For Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the tipping point wasn’t his indictment over alleged securities fraud. Or the state bar investigation. Or the evidence that he weaponized his office.
Rather, what’s proving to be the Republican’s biggest problem is the fact that several of his top aides accused Paxton of brazen corruption, which is currently the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. The matter was also the subject of a state House investigation, which last week concluded that the state attorney general repeatedly broke the law by, among other things, abusing his office to hide an extramarital affair, doing special favors for a donor, and retaliating against perceived foes.
The allegations were so serious that, as the Associated Press reported, the GOP-led state House in Austin impeached the scandal-plagued state attorney general on Saturday.
Texas’ Republican-led House of Representatives impeached state Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust, a sudden, historic rebuke of a GOP official who rose to be a star of the conservative legal movement despite years of scandal and alleged crimes. Impeachment triggers Paxton’s immediate suspension from office pending the outcome of a trial in the state Senate and empowers Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to appoint someone else as Texas’ top lawyer in the interim.
The final tally wasn’t especially close: As the dust settled, Paxton was impeached on a 121-23 vote. The AP report added that he is “only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to have been impeached.”
To be sure, the state attorney general was not without GOP allies. The problem is, they struggled to come up with much of a defense.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, for example, argued that Paxton “is the BEST Attorney General in the entire country” and “fights for Texans.” The far-right congressman did not even try to contest the underlying allegations or the…
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