Has The Texas GOP Finally Had Enough Of AG Ken Paxton’s Criming?

Yesterday Texas state Rep. Andrew Murr announced that Texas legal legends Dick DeGuerin and Rusty Hardin have agreed to serve as lead prosecutors in the impeachment trial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Murr, head impeachment manager and chair of the committee whose investigation of the $3.3 million litigation settlement Paxton reached with whistleblowers led to it, is no one’s idea of a liberal squish. But Murr has a record of putting good governance before party, recently overseeing the expulsion of Republican Rep. Bryan Slaton for getting a 19-year-old aide drunk and having sex with her.

“This Texas House is not going to hear from multiple complainants about serious and alarming facts and then turn the other cheek or simply slap a member on the wrist,” he said at the time.

It’s a bracing counterargument to Paxton, who recently went on Steve Bannon’s show to argue, in sum and substance, that Republicans have an obligation to let him get away with it because he’s so good at trolling the libs.

And naming Hardin and DeGuerin makes it clear that Murr and his fellow impeachment managers, including two members of the Texas Freedom Caucus, are not crossing the Capitol to the Senate for funsies.

DeGuerin represented former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Enron, real estate magnate Robert Durst, and cult leader David Koresh. And Hardin has advocated for a slew of celebrity clients, including Wade Boggs, Scottie Pippen, Deshaun Watson, and Roger Clemens. As legal commentator David Coale told the Texas Tribune, “This is the legislature saying, ‘This isn’t just some case, this is an unusual, historic case.’ And if you want to make some history, you get some history book-level lawyers.”

“The people of the state of Texas are entitled to know whether their top cop is a crook,” DeGuerin said at a news conference yesterday, invoking Richard Nixon with a trial lawyer’s flourish, and all but daring Paxton to deny it.

Hardin professed himself “shocked” at the House report, and said the allegations will “blow your mind.

“This is not about a one-time misuse of office. This is not about a two-time misuse of office. It’s about a pattern of misconduct,” he said, adding later, “I promise you it is 10 times worse than what has been public.”

It’s quite a promise since the public allegations are pretty amazing. And they’ve been amazing for the three years in which they were widely reported. But suddenly, the Texas GOP has decided to notice and maybe, possibly, take out the damn trash.

Over the weekend, Paxton’s henchman Brent Webster took control of the AG’s office and seized the opportunity to produce a report defending his former boss and deliver it to all the senators who will make up the jury in his boss’s case. But now Governor Greg Abbott has replaced Webster with former Secretary of State John Scott, who will — presumably — cut that shit out. Abbott may not have the balls to come out and call for Paxton’s ouster, but filling his chair is at least tacit support for the process. And while Senator Ted Cruz, with his lifelong commitment to the Order of the Troll, has come out in support of the embattled AG, his fellow Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has said for years that Paxton’s naked corruption is an “embarrassment.”

“The fact that this has come this far with the Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate and a Republican attorney general tells you that this is serious enough that people are looking past party labels to try to see what we need to do to preserve the public trust and integrity of the institution,” Cornyn said this week, which is an odd acknowledgment that, as a Republican, you have to be super-duper corrupt for your fellow Gippers to take notice.

Is it possible that Republicans in Texas are just DONE with Attorney General Ken Paxton? They ignored his blatant criminality for years, seemingly uninterested in the 2015 securities fraud indictment, as well as the unending stream of media reports about his abuse of office to benefit his crony real estate developer Nate Paul. And then two weeks ago it seemed like the dam broke, and the House voted 121-23 in favor of impeachment.

In the meantime, the state comptroller has confirmed that Paxton will not receive his salary during the pendency of the trial. Womp womp.

[Texas Tribune / Texas Tribune]

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