Impeachment Vote Set for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: What You Need to Know

The Republican-dominated Texas House has scheduled a vote on the impeachment of the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for Saturday at 1 p.m.

The vote was set to take place just two days after a bipartisan but Republican-led committee of representatives recommended that Mr Paxton be impeached over a series of abuses that may have been crimes.

Mr Paxton denied wrongdoing, as he has done several times before. The Attorney General has been dealing with various legal challenges for years and withstood multiple investigations with few political repercussions.

Here’s what you need to know.

Who is Ken Paxton?

Before becoming Attorney General in 2015, Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. as a lawyer and state legislator, in both the State House and Senate. His wife, Angela Paxton, became a political force in her own right, winning a Senate seat in 2018.

As the state’s top law enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton has styled himself as a champion of the social issues that drive Texas conservatives, effectively becoming the state’s foremost culture war advocate. His hard-hitting style has led some Republican allies to distance themselves, even though voters have remained loyal.

Mr. Paxton has closely aligned himself with – and was endorsed by – former President Donald J. Trump, and has used his office to challenge the results of the 2020 election. He has also taken frequent legal action against actions by the Biden administration, and has been at the forefront of efforts by Republican-led states to challenge the president’s efforts to relax some restrictions on migration on the southern US border.

The voters re-elected Mr. Paxton in November with a large majority for a third term.

What allegations prompted the home investigation?

In 2020, several of Mr Paxton’s senior employees wrote a letter urging an investigation into their boss’s actions. The aides accused Mr. Paxton of using his office to advance the interests of Nate Paul, who was a friend of the attorney general and a political donor.

Mr. Paul, a wealthy Austin real estate investor, had contacted Mr. Paxton after his home and offices were raided by federal agents in 2019. Mr. Paxton took the unusual step, against the vociferous objections of his staff, of authorizing a state investigation into the FBI’s actions. He appointed an outside attorney who called himself a special prosecutor to do it, though House Committee investigators said he had no prosecution experience. FBI officials have not commented on their investigation.

At the time, Mr Paxton said in a statement that he was “never motivated by a desire to protect a political donor or take advantage of this office, and I never will”.

In their 2020 letter, the aides of Mr. Paxton that he was guilty of bribery, abuse of office and other “possible criminal offences”. Four of the aides also took their concerns to the FBI and Texas Rangers.

According to legal documents in the case, the four aides had also communicated their concerns to the attorney general’s office; several weeks later they were all fired. The aides then filed suit, accusing Mr. Paxton of reprisals against them.

As the case progressed, Mr. Paxton’s office emerged a 374-page report which concluded, “AG Paxton committed no crime.” He also challenged the suit, but a Texas appeals court ruled against him. In February, Mr. Paxton agreed to pay $3.3 million in a settlement with the four former senior assistants.

How did that lead to the possibility of impeachment?

Questions about how the settlement was to be paid led to more scrutiny into the 2020 allegations.

Mr. Paxton asked the Texas Legislature for the money to pay the $3.3 million. Dade Phelan, the speaker of the Republican House, who is seen as a traditional conservative, did not support that use of state money. A house inquiry into the allegations was launched to gather information about the funding request, Phelan’s spokeswoman said.

Many of the investigators’ findings on Mr. Paxton were already publicly known through the allegations in the assistants’ lawsuit. But the vote in the House of Representatives committee on Thursday gave the first official verdict on those allegations: they were enough, lawmakers said, to start the process to remove Mr Paxton from office.

What do the articles of impeachment say?

The committee submitted 20 articles of impeachment to Mr Paxton on Thursday. As they were distributed around the House chamber, Andrew Murr, the committee chairman and a Republican, said they described “serious violations.”

The articles accuse Mr Paxton of a myriad of abuses, including taking bribes, neglecting official duty, obstructing justice in a separate securities fraud case against him, making false statements about official documents and reports, and abuse of public trust.

Many of the allegations related to the various ways Mr Paxton had used his office to benefit Mr Paul, the committee said, and then fired those in the office who spoke out against his actions.

The articles also accuse Mr. Paxton of profiting “from Nate Paul’s employment of a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair,” and of intervening in a lawsuit brought against Mr. Paul’s businesses by the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, an Austin non-profit group.

What other legal issues does Mr. Paxton face?

A federal investigation, opened over complaints from aides about corruption and retaliation, has not yet led to charges.

But Mr. Paxton has been under criminal charges for most of his tenure as state attorney general.

In 2015, his first year in that office, Mr. Paxton was charged with felony securities fraud charges and incarcerated in a jail outside of Dallas. The allegations stemmed from allegations that Mr. Paxton had misled investors and clients — for example, not telling investors he would take a commission on their investment — while doing securities work in the years before becoming attorney general.

He has denied wrongdoing in the case, which has yet to be tried.

This week’s impeachment articles charged the attorney general with obstruction of justice in that case, claiming that a lawsuit brought by a donor to Mr Paxton’s campaign had effectively delayed the process.

What happens now?

The chairman of the committee investigating Mr Paxton said he intended to introduce the impeachment resolution for a vote in the House on Saturday at 1pm.

An impeachment would mean Mr Paxton would be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, would serve as jurors. The Senate hearing could well be postponed until after the regular legislature, which ends on Monday. The Senate may convene a special session to hold the trial afterwards, though the timing remains highly uncertain.

A lawyer for Mr Paxton’s office, Christopher Hilton, has said that the committee’s process in issuing the articles of impeachment was “completely lacking” and that the issues raised had been fully aired during Mr Paxton’s successful re-election campaign last year. .

In what appeared to be a preview of a potential legal challenge to the proceedings, Mr. Hilton also said Texas law only allowed impeachment for conduct since the previous election. Most of the impeachment charges relate to conduct that occurred before that time.

Reporting contributed by Manny Fernandez, Miriam Jordan, Edgar Sandoval And Rick Rojas.