Texas Panel Recommends Impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton

A Republican-led committee of the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday recommended impeaching state attorney general Ken Paxton over a series of abuses of office that the committee says could be crimes.

The recommendation pushed the state capitol and its Republican leaders into uncharted political territory in the waning days of the legislative session, setting the stage for the House to hold an impeachment vote, the first in decades and one of the few ever. kept in the state. history.

If he is deposed, Mr. Paxton, who has faced separate criminal charges since 2015, should temporarily step down from his position while he faces trial in the Senate.

“There’s really no precedent — we’ve really only had two charges under the 1876 Constitution,” said Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. They contain the governor in 1917who resigned the day before the Senate sentenced him, and a district judge who was convicted and removed In the seventies.

Prior to voting, the committee met in an executive session, out of public view.

“Election overturning starts behind closed doors,” Mr Paxton said a message on Twitter that included video of an attorney from his office pleading with reporters against impeachment in a nearly empty committee room, while committee deliberations were underway.

The extraordinary developments were likely to test the Republican Party in Texas in new and unpredictable ways, at a time when rifts in the party were increasingly exposed.

The Texas House is led by speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican who represents Beaumont and is seen as a traditional conservative. Mr. Paxton, on the other hand, has ties to the most outspoken Republican lawmakers in Texas and former President Donald J. Trump, in a camp that also includes Lt. Governor and Senate Majority Leader Dan Patrick.

The vote by the House committee came a day after three hours of detailed testimony on Wednesday from a team of investigators – former prosecutors hired by the committee to investigate corruption allegations against Mr Paxton. The investigators described how Mr. Paxton misused and misused his office to help an Austin real estate developer and donor who also hired a woman with whom Mr. Paxton was in a relationship, and how Mr. Paxton created a climate of fear within the office. of the Attorney General.

The misdeeds Mr Paxton was accused of rose to the level of possible criminality, the investigators said, including cases of retaliation against people who spoke out.

The commission did not testify during its session on Thursday.

Attorney for Mr Paxton’s office, Christopher Hilton, told reporters that the commission’s trial was “completely lacking” and called Wednesday’s testimony “false” and “misleading”. He added that the issues raised by the committee had been fully addressed during Mr Paxton’s re-election campaign last year when he was elected to a third term.

“The 2022 election, the primaries and the general election, were held on these issues, these allegations,” Mr Hilton said. “The voters have spoken. They want Ken Paxton as their attorney general.”

And in what appeared to be a potential legal challenge to the proceedings, Mr. Hilton that Texas law only allows impeachment for conduct since the last election.

The investigation began in March after Mr Paxton, who has also been charged with securities fraud, apparently managed to get past at least one of his legal troubles. He agreed to a $3.3 million settlement with four of his top aides who sued him, accusing him of corruption and retaliation.

Mr. Paxton asked the Texas Legislature for money to pay for the settlement. But Mr Phelan did not support that use of state money, saying he felt Mr Paxton had not sufficiently explained why the state should fund the settlement. The house investigation into the allegations has begun to gather information on the funding request, Phelan’s spokeswoman said.

This week, as the committee’s inquiry neared its end, Mr Paxton engaged in two days of sparring and accusations against Mr Phelan, whom he accused of drunkenly presiding over a session of the House last week. Mr. Paxton based his claim on a video circulated among hard-right activists blaming Mr. Phelan for the failure of several pieces of conservative legislation in the Texas House.

Much of what was presented to the committee about Mr Paxton was already publicly known through the allegations in the assistants’ lawsuit. The aides have also submitted their complaints about Mr. Paxton to the FBI, which is still investigating.

Thursday’s vote gave the first official verdict on those allegations, finding them sufficient to start the process to remove Mr Paxton from office.

David Montgomery reporting contributed.