Not Exactly a Jury of Peers

I’ve spent the last two weeks listening in on the Texas Senate impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

To review, at the tail end of the legislative session in May 2023, the House suddenly, without warning, held a four-hour hearing in which they heard allegations and then voted to impeach on 20 counts. No witnesses were heard. No hard evidence was presented. No interviews leading up to that point had been under oath. We were told this was like a grand jury; they just have to decide whether there is enough there to hold a trial.

So that is what the Texas House did; they passed off any actual trial work to the Senate, where all the evidence would be presented.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick presides as judge in the Paxton Impeachment Trial.
screenshot from here

The Senate Impeachment Trial Process

This is similar to a court trial, but with significant differences. The jurors are the Senate members. They do not have to reach consensus, but must have 21 of 31 voting members vote to remove the Attorney General from his duly elected position. In this case, it will be 21 of 30, because one of the state senators is Angela Paxton, wife of the attorney general, who has been attending all the sessions but is recused from voting. We should note that one of the charges, bribery, reflects on her as well. The accusers claimed the Paxtons had received home renovations as a bribe to do political favors.

Earlier in the week a friend of mine commented on social media that what he’s observing is, whatever anyone believed going into this trial, they still believe. That’s probably accurate.

There are plenty of sources for information and commentary. I’ll list some of those below. But for this piece, I’m just giving my impressions—having listened to almost every part of the two weeks, including closing arguments this morning. This isn’t intended to persuade either side. There’s no time to do that. The Senate is now deliberating, and they could come up with a decision by tonight—likely before you could read this—or in a few days, depending on how long they take.

I won’t go through each of the 20 charges. But I’ll note, the case offered somewhere around 15 hours per side to present their case. That is less than an hour per charge. Cross-examination of the other side’s witnesses counted as time on the countdown clock. [Note that, as of today they are dealing only with 16 of the charges. The four related to securities fraud are pending in courts, I believe. They can deal with those later, depending on other outcomes. If they remove Paxton permanently from office, those charges won’t need to be dealt with. If they do not remove him, they could either dismiss those charges or deal with them separately.]

 

Impressions on the Various Counts

one of a series of texts pushing 
the anti-Paxton agenda

As long as the trial was, some of the issues were barely touched on. For example, as per the texts I keep getting from some entity unknown to me, they’re pushing two main things: an affair Ken Paxton has admitted to, but they claim he got the woman a job at Paxton’s friend Nate Paul’s company as a political favor; and the renovation of Ken Paxton’s house after water damage, which had upgrades they claim were provided by Nate Paul in exchange for favors.

We learned that the investigative team presenting the case to the House back in May made these allegations based on suspicions of the so-called whistleblowers. They did not interview Nate Paul, nor the woman who was hired by his company, nor the contractor who did work on the Paxtons’ home. In the intervening months they still didn’t do those things. There was nearly an opportunity to hear from “the other woman,” but, rather than subpoena her and schedule her testimony, the prosecution noticed her presence and thought they could call her, but couldn’t give the 24-hour notice that was required, before their time was running out. Seems kind of too little too late. They couldn’t have deposed her in June, July, or August?

Here’s what they missed, which was provided to us by the Paxton defense team: the woman in question applied and was hired according to normal process, continues to work there, pays for her own apartment in Austin, has not continued a relationship with Paxton, nor is there any evidence of this hiring being a cover for a favor to Paxton in exchange for—something unnamed.

The Paxtons had a general contractor to do the remediation work. He wasn’t contacted. The only connection made to Nate Paul was the mention of the name Nate during a discussion about possible upgrades, overheard by Paxton’s aide, who was concerned about it but was relieved, visibly, on the stand, to be convinced his concerns were unfounded. There is no evidence Nate Paul paid for anything; the receipts and bank records are in hand, showing Paxton paid for the renovation work. And the defense provided photo evidence (it was in the news weeks ago, so the prosecution could have verified at any time) showing that the Paxtons never upgraded to granite countertops and new cabinets as alleged. They still have the same kitchen witnesses recognized from before the repairs.

What the prosecution did was to bring in the people who reported the claims initially. They laid out their suspicions—and they did this well. What they saw, if you make assumptions about motive, looked like possible favoritism toward a particular client.

But repeatedly their claims fell apart on the stand. Under oath, one after another, the first few days admitted that, when they went to the FBI to report their boss, Attorney General Ken Paxton, they brought no evidence with them. By the second week they thought they had remedied this. Their reports, they claimed, were evidence. They brought their observations and beliefs and interpretations. So there!

Their stories might have been corroborating evidence, had there been any material evidence. There wasn’t. There was only these persons’ interpretation of Paxton’s motivations, missing quite often a fuller picture that they hadn’t sought. And neither had any other investigators.

