Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is almost comically corrupt. He's been under federal indictment for securities fraud since 2015. In 2020 whistleblowers accused him of abusing his office to help a wealthy donor. Last year he requested state funds to pay off the whistleblowers, who had accused him of retaliating against them:
Among the allegations were that Mr. Paxton gave special treatment and abused his office to help Nate Paul, a friend and campaign donor in Austin, in several instances. Lawmakers also said that Mr. Paul helped with renovations on Mr. Paxton’s home and employed a woman with whom Mr. Paxton had been having an affair, actions that amount to bribes in the eyes of Mr. Paxton’s critics.
The impeachment articles also include claims that Mr. Paxton directed his employees to violate the state’s open records law, fired employees who reported his bad behavior, made false statements to a state board, did not accurately disclose his finances and stalled a separate criminal prosecution that accused him of securities fraud.
Here's what I don't get. This stuff has been going on for years. Everyone knew about it because it's been all over the front pages. Paxton's corruption is all but an open record, but he's maintained his political support anyway.
So why now? Out of the blue he's hit with impeachment and the vote against him is overwhelming, 121-23. A special Senate session to vote on conviction will be called within days or weeks.
What happened? Why did the dam break so suddenly? Is there more going on behind the scenes than we know about?
He's too much even for Republicans.
Because he is in the paper every day and he has no way of hiding it, avoiding it or denying it, so --he's not getting away with it, and getting away with it is always the key value for a Republican.
George Santos is in the same boat. They'll drown him in a bathtub first chance they get.
Santos hasn't been booted yet, and they've had how much time now to do it? They protect their own until they absolutely can't any longer - kind of like the police.
It's because Kevin McCarthy thinks Santos will owe him and he needs all the help he can get.
That's my guess. Republicans only really act this way when one of their own becomes a threat to the rest of them. See also: Maddy Cawthorn.
Over in the Daily Kos I read an article that he had been threatening House members with retaliation if they voted to impeach. If he got too heavy handed, he may have talked himself right into impeachment. That was truly an impressively lopsided vote. I commend your eloquence Mr. Paxton!
Ken Paxton reenacting the death of Robespierre. Texans ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
It's Chinatown, err, Texas.
+1
Well, well, I was wondering the exact same thing. I doubt that it is because Texans have had enough of him. They seem to have more than enough of exactly like him-Abbott.
"I doubt that it is because Texans have had enough of him. "
Please don't stereotype. 46.5% of people here voted for Biden for president.
The $3,300,000 request to the legislature to pay the whistle blowers settlement is reported as the reason for Paxton's impeachment.
This is my understanding as well. Principle or ethics have nothing to do with it, it's the threat of a hit to the pocketbook for money that could be going towards other corrupt and anti-democratic causes.
The Republicans will be on the record voting tor that settlement too--which wouldn't look good if/when Paxton is hauled off to the hoosegow.
Oh, and apparently his rich benefactor is not so rich anymore....
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-ken-paxton-went-from-teflon-ken-to-the-brink-of-being-impeached-by-his-own-party
note: the impeachment protocol in Texas means everything is done quickly, but the actual investigation has been going on for a while--way before the request to pay up for the settlement...
It seems likely. The money isn't a drop in the bucket of Texas's overall budget, but it's something simple for voters. People help their friends, so even the voters that grasp the facts around that are going to tend to be forgiving. Getting sued for $3.3 million and asking the state government to pay it is simple and involves large but comprehensible numbers. The people of Texas, and their elected representatives not all of whom are extremely bright, understand that well enough to get really annoyed about it.
Oh come on. The Texas budget is $321.3 billion. $3.3 million is .001% of the budget. Also, in 2023 Texas will have a $32.7 billion surplus.
Government budgets are so huge that they're mostly incomprehensible. It tends to be small sums being obviously wasted that get people going. Do you remember the huge fuss some years ago over the Pentagon buying hammers for $600 each? Even then, it was an invisibly small fraction of the total defence budget, but it was something people could understand.
If you know anything about milspecs you would know they had to buy an additional 3 hammers and pay to have them destroyed to ensure that that one hammer wouldn't fail in combat. (Why they needed to buy a single hammer I don't know.)
I think there’s more to come out. It’s too sudden, esp given his history. Makes me think this is a form of attempted damage control.
