settle a lawsuit with four whistleblowers who were fired from his office.

One of the impeachment articles accuses Paxton of using employees of the attorney general’s office to write a legal opinion intended to help Paul avoid the foreclosure sale of properties owned by Paul and his businesses.

It was among a series of articles focused on Paxton’s relationship with Paul, including accusations he hired an outside attorney who issued more than 30 grand jury subpoenas while investigating a “baseless complaint” made by Paul, benefited from Paul hiring a woman with whom Paxton “was having an extramarital affair,” and provided Paul with favorable legal help in exchange for renovations on Paxton’s home.

The articles of impeachment also detail what are described as Paxton’s efforts to cause “protracted” delays in the securities fraud investigation. And the articles say voters in November, who voted for Paxton’s third term did not have a full understanding of Paxton’s legal troubles because he had intentionally obscured the details of the charges he faces.

I don't expect the GOP-controlled state Senate to make Angela Paxton recuse herself, but at the very least she could be a material witness to the case and she should be nowhere near being allowed to sit in judgment of her own husband's bribery and corruption case.

And people are pretending this is okay?

Jesus, this is ludicrous even for Texas GOP nonsense.

Paxton Faces The Lone Star Law, Con't

The Texas House has overwhelmingly voted to impeach GOP state AG Ken Paxton on all 20 charges brought forth by the legislature committee investigating his years of wrongdoing.

 

Defying a last-minute appeal by former President Donald Trump, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, temporarily removing him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office.

The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23.

The stunning vote came two days after an investigative committee unveiled the articles — and two days before the close of a biennial legislative session that saw significant right-wing victories, including a ban on transgender health care for minors and new restrictions on public universities’ diversity efforts.

The vote revealed substantial divisions within the Republican Party of Texas — the largest, richest and most powerful state GOP party in the United States. Although the party has won every statewide election for a quarter-century and has controlled both houses of the Legislature since 2003, it has deep underlying fissures, many of them exacerbated by Trump’s rise.

Few attorneys general have been as prominent as Paxton, who made a career of suing the Obama and Biden administrations. One of Trump’s closest allies in Texas, along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Paxton unsuccessfully sued to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in four states.

Attention next shifts to the Texas Senate, which will conduct a trial with senators acting as jurors and designated House members presenting their case as impeachment managers.

Permanently removing Paxton from office and barring him from holding future elected office in Texas would require the support of two-thirds of senators.

Impeachment was supported by 60 Republicans, including Speaker Dade Phelan. All votes in opposition came from Republicans.

The move to impeach came less than a week after the House General Investigating Committee revealed that it was investigating Paxton for what members described as a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions that include bribery, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice. They presented the case against him Saturday, acknowledging the weight of their actions.

“Today is a very grim and difficult day for this House and for the state of Texas,” Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, a committee member, told House members.

“We have a duty and an obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain,” Spiller said. “As a body, we should not be complicit in allowing that behavior.”

Paxton supporters criticized the impeachment proceedings as rushed, secretive and based on hearsay accounts of actions taken by Paxton, who was not given the opportunity to defend himself to the investigating committee. 

 

That's because Paxton will get his defense at his Senate trial, which presents its own set of problems: Paxton's wife Angela is in fact a Texas state senator. 

The good news is that the law prevailed, despite open and repeated threats by Paxton, GOP US Sen. Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump. Naturally, I expect those threats to be repeated against the Texas senate, which in this case would jury tampering, what Trump does best.

We'll see if Paxton survives this. There's got to be heavy pressure for him to resign, and let's not forget that the reason Paxton was impeached now is that by not doing so, Texas Republicans, who were asked by Paxton for millions in taxpayer dollars to pay off his whistleblowers, would have been culpable in the federal investigation into Paxton's bribery, still ongoing.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Paxton Faces The Lone Star Law

Republicans in Texas's House heard the results of the investigation into corruption and abuse of power by Attorney General Ken Paxton this week, and it's bad enough that Paxton may actually face impeachment.

 

A Texas House committee heard stunning testimony from investigators Wednesday over allegations of a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions by Attorney General Ken Paxton, the result of a probe the committee had secretly authorized in March.

In painstaking and methodical detail in a rare public forum, four investigators for the House General Investigating Committee testified that they believe Paxton broke numerous state laws, misspent office funds and misused his power to benefit a friend and political donor.

Their inquiry focused first on a proposed $3.3 million agreement to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by four high-ranking deputies who were fired after accusing Paxton of accepting bribes and other misconduct.

Committee Chair Andrew Murr said the payout, which the Legislature would have to authorize, would also prevent a trial at which evidence of Paxton’s alleged misdeeds would be presented publicly. Committee members questioned, in essence, if lawmakers were being asked to participate in a cover-up.

“It is alarming and very serious having this discussion when millions of taxpayer dollars have been asked to remedy what is alleged to be some wrongs,” Murr said. “That’s something we have to grapple with. It’s challenging.”

