Ken Paxton temporarily suspended after vote in Texas House

Lawmakers in the Texas House voted Saturday to impeach Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, and temporarily remove him from office on charges that he had used his elected position to benefit himself and a campaign donor.

After a four-hour procession in front of a packed grandstand, the vote landed with gigantic force at the Texas Capitol, where a statewide officeholder had not been impeached for more than a century since the legislature voted to impeach incumbent governor, James E. Ferguson, in 1917, for embezzlement and misuse of public funds.

Before the vote, Rep. Andrew Murr, the Republican chairman of the House inquiry committee who recommended impeachment, concluded by urging his colleagues to impeach. “The evidence presented to you is compelling and more than sufficient to warrant a trial,” he said, adding, “Send this to trial.”

The final vote was 121 for impeachment — a bipartisan coalition that included nearly every Democrat and a majority of the chamber’s Republicans — and 23 against, with two abstentions. As they voted, the board in the front of the room lit up with green lights indicating support. It went well over the 75 needed.

“It was a tough one, a tough one, a really tough one,” Rep. Jeff Leach, a Dallas-area Republican who voted for impeachment, said after the vote.

Texas law allows Governor Greg Abbott to appoint an interim attorney general pending trial in the Senate, but is not required to do so. A spokesman for his office did not respond to a request for comment on what he planned to do.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Paxton was immediately removed from office, pending the Senate trial. No date had been set for when that would begin.

The Senate trial will be presided over by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a staunch conservative with many of Mr Paxton’s supporters. Mr Patrick has taken a neutral stance in public comments this week. A two-thirds majority is needed to convict in the Senate, where Republicans have a 19-to-12 lead.

The speed with which events unfolded left legislators, Texas officials, and other political observers stunned and gripped: Just a few days ago, almost no one in the Capitol had even known that such an important investigation into Mr. Paxton was underway, let alone an impeachment vote could be the result.

His fellow Republicans, who introduced the 20 articles of impeachment, presented Mr. Paxton as a rogue government official who could not be trusted in the office he held. They did this in reference to Mr. Paxton’s actions, which they believed amounted to crimes in many cases, and contrasted them with the integrity of those who rose against him, many of them conservative Republicans.

“Attorney General Paxton consistently and blatantly violated laws, regulations, policies and procedures,” David Spiller, a Republican member of the investigative committee, said in an address to the House Saturday. “As a body, we shouldn’t be complicit” in that behavior, he said. “Texas is better than that.”

Mr Paxton released a statement immediately after the vote calling the process “illegal, unethical and deeply unjust”.

“I look forward to a speedy resolution in the Texas Senate, where I have every confidence that the process will be fair and just,” Mr. Paxton. He has many allies in the more conservative Senate, including his wife, Angela, and personal friends.

The articles of impeachment accused Mr Paxton of abusing his office in a number of ways, including taking what amounted to a bribe, disregarding his official duty, obstructing justice in a separate securities fraud case pending against him, making false statements on official documents and abusing public trust.

Many of the articles focused on Mr. Paxton’s alleged use of his office for the benefit of a particular donor, Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor who gave $25,000 in political contributions to Mr. Paxton. Those included using the office to intervene in a legal dispute Mr Paul had with a non-profit organization, and hiring a contract attorney to work for the Attorney General’s office, upon request from Mr. Paul and despite the objections of senior staffers at the Attorney General’s Office, to investigate a federal investigation of Mr. Paul.

Mr. Paul also provided Mr. Paxton with other benefits, the impeachment articles said, including giving a job to a woman described during impeachment proceedings as Mr. Paxton’s “mistress”, and providing expensive home renovations, including countertops worth of about $20,000.

Mr Paxton, 60, who has denied any wrongdoing, is a strong supporter of conservative legal causes and one of the leading opponents of the Biden administration on a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act and immigration on the southern border. Mr. Paxton also challenged the results of the 2020 election in court, a losing battle that won him the support of former President Donald J. Trump.

He was elected to a third term last year, even after alleged violations were prominently discussed during the campaign, including by Republicans running against him in the primary. He has accused the more moderate Republican leadership of the House of acting in tandem with Democrats to oust him.