Another oddity was that, when they went together, as a group, to the FBI on October 1, 2020, they sat around a table, together, recounting their observations. Had the FBI assumed their testimony validated any actual crime, the witnesses would have been interviewed separately, so that they did not know what the others were saying, thus coloring each others’ stories. Also note that the FBI, with all the “evidence” these five brought to them, in the ensuing three years have brought no charges.

This is not to say the FBI is spotless—although they may be in relation to this case. But it was suspicion about the FBI that led to some of the allegations. Nate Paul had had his home and storage unit searched. He believed that the original search warrant, of his home, was for drugs and guns, I think was the story. But when they of course didn’t find anything, they changed the search warrant to look for some kind of white collar crime, which entailed going through the storage unit for records. Nate Paul and his counsel, Wynne, believed they had metadata evidence showing that had happened. Note: eventual forensic work showed this to be inconclusive—not disproven.

The whistleblowers and others involved thought this was baseless, because the FBI and other federal officials never do anything wrong. Ken Paxton, however, asked for a fuller investigation. There’s more to recognize here. Paxton had been hounded and, he believed, badly dealt with by federal investigators, so he didn’t have blanket trust of them. Add to that, there were, at the time (and more since) multiple instances of federal officials playing fast and loose with citizen rights.

Former Travis County DA Margaret Moore testifies Monday.
screenshot from here

It was a rather satisfying moment in the trial when the defense Tony Buzbee was cross-examining the former Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, who claimed the state could never so much as suspect a federal investigator. The defense listed one after another of FBI crimes. Here’s some of that exchange:

Buzbee: I mean, there’s a lot of them. But, did you hear about the FBI admitted fraud forensic testimony in 32 death penalty cases?

Moore: No.

Buzbee: How about when the FBI conducted improper searches of US officials using a foreign database?

Moore: I don’t know about that.

Buzbee: How about when the FBI improperly spied on activists?

Moore: I don’t recall reading about that either.

Buzbee: How about when the FBI misused an intelligence database and performed 278,000 searches?

Moore: I didn’t hear about that.

Buzbee: And the reason I keep asking you about these repeated alleged FBI abuses is because, when you first heard about this alleged FBI abuse, the first thing you thought was, “Ridiculous.” Correct?

Moore: No. That’s not correct. That’s not what I said.

Buzbee: You knew that a federal judge had ruled that FBI agents had conducted illegal searches of businesses?

Moore: I don’t know what you’re alluding to.

Buzbee: How the FBI violated the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Americans?

Moore: Mr. Buzbee, I’m not aware of that article.

This lifetime law enforcement expert had never heard of any of them. Her claim to know the Nate Paul claim was false, without investigating it, rang hollow. My personal suspicion is that she didn’t want to investigate federal agencies she had to maintain a good working relationship with. That does not bode well for the people subject to the violations, though.

A similar line of questioning happened with the former Texas Ranger near-superhero David Maxwell, in the OAG, who was handed that case by Moore. He did a quick Google search on Nate Paul, concluded that he was a crook. So when he heard out Nate Paul and his counsel, with this suspicion they had about the search warrant, he thought it was ludicrous. He didn’t say so to them, but he never intended to do any investigation whatsoever.

 

The Whistleblowers

Paxton’s difficulty was that, despite his assignment to his subordinates to do an investigation, they admitted they “slow-walked” it, and in essence refused to do the investigation. When he followed up, they said they would get on it, but they didn’t. They didn’t so much as open a file on it.

Finally, Paxton hired outside counsel. He signed a contract with a young lawyer named Cammack, who was interested and willing in doing the investigation. Cammack said Paxton instructed him to just find out the truth.

Cammack was derisively dubbed "the kid" by the whistleblowers.
screenshot from here

Cammack started that investigation, and he also started another referral given to him, which the prosecutors had been unaware of and had assumed he was issuing grand jury subpoenas related to the Paul case, which he was not doing. He was thwarted at every turn by the “whistleblowers.” They derisively called him “the kid” in their conversations and correspondence. And they took it upon themselves to deny his contract, give him a cease and desist letter, and left him unpaid—claiming the Attorney General didn’t have the rights of the office given to him by the voters, which he could delegate to them but still held.

And these whistleblowers did worse. They got or made (it was disputed) official OAG stationery without the Attorney General’s name on it, and they hired, without permission, outside counsel for $50,000 to investigate/prosecute/persecute Attorney General Paxton. And then they claimed the AG was out of line in firing them.

It may be hard to know exactly what was in AG Paxton’s mind at every turn. But his communications show interest in the people of the state in general, not the single friend they insisted he was working for. He had worked hard to stop foreclosures from going through—before the first Tuesday of the month, during this time of COVID when a stay on foreclosures was about to end. This ended up having no affect on Nate Paul, as they insisted it did. But what AG Paxton had expressed to his team was that they may have kept some elderly grandmother from losing her home. And his policy became national policy by executive order a couple of weeks later.