Many of the allegations detailed Wednesday were already known, but the public airing of them revealed the wide scope of the committee’s investigation into the state’s top lawyer and a member of the ruling Republican Party. The investigative committee has broad power to investigate state officials for wrongdoing, and three weeks ago the House expelled Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, on its recommendation.

In this case, it could recommend the House censure or impeach Paxton — a new threat to an attorney general who has for years survived scandals and been reelected twice despite securities fraud charges in 2015 and news of a federal investigation into the whistleblowers’ claims in 2020.

Erin Epley, lead counsel for the investigating committee, said the inquiry also delved into the whistleblowers’ allegations by conducting multiple interviews with employees of Paxton’s agency — many of whom expressed fears of retaliation by Paxton if their testimony were to be revealed — as well as the whistleblowers and others with pertinent information.

According to state law, Epley told the committee in a hearing at the Capitol, a government official cannot fire or retaliate against “a public employee who in good faith reports a violation of law … to an appropriate law enforcement authority.”

The four whistleblowers, however, were fired months after telling federal and state investigators about their concerns over Paxton’s actions on behalf of Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and a friend and political donor to Paxton.

“Each of these four men is a conservative Republican civil servant,” Epley said. “Interviews show that they wanted to be loyal to General Paxton and they tried to advise him well, often and strongly, and when that failed each was fired after reporting General Paxton to law enforcement.”

 

Imagine being so utterly, thoroughly corrupt that Texas Republicans are even considering a recommendation to remove another Texas Republican from office. Indeed, the committee's recommendation is that Paxton has to go.

 

In an unanimous decision, a Republican-led House investigative committee that spent months quietly looking into Paxton recommended impeaching the state’s top lawyer. The House could vote on the recommendation as soon as Friday. If it impeaches Paxton, he would be forced to leave office immediately.

The move sets set up what could be 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 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.

 

In fact, Texas state House Republicans moved quickly to file those recommended articles yesterday evening.

 

In an unprecedented move, a Texas House committee voted Thursday to recommend that Attorney General Ken Paxton be impeached and removed from office, citing 20 accusations that include bribery, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstruction of justice.

Around 8 p.m., the House General Investigating Committee filed its impeachment resolution with the House clerk. It included the 20 articles listing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking that investigators detailed one day earlier. On the House floor, some lawmakers could be heard yelling the number of the newly filed articles, and several could be seen reading the document minutes after it was filed.

The House will next decide whether to approve the articles against Paxton, which could lead to the attorney general’s removal from office pending the outcome of a trial to be conducted by the Senate.

State Rep. Andrew Murr, chair of the investigating committee, followed by telling House members that the impeachment resolution alleged “grave offenses,” justifying the committee’s action.

“After a period of time for your review and reflection, I intend to call up the resolution adopting the articles of impeachment. If you have any questions at all, please come visit with me or any other member of our committee,” said Murr, R-Junction.

During a specially called meeting earlier Thursday afternoon, the committee voted unanimously to refer the 20 articles of impeachment to the full chamber.

 

If Paxton is impeached, he'll be removed from office pending the state Senate trial.

 

So maybe Paxton will finally fall.  We'll see.

Ken's Definitely Gone Wrong, Con't

Not to be one-upped by Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and his war on public education, Black and Hispanic history, and LGBTQ+ America, Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton is declaring war on the entire federal government.

 

Earlier this month, Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit claiming that the $1.7 trillion spending law that keeps most of the federal government — including the US military — operating through September of 2023 is unconstitutional.

Paxton’s claims in Texas v. Garland, which turn on the fact that many of the lawmakers who voted for the bill voted by proxy, should fail. They are at odds with the Constitution’s explicit text. And a bipartisan panel of a powerful federal appeals court in Washington, DC, already rejected a similar lawsuit in 2021.

Realistically, this lawsuit is unlikely to prevail even in the current, highly conservative Supreme Court. Declaring a law that funds most of the federal government unconstitutional would be an extraordinary act, especially given the very strong legal arguments against Paxton’s position.

But the case is a window into Paxton’s broader litigation strategy, where he frequently raises weak legal arguments undercutting federal policies before right-wing judges that he has personally chosen because of their ideology. And these judges often do sow chaos throughout the government, which can last months or longer, before a higher court steps in.

Texas’s federal courts give plaintiffs an unusual amount of leeway to choose which judge will hear their case, an odd feature of these courts that Paxton often takes advantage of to ensure that his lawsuits will be heard by judges who are likely to toe the Republican line. These decisions, moreover, appeal to the deeply conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Paxton filed the Garland case in Lubbock, Texas, where 100 percent of all federal lawsuits are heard by a Republican appointee. Two-thirds of such cases are automatically assigned to Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who will hear this suit.

Hendrix, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, is a bit of an unknown quantity. In his brief time on the bench, Hendrix did hand down one poorly reasoned decision undercutting a federal statute that requires most hospitals to perform medically necessary abortions. But Hendrix’s thin record does not tell us enough to know whether he’d actually be so aggressive as to declare most of the United States government unconstitutional.

