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. 

---

[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.

Projection

If you have not heard the psychological term projection, you may want to look it up. Essentially, it is seeing in others what is actually in yourself—in your thoughts, actions, intentions. You see it in others when it is not there, but you fail to see it in yourself.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Example 1: The Impeachment Acquittal

President Trump, after second impeachment acquittal
photo: Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty images, found here

This past Saturday former President Trump was acquitted in the impeachment trial. The prosecution spent two days last week drumming up emotional reaction to the violence that took place at the capitol on January 6th.

In an actual court of law, the defense would stipulate that the violence took place; showing evidence of it serves only to be “prejudicial rather than probative,[i]” so that would be inadmissible. Also inadmissible would be hearsay evidence, such as “I heard someone say that they heard Trump say….” The prosecution would have been required to depose the actual person who heard the actual statement.

In other words, while it is clear that violence took place, the prosecution showed zero evidence that the President incited it.

What they tried to do was claim it was his consistent horrible rhetoric that led to the violence. They speak of that as a given. But they don’t provide evidence of any rhetoric by President Trump actually calling for violence.

During the 2 ½ hours of defense presentation, the President’s lawyers also showed a video montage—of Democrats, many among those in that room—using the word “fight” as political rhetoric. (Here: It starts at the 20-minute mark and goes on for 11 ½ minutes.) Beyond that, many of them used actual calls for violence, and encouraged the violence that happened over the summer. Much of it was closer to incitement than anything President Trump said during his rally speech—or in any other speech.

That video montage of Democrats calling for fighting was instructive. The defense team didn’t claim those Democrats should all be prosecuted or impeached; they agreed that this was just political rhetoric. And political rhetoric actually has a heightened First Amendment protection, not lessened.

There was, in fact, plenty of evidence that the President didn’t incite the attack. He had sought only legal means regarding the voter fraud, and he reminded listeners that we are the party of law and order. I will add that he certainly had no motivation to disrupt the proceedings that were about to show the evidence of voter fraud that hadn’t been seen by a large portion of the public; that disruption was exactly opposite of what he called people to the rally to support.

The prosecution was embarrassed by the the presentation of the defense. Rather than going straight to a Senate vote, they spent time Saturday trying to call witnesses—after the trial. That is never done. You don’t get to closing arguments and suddenly say, “Oh, by the way, we want to call additional witnesses after all.” It’s too late for that.

In response, the defense said they were willing if they were also allowed to call witnesses—because they had been deprived of that during both the House and Senate parts of the process. Maybe they’d start with Nancy Pelosi, to learn what she knew ahead of time of possible danger to the capitol, and to have her explain why she refused additional protection to be brought in. Because there was, in fact, growing evidence that the attack was planned and had no connection to President Trump, and that Pelosi and others knew that in advance but wanted an opportunity to blame Trump.

The prosecution quickly backed off and settled for one statement to be read in; it was a second or third-hand account of something someone said they heard the President say—which, again, would not have been admissible in an actual court of law.

The vote went as expected—except that one of the Republicans who had voted that they didn’t have jurisdiction, looked at the prosecution, which was totally lacking in evidence but full of emotion, and voted to convict President Trump on incitement to insurrection. Still, unlike in a court with an actual jury, where consensus is required, this Senate jury fell ten short of a required two-thirds majority.

Defense attorney, Michael Van der Veen, in his closing statement, pointed out that it wasn’t justice that was driving the impeachment, and he offered four grounds for acquittal:

We heard one of the congressmen on the screen: “If you don’t impeach him, he might be elected again.” That’s the fear. That’s what’s driving this impeachment.

When you deliberate over your decision, there are four distinct grounds under which you must acquit my client.

(1)    First, there’s jurisdiction. There is no jurisdiction. And if you believe that, you still get to say it.

(2)  Two, rule 23: It had to be divisible. Each allegation had to be singularly set out in front of you, so it could be voted on and see if two-thirds of you think that they proved that case or not. They didn’t do that. You’ve got to ask yourself why. They know the Senate rules. They got them, and so did I. Why’d they do it? Because they hadn’t investigated, first of all. But also, what they found out, as they were preparing all of this, is they couldn’t do it. So, if they threw as much in as they could, and made as many bold, bald allegations as they could, then maybe two-thirds of you would fall for it. That’s why the rules don’t allow it to go that way.

(3)  Due process. I’ve exhausted that subject. It’s a really good reason for all of you—all of you in this chamber—to stop the politics, to read the Constitution and apply it to this proceeding, and acknowledge that the lack of due process—way over the top. Shocking. And you must not stand for it.