There’s a question about whether the whistleblower laws affected these high-level appointees in the Office of Attorney General. Courts have ruled that it does, but that is pending appeal. What we might be seeing is something of a mutiny—and then, because of bad feelings, jumping to conclusions and accusations to convince themselves and others that their failure to do the work assigned to them was not what led to the loss of their jobs.

One of them, Brickman, I think it was, insisted that he was not interested and would never take the settlement—the $3 million that was brought to the legislature, which supposedly triggered the investigation during the legislative session last March. Except, when the settlement was finally agreed upon, he took it. He testified that he required the AG to apologize to them for calling them rogue employees (which, obviously, they were). He didn’t get that. So far the money hasn’t been appropriated to pay them, but when it does, it’s because he signed on to receive it. Hmm.

In closing arguments, the prosecutors urged the jury (the Senate) to believe that they didn’t have to remove all doubt. They just needed to do what they thought was right. Isn’t that convenient—when the rules and the law say they must acquit if the evidence hasn’t taken them beyond a reasonable doubt standard.

The biggest difference between this and a regular case is that it is political. Sad to say, it is highly unlikely that any of the eleven Democrats in the Senate will vote to acquit. It’s a team sport. They’re not really on either team in this one; they’re the handicap. The two teams are: the ones trying to oust the duly elected Republican official and the ones trying to restore him to his office to do the people’s work. There are 18 total Republicans allowed to vote (excluding Senator Angela Paxton).

We can identify the ones very likely to acquit. These are the ones who voted to dismiss before the trial: Bettencourt (my state senator), Campbell, Creighton, Hall, Kolkhorst, Parker, Perry, Schwertner, and Sparks. However, Sparks, Schwertner, and Perry did not vote to dismiss on all counts. So there are a solid six. If as many as ten senators vote to acquit after hearing the case, then Paxton is acquitted and returns to work.

There are six identified as pushing to convict: Huffman, Hughes, Hancock, Middleton, Birdwell, Nichols. With the eleven Democrats, that puts their count at 17. They would need four more to convict.

There are several considered “swing” voters on this issue: besides possibly Perry, Schwertner, and Sparks, who were willing to dismiss on several counts, there are unknowns Springer, Flores, and King. So the question is, where will four of them go?

 

The Senate Trial Players

Unlike other Senate votes, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick does not cast a tiebreaking vote. He was the judge. And I have to say, I appreciated his work. It was done with humility, good humor, and professional respect. I do not know what his opinion is. There were times when the defense seemed to be saying “Objection. Hearsay” every other sentence. I didn’t keep track, but as the umpire I couldn’t see that he gave more to one team than another. He had some expertise on hand to help him answer questions he had about it. And generally he seemed fair.

I had definite responses to the two legal teams. There’s a particular style of Texas lawyer, where he talks with a slow drawl and doesn’t appear too bright—but that is an act that surprises the opposition when the bite happens. The slow Texas drawl and fumbling described the prosecution team, particularly their lead lawyer. But there was no bite. It was fumbling to the end—including when Rusty Hardin rested his case before cross-examine and redirect of the last witness. Not knowing page numbers was a problem. Not putting exhibits into evidence was another.

The defense, on the other hand, was quick, organized, strategic. Tony Buzbee is probably an acquired taste, but he was passionate and capable, as were the others on his team.

 

My Conclusion

As my friend said, you probably saw what you expected from the trial. I had been appalled at the lack of evidence presented at the House hearing, and the last-minute push to do that dirty deed. But people kept saying the evidence would come with the real trial in the Senate. I was open to that. I’ve been disappointed by way too many politicians in the past. I’m disappointed that Ken Paxton was guilty of the affair. Where can public virtue be found where there is not private virtue? Or, as John Adams put it: "Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” I am willing to accept that he is repentant; his wife has accepted that. And, as they quipped during trial, if we impeached for infidelity in Austin, we’d be holding impeachments for a long long time.

I was willing to see the evidence. Each time the prosecution laid out the things that looked bad, I could see why a person might have thought that. But then, each time, the defense got up and displayed how flimsy that was. Innuendo. Suspicion. Hearsay. Assumption. No proof. Not any.

I believe I know what should happen. Whether I am right or not, I pray that the Lord, who knows all, will grant our state what is right for the people of Texas, that justice may be done.

 

Resources

Texas Senate provided livestreaming and archived recordings. The archived segments were not always up the same day, but I believe there are all up now. When the Senate convenes to vote, that should be livestreamed as well. (If you search YouTube you will also find some livestreaming by various local news outlets, which was helpful when the Senate website delayed posting after livestreaming ended.)

Texas Scorecard has several resources, in addition to daily news coverage.

·        Luke Macias, daily emails up through day five and weekly podcast. 