The Texas federal bench is also riddled with judges — Matthew Kacsmaryk, Drew Tipton, and Reed O’Connor are probably the best known among them — who’ve largely behaved as rubber stamps for any right-leaning litigant who appears before them. It’s notable that Paxton chose to bring this case in Lubbock, where he was likely to draw Hendrix as his judge, rather than bringing this suit before Kacsmaryk or Tipton (Kacsmaryk hears 100 percent of federal cases filed in Amarillo, Texas. Tipton hears all cases filed in Victoria, Texas). But it remains to be seen whether Hendrix will show the same contempt for the rule of law as a Kacsmaryk or a Tipton.

So, while this case probably isn’t an immediate cause for alarm, it is a reminder that no lawsuit filed in Texas’s federal courts can safely be ignored.

 

Paxton, who is arguing that the current government spending bill is illegal because of House proxy voting, doesn't actually have to win the case.

 

He just has to get a judge to issue an injunction while the case is being decided. An injunction against the entire federal government. Boom, immediate government shutdown.

 

It would get worse, of course. Any new budget would have to be redone on terms of the House GOP Circus of the Damned writing the new plan.  They could then get every cut they want, because the hostage (in this case, the entire US economy) would have been shot already and would be bleeding out. 

Hours would matter, and gamesmanship could lead to a disaster that would break the country's machinery of operation.

Of course, everyone would blame Biden. Biden could ignore the order, but that's an immediate Constitutional crisis, and one with real consequences far into the future.

I'm really hoping this case gets dismissed, but again, all it takes is one crapass Trump judge to derail the country.

We'll see.

It would be a nightmare.

Last Call For Equal Opportunity Offender

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered a list of all transgender Texans in the state in June. He never got it because the Texas Department of Public Safety wanted to know exactly why it was needed, but gosh, nobody seems to know exactly why a Republican AG in a state like Texas would want a list of all transgender folks in the state, least of all Ken Paxton's office.

 

Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.

“Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”

After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told The Post in response to questions.

“A verbal request was received,” he wrote in an email. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.”

Asked who in Paxton’s office had requested the records, he replied: “I cannot say.”

The behind-the-scenes effort by Paxton’s office to obtain data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their license came as the attorney general, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders in the state have been publicly marshaling resources against transgender Texans.

 

Yep. It's a complete and total mystery. Bonus enigma points:

Paxton’s office bypassed the normal channels — DPS’s government relations and general counsel’s offices — and went straight to the driver license division staff in making the request, according to a state employee familiar with it, who said the staff was told that Paxton’s office wanted “numbers” and later would want “a list” of names, as well as “the number of people who had had a legal sex change.”

 

Surely small government, free speech, and civil liberties loving Texans like Paxton would never dream of using a list like that against citizens of the Lone Star State, especially targeting the people on that list as enemies of the Republic of Texas.

Right?

The Law In Texas, Con't

A reminder that Texas Republican Attorney General is still under federal investigation for bribery and corruption and under indictment for securities fraud, he's also been named as part of a lawsuit against the state's bounty hunter abortion law, and he's dodging process servers like a pro after seven years.

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home in a truck driven by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, to avoid being served a subpoena Monday, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.

Ernesto Martin Herrera, a process server, was attempting to serve the state’s top attorney with a subpoena for a federal court hearing Tuesday in a lawsuit from nonprofits that want to help Texans pay for abortions out of state.

When Herrera arrived at Paxton’s home in McKinney on Monday morning, he told a woman who identified herself as Angela that he was trying to deliver legal documents to the attorney general. She told him that Paxton was on the phone and unable to come to the door. Herrera said he would wait.

Nearly an hour later, a black Chevrolet Tahoe pulled into the driveway, and 20 minutes after that, Ken Paxton exited the house.

“I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name. As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage,” Herrera wrote in the sworn affidavit.

Angela Paxton then exited the house, got inside a Chevrolet truck in the driveway, started it and opened the doors.

“A few minutes later I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage towards the rear door behind the driver side,” Herrera wrote. “I approached the truck, and loudly called him by his name and stated that I had court documents for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck.”

Herrera eventually placed the subpoenas on the ground near the truck and told him he was serving him with a subpoena. Both cars drove away, leaving the documents on the ground.

On Twitter, the attorney general said his sudden departure was motivated by concerns for his family's safety.

"It’s clear that the media wants to drum up another controversy involving my work as Attorney General, so they’re attacking me for having the audacity to avoid a stranger lingering outside my home and showing concern about the safety and well-being of my family," he wrote in a tweet.

 

If you tried to dodge lawsuits, investigations, and indictments the way Kex Paxton does, you'd already be in jail. But Paxton has made sure he'll never be tried for his securities fraud indictment, the case being "rescheduled" time and again by Republican-appointed judges as Paxton uses his office to shield himself from the law his office is supposed to enforce.

There's no better example of what corrupt, permanent one-party GOP rules means to America, and how Republican officials will blatantly flout the law in state after state once the Roberts' Court gives them the power to institute perpetual corruption.

And here we have him dodging a process server with his wife driving him to "safety from an attacking stranger". Just corruption all the way through.

And he'll still win in November, as such he'll need that StupidiTag™ going forward...