(4)  And, of course, the First Amendment, the actual facts of this case. There were no words of incitement.

Swalwell showed media the tweets presented as evidence.
He misunderstood the word Calvary. The blue check mark
was added; also, at this point, they had the wrong year,
meaning they were recreations, not screenshots.
This screenshot from here.

By the way, on that third one, due process, did you hear that the prosecution had doctored evidence?
Defense attorney David Schoen offered multiple examples. One was a tweet sent out by a woman saying they were bringing the Calvary, which House Manager Swalwell misread as “cavalry,” or armed warriors on horses, when it really meant followers of Christ, who died on a hill named Calvary. Besides the misreading, the tweet as presented as evidence had a check mark showing the sender as verified as a public figure, meaning she had a large influence—a mark she does not have on her account, meaning it wasn’t a screenshot of the original tweet and could not be offered as evidence. In a real court of law, a single doctored piece of evidence is sufficient to have the case dismissed. 

Enough about that process. It was political theater with a known outcome beforehand—like seeing yet another movie portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express when you’ve read the book and seen previous movies. You know how it’s going to turn out.

But let’s add one more irony.

The attorney, Mr. Van der Veen, had his home graffitied, and his family and law practice threatened and attacked. People who are outraged about the capitol are pretty sanguine about threats and attacks on individuals. These miscreants called the attorney a traitor—in spray paint on his driveway—for providing a defense against the fact-free impeachment. And it doesn’t seem to occur to them that, if you have to intimidate a defense lawyer, you might be a much bigger threat to America than President Trump ever was.

Projection. They see Trump as bad, because they are bad, likely doing the very things they accuse him of.

This may not be exactly related to projection, but Candace Owens sums up their thinking, implying, yes, indeed, it is mental illness.

image found here

 

Example 2: Harris County Election Law Crime

There’s a case of voter fraud here in Harris County that we’re looking at right now. Actually there are many, but this one seems like it ought to be a slam dunk.

On October 14, 2020, a Republican poll watcher was denied access to observe the Signature Verification Committee’s work, related to ballots by mail. The presiding judge for that process was Rob Icsezen. He didn’t just deny her access. He wrote on her poll watcher certificate that poll watchers are not allowed to observe the work of that committee—and then he signed his statement.

The poll watcher appealed to Mr. Michael Winn, the Director of Elections for the Harris County Clerk; he refused to correct the situation. Members of the Early Voting Ballot Board witness the above and have signed affidavits saying so. The poll watcher then appealed to Mr. Keith Ingram of the Election Division of the Secretary of State’s office, who verified that poll watchers can observe the Signature Verification Committee’s work. In other words, Mr. Icsezen’s denial of access to poll watchers was illegal.

All of the signed affidavits related to the case were presented to the Office of the Attorney General that week. AG Ken Paxton’s office then sent its own investigators to Harris County to re-interview each witness, re-creating the affidavits. It is now February, and the Republican AG’s office has yet to take action on this case that was placed in their laps.

Many of us are contacting the AG’s office to encourage them to act. [If you’re in Texas and take an interest, here’s an action plan.] It may seem like a small thing, but if we don’t act on the known crime, it continues. At the very least, this presiding judge should be prevented from working an election again.

What got my attention, as I was learning about this case, was a memo this partisan PJ sent out the week before he committed that crime. In part, he urged voters to vote Democrat all the way down the ticket and explained why:

Even if the worst human of our generation, whose putrid vile will stain the top of our ticket, even if he loses this election, 60+ million Americans will have voted for him. [actually closer to 74-79 million]. And they’ll still be here when he is gone.

Let that sink in a moment. He is saying that Donald J. Trump is the worst human of our generation. Worse than Xi Jinping. Worse than Kim Jong-un. Worse than Jeffrey Epstein, who sex-trafficked children. Worse than Osama bin Laden. Worse than the guy who mass murdered people at a music concert in Las Vegas. Worse than the Boston Marathon bombers. Worse than drug cartels or violent gangs.

Because of his tweets. Which are supposedly worse than referring to people as “putrid vile” who “will stain the top of” a ballot just by having their name there.

image of Robert Icsezen post
from Oct. 6, 2020, from here 

I don’t want to defend rude tweets. But I keep waiting for someone to share at least one that is truly vile, or racist, or some other epithet they keep throwing around about President Trump. His account was taken down by Twitter, but someone archived it, here.  If you have time, please comb through them and find something worse than what this man just said about Donald Trump. Then we have a fact to converse on.