·        Brandon Waltens, daily headlines.  You can also look for Brandon Waltens on X (Twitter).

·        The Texas Heist documentary 

 

Houston Conservative Forum—Don Hooper. This source was new to me. As with Texas Scorecard, there is a bias toward defending AG Paxton. Know that going in, but the coverage is good, and squares with what I saw in the hearings, but adding some inside baseball I didn’t know. Video clips are sourced from Brandon Waltens.

·        Day 1 Prior Election Doctrine (vote on whether to dismiss each count) 

·        Day 2—Beginning of Trial 

·        Day 3 

·        Day 4 

·        Day 5 

·        Day 6 

·        Day 7 

·        Day 8 

·        Elements of Articles of Impeachment

It Depends on Who You Trust

Last week I was a shocked as anyone to learn that the Texas House was doing an impeachment hearing of Attorney General Ken Paxton—with about 48 hours’ notice, at the tail end of the session when normally you’d see them gaveling down a vote every half minute to get through those agreed upon things. (Honorary recognitions fit in that category, but also a number of significant bills that just need a floor vote before they’re ready to be sent to the governor for signature.)

What is going on?

Texas Attorney General Paxton holds a press conference in response to
the call for his impeachment, screenshot from here.

And then I tuned in for the impeachment hearing on Saturday, which took a total of four hours, during which there was no witness testimony, no evidence presented, just House members speaking on one side or the other, followed by an up or down vote on the recommendation of the House General Investigating Committee. And, unlike a US presidential impeachment, the House impeachment would suspend the officeholder until the completion of a trial in the Senate. Instant ouster, albeit not yet permanent.

Word as of this morning is that the Senate will take up the trial August 28. That will be at best three months of AG Paxton being unable to do what he was in the middle of doing, which we should probably consider. Governor Abbott has appointed former Secretary of State John Scott to fill the role in the interim; I do not know anything about Scott.

tweet from Jill Glover SREC committeewoman from SD 12

The vote, after that non-trial half day was 121 Yea 23 Nay. The House is majority Republican; AG Paxton is Republican. 60 Democrats of course voted for impeachment, with 2 or 3 absent or not voting. 61 Republicans voted for impeachment. My representative was one of them (I had urged her to vote Nay based on what I could see).

Among those lonely 23 were two new representatives that I knew as grassroots conservatives for years before they even considered running: Mark Dorazio of San Antonio and Teri Leo-Wilson of Galveston. If they voted Nay, I trust they had good reason. And maybe I was right about what I was seeing.

vote board in the Texas House on Paxton impeachment
image passed along from a friend

I have a gut-level reaction to what has happened, in step with many friends but not everyone. So that was followed by questions about whether I knew enough to make that judgment. So, in the week since, I have tried to do some due diligence, such as it is, which I’m sharing below in what is, I’m sorry to say, much too long for one post (or four), but here it is anyway. And my due diligence and consideration may in fact be more than most of those who voted to impeach on Saturday bothered to do.

the roll call vote on impeachment, May 27, 2023
image passed along to me, from Texas Legislature Online

 

SOURCES

If you’d like to get the basic facts for yourself, I suggest starting with the following:

·        Committee hearing (4 hours) here. (The video is actually only three hours of report, followed by a full hour of a still shot of the room while the committee met privately in executive session. Supposedly the committee began investigation into a possible Paxton impeachment in February, but I can only find these 4 hours related to it, from May 24. There are two other brief videos of this committee, May 23 and 25; no other video record of this committee is provided. See full House video list here.)

·        House Floor debate (4 hours) here.

·        There are 20 counts: here.

·        The OAG put together a very long (374-page) response to allegations, here.

·        The OAG hired an independent group of lawyers to investigate; their report is here.

 

COMMITTEE BACKGROUND

Texas House General Investigating Committee
image from Texas Legislature Online

Here’s the basic background. There were several employees of the Office of Attorney General who were fired in late 2020. They filed whistleblower complaints and claim that their firing was motivated by their complaints. There was a lawsuit involving four of them, which was being settled for $3.3 million dollars, for which the OAG requested state funding.

It is neither unusual nor improper for a state office to require state funding for defense or legal payment regarding suits against a sitting elected official related to his duties in office. That is to protect such officeholders from lawsuit abuse and threat in the course of their work. $3.3 million sounds like a lot of money, and to most of us it is. But it is likely considerably less than yet more ongoing legal defense costs, and is not a great deal more than the wages would have been for four high-level officials in the OAG for the two years since their firing.

It was the request for that $3.3 million that triggered the investigation by the House Investigative Committee, which was convened in February.

In mid-March the Committee hired several lawyers to investigate the allegations of the whistleblowers. They carried out that assignment and made their three-hour oral report on Wednesday, May 24. The Committee then deliberated for one hour and made the recommendation for impeachment to happen on Saturday, May 27.