Dozens of Mr Paxton’s supporters filled the house’s gallery – spurred to be there by a public appeal from Mr Paxton the night before – watching the proceedings go on largely in silence. There were no outbursts or attempts to disrupt the mood.

What surprised many observers at the Texas Capitol was not the nature of the allegations against Mr. Paxton, but that they had finally caught up with him. Much of the misconduct publicly presented to a House investigative committee this week by its investigators was well known.

The allegations of corruption and abuse of office were detailed in 2020 by several of his top aides, who called for an investigation into Mr Paxton. The aides who spoke out resigned or were forced to leave or were fired. Four of them have filed a lawsuit over their dismissal. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also opened an investigation, and in February the Justice Department said it had closed its investigation had been taken over by detectives in Washington.

What changed this year was that Mr. Paxton sought state money to try to put the most serious case behind him, asking for $3.3 million in state funds for a settlement he reached with the four aides. The Texas House responded by launching an investigation into the request and the underlying allegations. Their findings that Mr Paxton’s actions were inappropriate and possibly illegal constituted the first official condemnation of his conduct.

Many of the most prominent national voices in the Republican Party, including Mr. Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, defended Mr. Paxton, arguing that the impeachment was politically motivated and served the interests of Democrats.

“Ken has been the strongest Conservative AG in the country for the last nine years,” Mr. Cruz wrote on Saturday. “I understand people are concerned about Ken’s legal challenges. But the courts have to sort them out.”

Mr. Trump explicitly threatened Texas Republicans who supported Mr. Paxton’s impeachment and, less than an hour before it began, urged them not to go through with it. “I will fight you if you are,” Trump wrote. “Free Ken Paxton!”

Mr. Paxton himself is said to have made similar threats, called members directly in a last-ditch effort to avoid impeachment and “threatened them personally with political repercussions in their next election,” said Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican member of the committee of inquiry. .

During the proceedings, Republican supporters of Mr. Paxton’s actions did not raise questions about fairness and due process. Several complained that they had not been given enough time or information to make a decision, or that they had been asked to rely on “hearsay” in the form of testimony before the Commission of Inquiry rather than being able to examine evidence against Mr Paxton on their own.

The committee itself did not directly consider the evidence. Instead, it relied on testimonials from his detectives, who collected documents and interviewed employees of the attorney general’s office and others as part of their investigation, which began in March.

“I’m against this resolution, not because I’m convinced of the attorney general’s innocence,” said one of the leading opponents, Brian Harrison, a Republican member of the House’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus. But, he said, the trial did not sufficiently document his guilt and he called it “a sham of a political enemy”.

Another Republican opponent, John Smithee, sought to offer an alternative to Republicans who may be on the fence: Vote against Saturday and return for a “one-day hearing” where the evidence can be fully presented and Mr. Paxton a chance to speak. to defend.

“If I’m ever going to be part of an impeachment proceeding that actually results in the impeachment of an officer, I don’t want to look like a Saturday mob going out for an afternoon lynching,” said Mr Smithee, after completing his remarks, much of it erupted the public gallery in applause.

Democrats had remained largely silent while Republicans debated among themselves and appeared to want to avoid turning the impeachment into a partisan issue.

“You keep hearing, ‘Why now?'” said Representative Terry Canales, a Democrat whose father, when he was a state representative, presented articles of impeachment against a district judge in 1975, the last time such a vote was held. “There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing,” Mr. Canales said, pounding the desk at the front of the House.

Outside the Capitol, a small number of opponents and supporters of Mr. Paxton protested and occasionally confronted each other. “What he’s doing is the right thing, and the speaker is doing the wrong thing,” said a 76-year-old retired information systems administrator from Austin, who declined to give his name.

Ilan Levin, 54, a deputy director at an Austin nonprofit, stood beside his bicycle arguing with Mr. Paxton’s supporters. He was holding a cardboard sign that read “IMPEACH!!!” But he said he didn’t think the impeachment vote would have a major impact.

“A lot of Texans will forget about it by the next election cycle,” he said.

J. David Goodman And James Dobins reported from Austin, Texas, and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs From New York. David Montgomery in Austin and Anushka Patil in New York contributed reporting.