Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Impeachment Trial Begins

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the launch of an antitrust investigation into large tech companies outside of the Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 9, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton began on Tuesday at the Texas Senate, which could lead to him being ousted from office.

Mr. Paxton was impeached in May by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives. which voted 121–123 to charge him with abuse of office and bribery. The vote immediately led to his suspension and made Mr. Paxton the third sitting Texas official in almost two centuries to be impeached.

He is accused of having engaged in years of misconduct, including receiving bribes and using his office to help donor and friend Nate Paul, a real estate developer from Austin. The impeachment trial begins Tuesday morning, with a jury of 31 senators who will vote on the various charges leveled against him.

The trial is held publicly.

In total, Mr. Paxton is facing 20 articles of impeachment, with senators set to vote on them separately. Out of the 31 senators, two-thirds or 21 have to vote “yes” on an article for Mr. Paxton to be acquitted. If an article of impeachment does not gather enough votes, it would count as an acquittal.

If Mr. Paxton is convicted in any of the 20 articles, it could trigger a second vote that would seek to permanently block him from holding any public office in the future, KXAN reported.

Out of the 31 senators, 12 are Democrats. Even if all 12 Democrats vote against Mr. Paxton, nine out of the 19 Republicans would have to side with the Democrats for a conviction to take place.

Paxton Denies Wrongdoing

Mr. Paxton has decried the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and an effort to disenfranchise voters. The attorney general’s lawyers say he won’t testify in the Senate trial. He has said he expects to be acquitted. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, will attend the trial but is not allowed to participate or vote.

Back in May, 60 Republicans sided with 61 Democrats to impeach Mr. Paxton. Only 23 Republicans voted to keep him in office.

Mr. Paxton’s impeachment has triggered strong reactions from his support base within the GOP. A small group of his supporters have pledged political retribution in case Mr. Paxton gets convicted and removed from office. Billboards have been set up in North Texas to rally support for the cause.

Lauren Davis, an activist running for chairwoman of the Dallas County Republican Party, believes the efforts of Mr. Paxton’s supporters will see success.

“To most voters, it’s a political witch hunt,” she told The Dallas Morning News. “People do not agree with how the House went about what they were doing.”

There were rumors that Mr. Paxton would resign prior to the impeachment trial. However, he shut down the rumor in an Aug. 27 post on X, stating “Wrong! I will never stop fighting for the people of Texas and defending our conservative values.”

Since Mr. Paxton’s impeachment and suspension, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed two interim attorneys general to take over his duties.

Allegations Against Paxton

The trial will likely bring forth new evidence. But the outline of the allegations against Mr. Paxton has been public since 2020, when eight of his top deputies told the FBI that the attorney general was breaking the law to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.

The deputies told investigators that Mr. Paxton had gone against their advice and hired an outside lawyer to probe Mr. Paul’s allegations of wrongdoing by the FBI in its investigation of the developer. They also said Mr. Paxton pressured his staff to take other actions that helped Mr. Paul.

In return, Mr. Paul allegedly hired a former aide to a Republican state senator with whom Mr. Paxton was having an affair and bankrolled the renovations of one of the attorney general’s properties, a million-dollar home in Austin.

Mr. Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges that he made false statements to banks to secure more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty and has broadly denied wrongdoing in his dealings with Mr. Paxton.

The two men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI.

Mr. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial. The Senate is not taking up, at least initially, three impeachment articles about the alleged securities fraud and a fourth related to Paxton’s ethics filings.

Federal prosecutors continue to examine Mr. Paul and Mr. Paxton’s relationship, so the evidence presented during his impeachment trial poses a legal as well as a political risk to the attorney general.

After going to the FBI, all eight of Mr. Paxton’s deputies quit or were fired. Their departures led to an exodus of other seasoned lawyers and saw the attorney general’s office consumed by dysfunction behind the scenes.

Four of the deputies later sued Mr. Paxton under the state whistleblower act. The bipartisan group of lawmakers who led Paxton’s impeachment in the House said it was him seeking $3.3 million in taxpayer funds to settle with the group that prompted them to investigate his dealings.

The Associated Press contributed to the report.