The Committee did not hear from anyone other than the hired investigators. They did not call for testimony from any first-hand witnesses. Nor were witnesses under oath when interviewed by the investigation team. Nor did they allow as evidence anything from either the OAG (although their long report is referenced by the investigators) or from the independent investigative report, I’ll refer to as the Brisbois report (the name of one of the lawyers of the firm).

The Saturday hearing did not hear either from the investigators or any witnesses. They had floor discussion, as with any other bill, which included hearing from Committee members and other House members who asked to weigh in.

Committee Chairman Murr claimed, during Saturday’s floor debate, that they (the Committee) had been working on this investigation since February, and that the Attorney General could have testified or submitted evidence at any time. That isn’t exactly true. The Committee, as most other House committees, was formed in February, a month after start of session. The Committee assigned the investigation team in mid-March. The investigation team did not interview AG Paxton, nor any others accused of being involved in wrongdoing; they interviewed the whistleblowers and combed through their paperwork. Looking at this now, I wonder if they were avoiding alerting the OAG of their investigation and possible intention to impeach.

Committee Chairman Murr during Saturday's impeachment debate
screenshot from here

The Committee was not open about the investigation. Most House members first learned of the investigation by the Committee when the Committee announced their recommendation to hold the impeachment hearing—with 48 hours’ notice. The Committee had not asked for testimony or information from the OAG, nor from Ken Paxton himself. There must have been some awareness, however, because we were told on Saturday that the OAG had sent someone to present the findings of the independent law firm’s investigation (the Brisbois report), but the Committee had refused it; this happened I believe on Wednesday, the day of the hearing.

So, the House had the three-hour report to go by—and nothing else but their gut instincts about the guilt or innocence of the duly re-elected Attorney General (that is, re-elected for a third term, after the accusations of the whistleblowers were public for two years).

There’s another timing detail we probably ought to add. House Speaker Dade Phelan was drunk during floor debates and votes; video of him slurring his words and appearing either drunk or having a stroke went viral the week before. (Info for non-Texans: his name is pronounced Fee-lin; and I have heard him speak as fast and crisp as an auctioneer in a hurried close of session in the past. He really was drunk in the video.) AG Ken Paxton called him out for it and asked for him to step down. This happened Tuesday, May 23 (a tweet shows 2:53 PM). Paxton followed with a letter to the General Investigative Committee—the one investigating Paxton that no one knew about yet—to open an investigation into Phelan’s drunkenness, a violation of ethics and appropriate behavior that embarrasses the state.

video of House Speaker Dade Phelan drunk on duty
screenshot from here

This is the day before the Committee hearing on Paxton, which Chairman Murr claims was scheduled for that date as of the previous Friday. I can’t verify that after the fact, but since the investigation team presumably had to travel in to give their report, that could be true.

The question is, could Paxton’s call for Phelan to step down be related to the upcoming report on the investigation into him, to deflect? Or could the way the investigation suddenly showed up and quickly turned into an impeachment be a retaliation for calling for Phelan to step down? Or both? Or neither? I don’t think I can answer that here, but it’s worth noting that there’s a lot going on behind scenes that we’re not privy to.

What we can and ought to know, then, is what was reported to the Committee by the investigation team, and what was reported by the Brisbois investigation. (I didn’t yet read through the long OAG report, but a fair trial ought to include that as well; I hope the Senate does that.)

 

INVESTIGATION TEAM REPORT

Texas House General Investigating Committee hearing May 24, 2023
screenshot from here

Five lawyers (I believe that was the number) were hired by the House General Investigating Committee, around March 14, 2023, to follow the accusations of the whistleblowers and make a report. As I said, it is unclear whether most (or rather, it’s unlikely that most) or any of the voting House members watched the video report to the Committee in its entirety, or perhaps read the transcript (I don’t know where that would be) or a written report provided by the investigators (if there was a written report, I also don’t know where that would be).

The investigation team lawyers have strong credentials. I don’t have any knowledge of any of them to distrust them. But, then, there are a whole lot of people involved in this that I didn’t know I had reason to distrust, so there may be plenty of reasons that I’m unaware of.

Twenty counts is a lot. They can be categorized, or grouped.

·        1-6, 8, 18 are Disregard of Public Duty, dereliction of duty

·        7, 17   misapplication of funds or resources

·        9-10   bribery

·        11-12  obstruction of justice

·        13-15 false statements in official records

·        16   conspiracy and attempted conspiracy

·        19-20   unfit for office, abuse of public trust

There’s a rhetorical technique, sometimes called the Galloping Gish (or Gish Gallop, if you prefer). You pile on a lot of things, all at once, each of which could be dismissed, with enough time and effort, but the idea is to overwhelm the opponent with so much that they think, among all this wrongdoing, there must be some truth to the fact the guy is guilty. When you make it an impeachable offense (conspiracy) to defend yourself against the other allegations, I think there might be more counts than necessary. Piling on in a Galloping Gish is what this looks like to me.