Here’s a bit more of what Icsezen says—about us voters:

The only principle that guides the GOPklan, is power. They have shown this repeatedly, trampling laws and norms without hesitation. It’s OK in GOPland to be an awful person unbound by any sense of community or consistency, so long as you get those judges in, deregulate big business and keep those black and brown people away from the polls and in cages.

That’s projection.

The Dems have used every lever they can find to increase and hold their power. Look at the censorship we’re dealing with. Look at the attempts to change voting laws going forward to facilitate fraud. Look at the insistence on taking away the people’s means of self-defense. Look at their plans to “pack the Senate” by adding DC as a state, and maybe also Puerto Rico and Guam, and to “pack the court” by adding whatever number to the Supreme Court they want in order to secure the outcome they want. They want to make sure their power is never again challenged, even if they must use Communist Chinese methods of monitoring, and threatening that those who disagree may not buy, sell, or make a living.

But somehow Trump’s smaller government, non-authoritarian actions over four years were pure power hunger?

And “trampling laws”? You mean like that refusal to allow observation by poll watchers to assure a free and fair election? What laws is he referring to?—since neither the first nor second impeachment of the President involved an actual accusation of a crime, because they couldn’t find one.

We could deal with each point. But, do Republicans keep black and brown people from the polls? No. We want free and fair elections for all. And, this election, that meant more black and brown people voting Republican than ever, mainly because their economic and social situations improved under Trump in ways that Democrat promises had never actually provided. Because, if it’s about power—as it arguably is for Democrats, at least their leadership—you want to keep people dependent. On the plantation, you might say. While we’re mentioning that, the actual Klan was and always has been affiliated with the Democrat Party.

And those cages? The photos you’ve seen are most likely from 2014, under Obama, when they were constructed. Or they might be people in the Middle East, not even the right part of the world. But lying is apparently the Democrat comfort zone.

The policy of separating children temporarily from parents has a specific purpose: to protect children from trafficking. It needed to be determined that the children belonged to the adults claiming them. If that could be determined, then they could consider a detention arrangement with parents reunited with children. The Democrats didn’t question Obama on it. But with Trump, they’re willing to throw children to traffickers for the chance to create a visual that makes Trump look bad.

In other words, everything this guy says about President Trump is a lie. And he is pasting the lies onto every Trump voter.

Icsezen, the guy who broke the law to facilitate a fraudulent signature verification process, says, “All Republicans are guilty.” Ironically, with much tone-deafness and lack of self-awareness, he adds,

They must be taught a lesson: that truth matters, facts matter, consistency matters, principles matter, decency matters.

I know when we’ve worked elections along with well-meaning Democrats, and they see that we run a free and fair election, which is what they want too, we have no difficulties with them. It is that connection to law that gives us civilization together.

When someone flouts the law and gets away with it, that civil connection breaks down. It’s like in a crime-ridden neighborhood. Once law enforcement starts taking care of the relatively small window breaking and petty theft, they get a lot less of the assault, burglary, rape, and murder. Criminals come to expect that the law will be enforced.

We need that restoration of law enforcement.

 

But those doing that crazy projection? How do you fix that sort of crazy? I don’t know. How do we function together in a society with people who cannot see those who believe differently as human, and cannot see the lack of human decency in themselves? Maybe we need a whole lot of clinical psychologists who specialize in dealing with projection.

---

[i] I got the legal language from a Robert Gruler podcast.

Time for the Annual Pointless Impeachment Trial

A year ago, the pointless impeachment trial was meant to say, “Even though we can’t find a single crime, even a misdemeanor, that this President has committed, we think he’s awful and should be removed from office.” That was the essence of the prosecution, which of course went nowhere once they sent it to the Republican-led Senate. So it was posturing, nothing more.

This year, the pointless impeachment trial has actually included a crime—just not one the former President committed. And they’re saying the action, which he didn’t commit, was done a mere two weeks before inauguration. They held the trial just days before the President was leaving office. And they failed to deliver the Article of Impeachment to the Senate until well after inauguration.

I’m not a lawyer, but I can play one as well as the next blog writer. So here’s my analysis.

The founders didn’t want elected officials to have to spend their time in office defending themselves against lawsuits and various accusations. It is the nature of politics that there are things they will do in office that opposing factions will find just wrong, even though not technically unlawful. For policy issues that may actually violate the law, lawsuits can be brought against the government, rather than personally against the official.

