What’s Ken Paxton doing? He’s bullying a top Texas court, bashing fellow Republicans | Opinion
Ken Paxton basically confessed, and that wasn’t even the weirdest thing he did all week.
Before Texas’ attorney general filed papers saying the whistleblowers were actually right all along about the facts of his impeachment, Paxton bizarrely blamed the whole thing on two Democrats far from Texas: Joe Biden and George Soros.
It has been 21 years since Democrats had any say in Texas. That party has dwindled so much in Austin, Republicans have to bicker with each other.
Yet at campaign rallies in Beaumont and across Texas on his I-Didn’t-Get-Removed Tour, Paxton made that wild claim and more:
▪ Somehow, Paxton also now says, the same Senate Republicans who graciously spared him from removal were actually out to boot him and take his job.
“There were several Republicans, particularly attorneys, who wanted my job,” Paxton, a McKinney Republican elected as a religious conservative, said in a Beaumont appearance Monday captured in an online video. “So they were organizing behind the scenes.”
It’s the “See? They’re Out to Get Me” campaign strategy. It seems to be in vogue this year.
But this is a paranoid Paxton biting the hands who supported him.
▪ Next, Paxton said Biden was behind the effort to remove him.
“I’m convinced that they wanted to impeach me, and this came from Joe Biden’s administration,” he said, although evangelical Christian Republicans in his own office grew disgusted and reported him breaking the law or his oath.
The White House “went to the Democrats in Austin,” Paxton said, “and said, ‘Get rid of Paxton.’ “
He did not explain why Texas Republicans would want to help Biden.
He also did not explain how Biden made Paxton conceal an affair with a real estate developer’s secretary.
▪ Finally, in his strangest comment, Paxton said the Republican judges on Texas’ highest court were elected by George Soros.
This started when Paxton lost a case a couple of years ago at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals where judges ruled he can’t prosecute criminal cases such as voter fraud.
Texas’ attorney general is not like in other states. Ours represents the state in lawsuits. It’s up to district attorneys to chase criminals.
So, the judges went by the Constitution.
Paxton didn’t argue that.
Instead, he argued simply that if the attorney general can’t lock illegal voters up, then Republicans can’t win.
He described Presiding Judge Sharon Keller’s high court as judges “that no one knows.”
In an Alex Jones-worthy version of the big lie about election fraud, Paxton said Democratic donor Soros “put those members on there because nobody knows whether they’re Republicans or not.”
“Nobody knows their names,” Paxton said. “Even the players don’t know who they are.”
I checked a couple of the judges’ campaign donations.
Their biggest contributor was Houston-based Texans for Lawsuit Reform, donor of $63 million to Republicans over three decades.
The judges themselves can’t respond due to ethics restrictions.
See, this gets forgotten, but Paxton is free on $35,000 criminal bond.
His Collin County fraud case is supposed to go to trial in April. It might someday go before the high court.
So basically, Paxton can bully them any way he wants and get away with it.
If he can’t arrest illegal voters, he said, then election integrity will be left up to Democratic big-city district attorneys.
If that happens, he said, then “the magic is done. ... Anybody can cheat as much as they want in Texas.”
Paxton should know.
This story was originally published January 19, 2024 at 9:23 AM.