There was a securities case, brought in 2015, regarding behavior in 2009 or earlier, if I’m getting that right. The case will be eight years old in July. Every civil litigation regarding the same accusations was long ago dismissed. Yet this case still hasn’t been brought to court. The investigation team pointed out that this meant the defense team never had to go through discovery. They fail to mention that the prosecution hasn't had to go through discovery and actually present their case either.

It seems to me a trivial matter. I may be missing details, but it appears that Paxton was asked by clients for recommendations about a securities investment company. Paxton recommended someone he knows and was associated with—but failed to mention that he got a payment for recommending them. The clients were fully satisfied with the recommendation. They did not complain about any lack of disclosure; someone else trying to take him down did that.

This doesn’t have very much to do with the whistleblower complaints. This suit was there well before Paxton ran for AG, and any employees knew about it when they agreed to work for him. The investigation team report detailed it nevertheless.

Many of the complaints come from anything associated with a real estate developer named Nate Paul. He made a one-time campaign donation of $25,000 to the Paxton campaign, for his first election to AG I believe. It was reported according to law, no illegality there. While it is sizable, the man is extremely wealthy, and that isn’t a huge donation for a man of his budget. He was a friend of Paxton’s prior to and after the donation and election.

There seems to be an attempt to tie the donation to Paxton’s actions that may favor Nate Paul. One of the ones they bring up twice relates to the renovation of Paxton’s house. There was water damage. The Paxtons decided to do a full renovation, rather than simply repair. The investigation team report seems hung up on the fact that Paxton asked for an upgrade on the countertops, to granite; they bring it up twice. This is in a day when any high-end home probably already has granite countertops; they are de rigueur. Someone who talked with the investigation team overheard a conversation between Paxton and the contractor, asking for the upgrade. The contractor said it would be an additional $20,000. Paxton said to go ahead. The contractor said OK, he’d talk to Nate about it.

The assumption was made, I presume, by the person overhearing, that Nate Paul was doing the house renovation as a gift to Paxton in exchange for possible favors. But the Paxtons have the receipts to show that they paid for all the work. It may have been Nate Paul’s company that did it. That would be logical for a person to hire a good friend who does that kind of work. There is nothing to this allegation whatsoever, and yet it occupies a chunk of the investigation team report.

Of course, there’s more. We’ll start with the peripheral one. The claim is that Ken Paxton was having an affair with a woman, and that he asked Nate Paul to give her a job, as a favor to him.

Paxton has said that the whistleblower allegations are all false, innuendo, and gossip. He and his wife remain married (she is a state senator and will thus be on the jury for his trial in the fall). She is independent and powerful in her own right, so why would she stay with a man having an affair?

The media speak of the affair openly, as if it is a known fact. I find this troubling. The one time I met Ken Paxton was at a Tea Party meeting. I’m trying to remember when. I think it was from his 2014 campaign. He convinced me that he was a constitutional conservative, and that was based on his strong Christian worldview. A person willing to break a marriage covenant, it seems to me, would have even less trouble breaking the covenant of the Constitution.

Nevertheless, recommending someone you know for a job at a friend’s place of business seems both normal and legal. The inference is that these behaviors only happen because of corrupt reasons. But there doesn’t appear to be any related illegality. No one knows what position the alleged woman was given nor what she might have been paid, nor did they seem concerned with whether the unknown woman could have been hired because she was capable of doing a particular job.

The investigation team report does claim that there are actions Paxton took that benefited Nate Paul. One of them relates to a search warrant at Nate Paul’s property/offices. Paul’s lawyers were given the list of items to be sought, the brief warrant. But when his lawyers asked for the full search warrant, to know what their client was being accused of, they were refused and got only a heavily redacted version.

The investigation team explained that this is standard; they don’t want the accused to know ahead of time what they’re being accused of, because they could tamper with or hide relevant evidence.

One thing they mention is a conversation about this rather heavy-handed search, and Paxton sympathized, saying he’d suffered that kind of treatment as well, and he didn’t want to go out of his way to help out the FBI. The investigation team—emphasized by the Committee—seemed shocked, shocked! that the top law enforcement officer of the state wasn’t 100% behind a law enforcement body.

However, in this day of SWAT raids on innocent and harmless citizens—including a former US President—some of us might be fully behind Paxton on those sentiments.

Anyway, related to the warrant, Paxton asked for and obtained the unredacted warrant and held it in his office for several days before returning it. Meanwhile, there was a jurisdictional change made such that Paul’s lawyers could seek again to get the unredacted information they sought.

But someone reporting to the investigation team saw that, around this time, Paxton had a staffer hand-deliver a manilla envelope of unknown contents to Nate Paul at Paul’s office.