But when it is the official who personally does wrongdoing, rather than a typical court trial, the remedy is an impeachment trial. In our Constitution, the limit of such a trial is to remove the person from office. The founders wanted to prevent the uncivilized practice of executing or imprisoning political enemies. If there was a criminal act, that could then be handled in a criminal trial—for example, say a president murdered his secretary of state in a fit of anger. The House would bring charges in an impeachment trial, and if the House found the president guilty, they would pass the articles of impeachment (the charges and the prosecution’s case) to the Senate, where the actual trial would be held. If the Senate found him guilty, he would be removed from office. That’s the limit of an impeachment. But the president—or a justice or other officeholder subject to impeachment—would thereafter be a private citizen, subject to criminal proceedings, and murder, as you know, has no statute of limitations.

A year ago, when we were talking about this, I explained, 

While an impeachment is not exactly a court trial, it is analogous to think of the impeachment articles, and all that was done in the House, as the prosecution’s case. When they pass along the articles of impeachment, that is akin to the prosecutors saying, “The prosecution rests its case.”

When the Senate takes up the case, they have a couple of options beyond holding a further trial. One is to look at the evidence and say, “No, the evidence does not show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant [the president] is guilty of these charges,” and they could rule not guilty.

Or they could look at the evidence and say, “He may have done these things he’s charged with but still not be guilty of something requiring his removal from office,” and they could rule not guilty.

Beyond that, of course, if they were to find him guilty, they could remove him from office, which, of course, they didn't do.

But this year, the trial is against a private citizen already out of office. The Congress doesn’t have the authority to legally pursue a private citizen, even a former officeholder. The Democrats don’t care, however. But that explains why Justice Roberts will not be overseeing the impeachment trial as constitutionally required; this is not a legal impeachment trial.

If the Senate trial were to find the former President guilty, they can’t even remove him from office. Obviously. The assertion is that they can at least attach the additional impeachment punishment of preventing him from ever running again. Now, seriously, in four years Donald Trump will be 78, practically as old as Joe Biden is now. While his health and energy are far better than Biden’s right now, handling a presidency between ages 78 and 82 might not be what he wants to do—or what the American people want him to do at that time. Democrats seem to assume others are as power hungry as they are, and as incapable of retiring from their power mongering. But if you look at someone who hasn’t lived his life accruing political power, you might find other life purposes altogether. Who knows?

However, if Donald Trump wants to run in 2024, he can run, regardless of what the House proclaims in a nonofficial “impeachment” trial. If he does, the House can take him to court, to see whether they had any legal authority to punish him by removing permission to run. But their saying “You can never run for anything again,” when they had no authority to do so is nothing more than slamming the door after someone leaves, and then saying, “And take that!” If they could, they would simply hold an “impeachment” trial of any political foe they never wanted to face and put up that roadblock. In a legal court of law, such a punishment couldn’t stand.

They also want to claim he shouldn’t be allowed to have a presidential library. A good question would be, why do they care? It’s a private thing, built with money from private donors. Not taxpayer dollars. And no one is forced to go to it. Just as Congress has no power to prevent other private citizens from building libraries, or other buildings of whatever purpose, they do not have the power to declare that a former president cannot build a library related to his life and his time in office.

This impeachment isn’t going anywhere for one large additional reason: the Democrats do not hold a 2/3 majority in the Senate, where they need to convince all Democrats plus around 17 Republicans that the President committed the crime they are accusing him of.

As with last time, it’s hard to know whether the Senate will even bother to try the case. With a split Senate, and possibly a few Republican defectors, they will likely look at the charges, and spend some time posturing. But they cannot convict. So it is a waste of taxpayer time and money.

There are some other legal issues related to this impeachment we ought to mention. Like we said, the House brought the single article of impeachment. That is the prosecution’s case. Done. They took only a few hours to discuss and even fewer pages to write up their case. They voted on that in a frenzied hurry.

And then they changed the article of impeachment, added to it, after the vote. This week they offered up what they’re calling a “memorandum” on the impeachment. And it isn’t what the House voted on.

Law vlogger and defense attorney Robert Gruler compared the original article of impeachment to this new memorandum. He reviewed what he said a couple of weeks ago, where he had shown the pertinent charges: that President Trump incited violence at the capitol with his speech, and they cited certain words from that speech. Here’s a screenshot of what was included:

Robert Gruler shows the main points of the Article of Impeachment
screenshot from here

You might note that, speaking untruths about election fraud is something the former President could defend himself on by showing that there was a whole lot of election fraud. They’re claiming that saying that basic fact, which they call untrue, incited violence at the capitol. The other things they’re saying incited violence are two quotes from his January 6^th speech. Plus, not shown on that page is also the Raffensberger phonecall, which Gruler says was simply a settlement discussion in a litigation suit, perfectly legal, even if the President’s words were not precisely elegant or helpful. It was certainly not something they could impeach him on, nor did they consider doing so prior to the events of January 6^th. In other words, that was just thrown in but wasn’t an impeachable charge.

