Hey, Gunnison County made it into a national news story! Only tangentially, you understand, but for a new moment we are a footnote of notoriety in a firehose of sewage seeping out of the crazy state that Texas has become.
Ah, Texas. The oily secretion that butters our bread here in Gunnison County. We here in Gunnison need the Texans to sustain our livelihood (and drive us out of our own valley with amped-up home prices, but here I digress), although we don’t seem to give this financial underpinning the gravitas it deserves, instead endlessly mocking our money supply. If only Texas didn’t make that so easy.
Texas, which is failing, although not for lack of trying, in its attempt to Own the Libs Better’n Anyone (a well-removed second place to Florida), finally took a break from imposing Christianity upon all its citizens and running all the Chinese out of the state to tend to one of its own: state attorney general Ken Paxton has been impeached by the state’s House of Representatives. And, in true, shoot-from-the-hip Texas fashion, it only took nine years!
Ken Paxton, Citizen of Texas, has been the state’s attorney general since 2014 — the same year he admitted to securities fraud. One year later he was charged on two felony counts of fraud and entered a plea of not guilty. That’s still the status quo all these years later — a trial has never come to pass. Now, this ought to be a serious charge: if found guilty, punishment could range from five to 99 — 99! — years in the hoosegow, a Texas mangling of the Spanish word juzgado.
But that didn’t bother his fellow Republicans all that much, and neither did a whole bunch of other crimes — pardon me, alleged crimes — infracted over the years, years in which he won re-relection not once but twice, including just last November, which AG Paxton thinks is relevant, because while he still persists in insisting that President Joe Biden stole an election, down there in Texas AG Paxton regained his seat in a “free and fair election” and the will of the people should be inviolate, meaning the Texas legislature needs to leave poor him alone.
This mean ol’ legislature racked up 20 articles of impeachment against him with a speed that took everyone by surprise, these short nine years. A legislative panel consisting of three Republicans and two Democrats came out Tuesday with the recommendation to impeach, and by yesterday AG Paxton had been removed by a vote of the people’s people (85 of whom are Republicans, although it should have been 86 but for the removal of one due to sexual assault claims). The vote was 121-23 in favor of impeachment, and Texas law mandates that the impeached person be removed from office immediately, pending the outcome of a trial in the Texas senate.
The 20 articles, according to the Associated Press, included “bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust.” It’s also been clear, at least to those of us in Gunnison County, that AG Paxton is fond of doing favors for those who do favors for him.
The AP reported, “He opened a legal defense fund and accepted $100,000 from an executive whose company was under investigation by Paxton’s office for Medicaid fraud. An additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but was soon fired after trying to make a point by displaying child pornography in a meeting.”
And — this is where we come in — “In 2020, Paxton intervened in a Colorado mountain community where a Texas donor and college classmate faced removal from his lakeside home under coronavirus orders.” That’s us! That’s Gunnison County! [You can read my real-time reporting from 2020 on this here and here.]
AG Paxton has reportedly been a good friend to an Austin real estate developer, even dating a woman who worked for the developer (when you also have a wife, it’s called an “affair”). The developer was investigated by the FBI in 2019, which is early yet in Texas time, so no charges have been filed. But there have been concerns about the relationship between the developer and the AG involving interfering in lawsuits and issuing legal opinions to benefit said developer, along with “firing, harassing and interfering with staff who reported what was going on.” Oh, and bribery.
In fact, eight of the attorney general’s own staff members filed complaints about him over the years, and if you aren’t going to do him favors, then you aren’t in favor, and at least four of these folks were fired. They brought suit under a state whistleblower law, and in February won a $3.3 million settlement with the AG.
And this is where he finally — finally! — went awry of all the good ol’ boys and girls (mostly boys) in Texas politics: AG Paxton expected the state taxpayers to cover this bill. As Lindsey Graham is learning over in South Carolina, you can pretty much say and do whatever you want as a politician, except expect other people to unwittingly foot your legal bills. (Although there’s an exception to that rule if you are a disgraced once and wish-to-be future president.)
The five legislators who recommended impeachment even said the quiet part out loud: “But for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct, Paxton would not be facing impeachment.” So, it wasn’t the wrongful conduct — that has been okay lo these nine years — it was the notion that the taxpayers should pay for misdeeds.
If only he’d done these misdeeds as a political stunt! Say, stopping trucks entering Texas from Mexico and holding up international commerce for several days and costing the state over a billion dollars. Maybe, when you’re the governor, they let you do it. But not, apparently, the attorney general.
Of course, the deed is not completely done, yet, and Oilslick Ken could still slide out from under this. The Texas senate, 31 strong, still has to weigh in with a trial, and two-thirds have to vote him out. There are 19 Republicans in this I assume august body, one of them still married to currently-removed AG Paxton. She even went on the lam with him awhile back in a failed bid to dodge him being served a subpoena.
The senate is presided over by the lieutenant governor, who, along with the governor, has carefully been holding his powder so far on this issue. But 121-23 from the House doesn’t seem like good odds. Not-AG Paxton may want to start looking at his options. Here’s one I don’t like, but it could work for him: perhaps he calls up an old college friend, one he’s done a few favors for over the years, one with a secluded place up in them thar hills of Colorado . . . It could happen. Fortune favors the favored, after all. For at least nine years.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 