Paul’s lawyers didn’t seek the unredacted information again. The investigative team assumes it is because they already had the information they needed, because Paxton had illegally given it to Paul in the manilla envelope.

Paxton is being impeached because he handed a manilla envelope to a person.

There was, however, another item related to Nate Paul. He believed his documents had been tampered with. He turned them in for examination. Whoever handled that in the OAG found no evidence of tampering. Also, the whistleblowers claimed that Paul didn’t provide the documents in question. Both, it seems to me, can’t be true.

Paxton asked about it. He asked for a list of documents the OAG lawyers wanted Paul to provide. This was considered interference by the whistleblowers.

I think it was related to this that Paxton hired a lawyer to look further into this matter. The lawyer, the investigation team made a big note of saying, had only five years’ experience and wasn’t a prosecutor, so Paxton had no business hiring him—although they admitted the AG has the legal right to hire who he wants, whether he goes through the official review protocol or not.

I’m surmising here, but it could be that Paxton had lost trust in the staff who was handling these issues. He was aware of them because he was friends with Nate Paul, but the trust issue would go beyond that. So, what may look like giving preferential treatment to a friend could be dealing with corruption in his office. Or maybe the friend was getting preferential treatment—but unless he was getting illegal help, that still isn’t necessarily an impeachable offense.

Note that the investigation team did not think it worth their time to interview Nate Paul or his associates related to any of the questions involving him. And the paperwork they went through was provided by the whistleblowers, who were of course not providing anything exculpatory.

 

BRISBOIS REPORT

a page from the Brisbois report

Let’s look at the other side now.

The Brisbois report lets us know that there was full authority to fire at will by the AG, and political appointees are not subject to whistleblower protection, only public employees. The Brisbois report concludes:

First Assistant Webster has identified, and the objective evidence we have been able to review supports, that each Complainant who was fired was fired based upon that individual Complainant’s poor work performance and, in some cases, clear insubordination.

We’ll take a look at a few examples. There was the former First Assistant Penley. He had warned AG Paxton against doing anything related to any Nate Paul case. And he was very offended that his boss did not do as Penley ordered, and particularly about the hiring of the lawyer, Cammack. So he acted in direct opposition to the AG.

According to the Brisbois report:

After Mr. Penley released incorrect information as part of his official duties at OAG, the Attorney General wished to place Mr. Penley on administrative leave. As mentioned in the OAG Report, OAG found that Mr. Penley misled:

·        Don Clemmer to obtain copies of secret grand jury subpoenas for the unlawful purpose of providing those subpoenas to a third party, namely Johnny Sutton[i].

·        The 460th Criminal District Court Judge, in a court filing, by not disclosing that Penley had within his possession a signed contract between AG Paxton and Cammack that designated Cammack as OAG’s outside counsel. See, e.g., OAG Report at 2.

In addition, after removing the Attorney General’s name from the OAG Seal on OAG letterhead, Mr. Penley sent an unauthorized cease-and-desist letter to Brandon Cammack on September 30, 2020, in violation of direct orders from the Attorney General. This is referred to as the “Penley Letter” in the OAG’s Report. See OAG Report, Ex. 19.

Yeah, the whistleblower was worried about Paxton's “impeachable offenses,” but didn’t see anything wrong with forging documents and lying in direct opposition to his boss.

This next is about a person named Vassar, in relation to trying to get grants that I believe were used to pay for certain OAG staff. Vassar was saying the OAG could not get grants because of the longstanding prosecution filed against AG Paxton in 2015—although that longstanding case was not a hindrance in past years, the whole first term, and the second term up to that point. The Brisbois report says this:

During Lewis Brisbois’s interview of Mr. Kinghorn, Mr. Kinghorn reported his belief that Mr. Vassar had raised this issue in an effort to obtain leverage as part of an effort to force the Attorney General to resign. Mr. Kinghorn’s opinion is buttressed by the fact that Mr. Vassar had approved many of the very same and similar grant applications for several years without expressing any concern.

It seems more likely that Vassar was trying to find a way to get rid of AG Paxton, rather than do the work he was assigned. That might warrant firing.

A third person was a Ms. Mase, who was being fired for abusive behavior toward her subordinates. She was fired right after her meeting with the FBI. She claims the firing was retaliation for her whistleblowing. However, no one in the OAG was aware of her meeting with the FBI, so it couldn’t be retaliatory. The Brisbois report says:

In an interview Mr. De La Garza stated that Mr. De La Garza believes Ms. Mase knew she was going to be dismissed from OAG, and so Ms. Mase likely timed her meeting with the FBI to provide the appearance of a connection between that meeting and Ms. Mase firing. There appears to be no evidence to indicate that any individuals at OAG, including First Assistant Webster, knew beforehand that Ms. Mase intended to meet with government authorities on October 20, 2020, shortly before the First Assistant carried out the prior decision to fire Ms. Mase. If First Assistant Webster and others did not know about this meeting, they could not have retaliated against Ms. Mase for attending it.