It might be a case of strength in numbers. Once the Republicans saw he was going to lose big the fence sitters were free to pile on without much fear of retaliation. What may have changed is the Republican leadership became certain they had the votes to get rid of him. As the saying goes you don't want to strike at the King and miss.
But they were striking the jester.
May the national GOP take a lesson from their Texas acolytes.
AP:
The impeachment allows Texas to hang this $3.3M settlement around Ken Paxton's neck, and wash their hands of his crimes without it breaking down along partisan lines and allowing Democrats to break through in 2024.
Shouldn’t that have gone to trial by now?
Not if Paxton keeps doing everything possible to delay the trial (which is not to say that the prosecution shouldn't have forced it to proceed).
Presumably nobody in the Trump admin had any interest in pushing it along, what with all the criming that needed covering up in the White House at the time.
And then Merrick Garland took over and promptly went into a 4+ year coma, so of course the case remains untouched by DOJ to this day.
I don't mean to sound pedantic (well, maybe I do), but Merrick Garland has only been in office for 2 years. During that time he's been faced with cleaning up quite a lot of mess and minefield, both inside DoJ and throughout the country, all while trying to show the country that this is a different, non-political DoJ than the previous administration. So if he didn't personally get to prosecuting the AG of Texas yet, maybe there's a reason.
Paxton's securities fraud indictment is a state indictment under state securities fraud law, not a federal indictment, and is caught up in a long running fight over how much to pay special prosecutors and the vagaries of Texas law and criminal procedure.
The backstory is well described here:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/ken-paxton-impeachment-texas-house
It's... complicated.
Is it "out of the blue"?
These things simply take a long time (due process and all that)...
If you look at the timeline, what appears to have happened is
In 2020 four employees/appointees of Paxton filed a whistleblower lawsuit. This bounced around between lawyers but, importantly, was SETTLED in February 2023. That's a great deal for Paxton (he apparently got off scot free) EXCEPT that he was stupid enough (or desperate enough) that he paid off the whistleblowers, and he paid them off using Texas money, not his own bank account. That triggered the Texas House to create an investigative committee, which took a month or two to gather evidence, then presented its results, which included a recommendation of impeachment.
So, in essence, the system worked. It worked slowly, but it pretty much ALWAYS works slowly - it's not like the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6th were on trial on Jan 7 and found guilty on Jan 8.
It's not like the impeachment is out of the blue. It looks to me more like he engaged in a variety of dodgy (but popular with at least some people) behavior, but what was *widely known* did not seem to fall into the category of "worth impeaching, and with evidence available". Not until he made the stupid error of using Texas money to pay for his mess, which triggered a real investigation, which got us to where we are.
It's not clear how people bemoaning this situation want it changed. You want any random politician to be subject to impeachment on any random charge? We went down that path with Bill Clinton, and I fail to see why we'd be better off by assuming that as a template for government at every level.
Mostly better to let the system operates as it currently operates. People like Paxton invariably overreach. Sure we'd like the overreaching, and denouement to happen earlier, but half the country would also like the other half of the country dead. We don't get the politics we want; but we should try to get a system that kinda sorta mostly works.
Just seems like Paxton is kind of a Texas version of the former guy. May they wind up as roommates in one of the lower levels of hell.
"but half the country would also like the other half of the country dead"
Now THAT is a nail with a splitting-headache!
He was indicted in 2015. It’s now 2023. That’s a long time to wait for trial, certainly longer than almost anybody else facing felony charges in Texas or anywhere else in the country.
Is a puzzlement but my guess would be headlines coming soon involving a dead girl or a live boy.
Russia issues arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lindsey-graham-russia-arrest-warrant/
You know if Bluto Barksalot was president and this was Charles Schumer . . .
I just figured someone forgot to put the kool-aid in the water.
Resident of Texas here ... I think there's an element of Hemingway's How Did You Go Bankrupt going on, but I also think the immediately driving event started here https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/texas-ag-accuses-states-house-speaker-intoxicated-99552495
Regardless of the motivations of elected Republicans in Austin (and I see commenters here are quick to assume the worst motivations), I'm glad Republican lawmakers are doing the right thing. I hope next Paxton is removed from office.
The official explanation for the headline question of why now is that the house got the bill for the 3.3million hush money payment. They revolted when they realized they had to go on the record to approve tax payers making the payment.