FILE - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)(Eric Gay / ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week curiously claimed that the Texas House’s ethics committee is plotting to recommend impeaching him a second time, saying that “their bitter obsession with taking me down
knows no bounds, and they will stop at nothing to remove me from office.”
Except that the House General Investigating Committee says it has no such plans. The committee chair, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, called the claim a “far-fetched fantasy” and said the meeting scheduled for yesterday involved “a completely unrelated
matter.” Despite his bombastic certainty, Paxton offered no evidence to support his claim, only that this so-called second impeachment effort was being waged by “lame-duck Republicans who lost their primaries thanks to my support.”
Until proven otherwise, we’ll take the committee at its word. But we’ve come to discover that the attorney general can deliver master classes in deflection, distraction and ham-fisted political warfare. When
confronted with controversy and allegations of wrongdoing, Paxton denies, delays, accuses accusers of pursuing a politically motivated vendetta against him and launches insidious revenge tours. In his latest blast against the committee that pursued his impeachment last year, the attorney general seems to have returned
to a familiar playbook with a Shakespearean doth-protest-too-much flavor.
Paxton’s remarks come not long after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made public its opinion in a sealed and ongoing grand jury investigation. From that filing, the public
learned an unnamed state agency attempted to end a grand jury investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by senior agency personnel and to block grand jury testimony previously ordered by a lower court in October 2020.
No charges have been filed, but the
published ruling tracks closely with what is known about the relationship between real estate developer and donor Nate Paul and Paxton, and the claims of several former top executives in the attorney general’s office who were fired or resigned for alleging that Paxton abused his authority to interfere with a federal investigation into Paul.
Paxton’s dealings with Paul, who has since been indicted on a slew of federal charges, including
making false statements to lenders, wire fraud and conspiracy, led the Texas House in part to impeach the attorney general in May 2023. Later that year, the Senate cleared Paxton of all impeachment charges.
What we have learned from watching Paxton repeatedly sidestep serious ethical allegations, some of which surfaced nearly a decade ago, is that victimhood is a favorite preemptive strategy.
In a normal situation, such an embattled attorney general would have stepped aside for the good of the state and the credibility of the office. But to raise another red herring and feint outrage strikes us as a tactic of someone for whom the legal options are running out.