More on Mase:

Given Ms. Mase’s insistence on knowing all interactions between Mr. Simpson and the First Assistant, Ms. Mase’s knowledge of OAG placing Mr. Vassar on investigative leave, and the above-mentioned email from First Assistant Webster on October 19, 2020, it seems likely Ms. Mase surmised she would soon be fired or placed on investigative leave. As such, the timing of Ms. Mase’s meeting with federal authorities seems more likely to be an effort to obtain the “job insurance” Ms. Mase has discussed with Mr. De La Garza in light of Ms. Mase’s reasonable perception of the OAG’s pending decision to fire Ms. Mase.

Rather than merely dismissing employees, AG Paxton seemed more likely to put them on paid investigative leave, or to move them to a different department—no loss in pay. It may be that he was too soft on certain people who were intent on doing harm to his reputation and his ability to do his job.

The paper trail shows that all the firing offenses were documented and in process of investigation well before any whistleblowers claimed that status or made their reports. So we’re starting with a rather major lie on their part.

 

CONCLUSION

It could be that the whistleblowers are right, and that the AG is wildly corrupt.

Or it could be that the whistleblowers are among a rather large number of establishment Republicans who don’t want AG Paxton to do what he’s been doing. And there’s a sizable list—things that grassroots Americans approve of, but that elites do not. Some of these actions show up in the list of resources below.

Republican Party of Texas Chair
Matt Rinaldi's statement

I have in the past been persuaded to question AG Paxton’s rulings as well as the rumors of corruption in his office. I depended on people I trust. I now question where those people were getting that info. I actually voted for another person in the 2022 primary. Seeing what looks like a railroading scheme now—so similar to what was done to President Trump for his entire term, and beyond—I think I might have been steered wrong.

There are plenty of people who have written responses to this impeachment. There are also some theories about the reasons. I’ll list a few below, rather than going through those arguments in addition to what is already too long a piece.

To summarize, my personal belief is that the impeachment was unjust. I hope that the Senate trial will bring out all the facts and reveal the corruption wherever it lies. The voters in the state deserve that.

 

MORE BACKGROUND RESOURCES

·        “ANALYSIS: Crony Establishment Will Veto Your Vote” by Michael Quinn Sullivan for Texas Scorecard, May 30, 2023. 

·        “Texas AG Ken Paxton Take-Down – Why Now?” by Devvy Kidd, May 31, 2023. 

·        “Dade Phelan Targets Trump’s Top Lawyer With Illegal Impeachment” by Cary Cheshire for Texas Scorecard, May 26, 2023. 

·        “FEUD: SPEAKER OF TX HOUSE DADE PHELAN VS. TAGKEN PAXTON” by Donna Garner, May 25, 2023. This piece lists a large number of cases AG Paxton has been involved in, which probably explains his popularity with the voters but not the elites. 

·        “Pax­ton Launch­es Inves­ti­ga­tion into Gain-of-Func­tion Research and Mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions by Covid-19 Vac­cine Manufacturers” official OAG press release May 1, 2023. 

·        “Paxton Announces Sec­ond Inves­ti­ga­tion into Texas Hos­pi­tal for Poten­tial­ly Unlaw­ful­ly Per­form­ing ​'Gen­der Tran­si­tion­ing' Procedures” official OAG press release May 19, 2023. 

·        “Texas AG Ken Paxton’s COVID-19 vaccine investigation could stick it to Big Pharma execs” by Miranda Devine for the New York Post, April 30, 2023. 

·        Rep. Schaeffer’s response to the impeachment, May 26, 2023, within an email from Grassroots for America. 

·        “Texas Legislature has a WHORE HOUSE in it...Everything you might want to know about the Texas Coup” BIZPAC email (I don’t know if it originated with them; I saw it passed on from friends before I received it from BIZPAC). 

·        “Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan’s Popularity Plummets Following Lackluster Session” by Brandon Waltens for Texas Scorecard, May 29, 2023. 

·        “A Time for Choosing in Texas” by Wallace Hall Jr, for Texas Scorecard, June 1, 2023. 

·        “WATCH: Texas AG Ken Paxton Holds Press Conference in Response to House RINOs’ “Deceitful Impeachment Attempt” – He Was Railroaded – Urges Supporters to “Petition Your Government” TOMORROW AT 1 PM” by Jordan Conradson for Gateway Pundit, May 26, 2023. 

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[i] Johnny Sutton is the attorney famous (or infamous) for prosecuting two border guards “for using a gun in carrying out a crime” when they shot an illegal intruder at the border. Their long sentence was commuted after a couple of years.