Gruler draws the scope looking like this, inside the blue circle. Plenty of things exist outside the circle, but they are all outside the scope of the case.

The scope of the case includes only what is in the blue circle.
screenshot from here

 

What does he mean by scope? An example he gave was, if you were arrested for stealing a candy bar, and you face your day in court on that charge, referring to what you did on a certain day, a certain place, doing a particular thing—and then suddenly on the day you get to defend yourself in court, they say, “Oh, by the way, we’re also charging you with the theft of that TV.” What? That has nothing to do with what you were charged with. That’s not what your attorney prepared to defend you on. Not only that, it’s not what they presented evidence to prove. We have due process to prevent that sort of thing.

Here he shows what additional “outside the scope of the case” stuff they are suddenly putting in that memorandum. 

Gruler shows how the memorandum stuffs all kinds of things
into the scope of the case that are not in the Article of Impeachment.
screenshot from here

He lays it out this way:

My high-level take on all of this is, the old narrative, the old theme of this case was, “Trump’s irresponsible rhetoric on January 6th was the direct cause of (incitement of) the Capitol Hill Insurrection.” That narrative is now changing. It’s now, “Trump’s irresponsible rhetoric before, during, and after January 6th was the direct cause of (incitement) of the Capitol Hill Insurrection and is a continuing threat to America.”

It’s even worse than that; he didn’t just cause what happened on Capitol Hill, but he’s also now a continuing threat to America. So you see how the scope sort of changes a little bit. And I read through most of the 80 pages. I read through Donald Trump’s response. And that’s just sort of how I synthesize it into the Democrats’ argument, that they’re expanding the scope, and they’re now saying that a lot of Trump’s behavior, before, after, during, his response after the Capitol Hill riots, was all inappropriate, and it’s all impeachable now as a result. So the scope—it gets much bigger, as we’re going to see.

He goes on to say why they couldn't leave it at "Trump's speech incited a riot." You see it spilled by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this week. She claimed that she was getting text messages about a threat on January 6^th as early as a week before. Add to that some things we’ve known for a while. There was a letter put out by Pelosi herself, I believe, refusing any additional help from the feds. Chief of the Capitol Hill Police Steven Sund brought concerns to the attention of the Sgt. of Arms of both chambers of Congress, but they flatly refused to use any additional help. Gruler says,

So, if they knew this was going to be a problem, and they undersecured the facilities, is the government negligent? Are they contributory? Is their negligence contributing to this entire debacle? Or was this all just Donald Trump? Because that’s what the original allegation has been.

At least it was that for a while. Then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, no, Ted Cruz tried to murder her. So it’s not just Donald Trump; it’s Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who tried to murder her, literally; she said that on Twitter. We covered that.

So, you’re seeing how the narrative is just unraveling just a little bit.

You can’t have it both ways: Trump incited violence on January 6^th, or there was pre-planning that didn’t involve Trump, but he’s somehow responsible for that too.

Evidence keeps coming out about the pre-planning. Much of it appears to be done by non-Trump supporters. It’s looking more like a setup. They hoped there would be a problem they could blame Trump for. Maybe Democrats even colluded to make that happen; if I were the investigator, that’s what I’d be looking into. But of course Democrats won't be investigating themselves.

But now we’re supposed to believe Donald Trump is guilty of insurrection for questioning a voting process with more evidence of fraud than we have ever seen in a US election. And we’re supposed to believe saying so—which I have done and continue to do on this platform—is inciting insurrection. And it was all put over the top by a speech, in which the President called for peacefully cheering on those who challenged the electors, and never called for violence—and never has before or since either. And the words they claim incited violence weren’t even spoken before the violence began miles from where he was speaking.

Incitement has a legal definition as well, which they’re ignoring. It has to be actually calling for violence to happen imminently. It can’t be hinted at, or words construed to mean that. And you certainly can’t incite violence by calling for peace, as the President did, before, during, and after.

So this is all a sham. It seems designed to label everyone who believes there was election fraud as an insurrectionist. And beyond that, anyone who voted for Trump is, by association, an insurrectionist.

It’s hard to believe this is America. A question for a future post is, is the current dictatorship more like a banana republic or a communist regime?

In other words, don’t worry about President Trump’s impeachment trial. He’ll be fine. But the country, if left in the hands of these lawless power mongers, will not.