Ken Paxton in 2016: ‘You think about Jesus, being falsely accused’
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton impeachment updates
On Saturday, May 27, 2023, The Texas House of Representatives voted 121-23 to send articles of impeachment against Attorney General Ken Paxton to the Texas Senate.
Paxton now awaits trial in the Senate, which will start no later than August 28. Until then, here’s everything we know so far.
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In Texas, Republican conventions are always about babies, the Bible, bullets or borders.
This year — bathrooms?
That’s it?
The Convention About Nothing wheezed to a close Saturday, amid tepid calls for unity around a rarely named presidential nominee and uncertainty about the party’s fate at the national convention in Cleveland and beyond.
More than 2,000 of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s dispirited faithful stayed away, leaving about 7,000 delegates and alternates for a convention that used to draw crowds of 16,000 and more for Texas presidential hopeful George W. Bush.
Bush’s business Republicans no longer dominate the party. Even the religious-libertarian ruling coalition called “movement conservatives” seemed muted unless Cruz or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was onstage.
Sometimes, the low wattage was by design.
Party leaders averted a vote on whether Texas should secede from the U.S. Speakers also navigated carefully around any comments that might sideswipe the probable presidential nominee, lapsed Presbyterian Donald J. Trump.
Instead of the usual Christian book and gift vendors or “Secure the Border” gear, the exhibit hall had little of either.
At the booth for the Houston-based Remembrance Project, supporting victims killed or injured by those in the U.S. illegally, Phallyn Espinoza of Houston said the convention delegates were “disappointing.”
“If we bring up a topic like, say, immigration,” she said, “people go, ‘Oh — Trump.’
“Then they shy away.”
Trump’s tough border talk and recognizing Remembrance Project survivors made immigration a “Trump issue” at a Cruz convention, she said.
Even the convention’s usual faith-and-values themes seemed muted.
Prayer mostly became a refuge for the accused or indicted. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller of Stephenville, facing investigation over dubious spending for out-of-state trips, closed his speech in prayer.
Earlier Saturday, indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton of McKinney delivered the only message at the convention’s Faith and Fellowship Gathering, usually a longer breakfast program of music and praise.
Paxton, free on $35,000 bond awaiting trial in a felony securities fraud case related to civil violations he has admitted, talked about how he came to faith and about Bible figures who faced accusations.
“You think about Jesus, being falsely accused and then executed,” he said.
He named Paul, Joseph and Daniel, “because he defied the law on prayers … and every one of those people suffered, but God was there to provide.”
You kind of got the feeling he was comparing them to someone else facing accusations.
Otherwise. it was a weekend of bashing President Obama’s new school guidelines for transgender students, and beyond that adhering to the vague convention slogan, “Unite to Win.”
I’m surprised it wasn’t “Make Bathrooms Great Again.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 5:45 PM.
