Ken Paxton is in hot water again. And he’s twisting law, politics to save himself | Opinion

Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again acting like a man who knows he’s in trouble.

And he is once again willing to roil Texas politics and the law to squirm out of it.

Paxton warned ominously Wednesday that the same House committee that recommended his impeachment last year — which ended with a Senate trial that let Paxton off the hook — was at it again. He said, without evidence, that a committee meeting set for July 17 was an effort by “lame-duck Republicans … conspiring with Democrats to remove me from office.”

In case anyone missed the point, Paxton threw in that it was “just like [President Joe] Biden’s relentless attacks on President [Donald] Trump.”

The chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, Republican Rep. Andrew Murr of Junction, called Paxton’s statement a “farfetched fantasy” and said the panel was taking up business completely unrelated to the attorney general.

So, why would Paxton go there? Paranoia is an obvious answer, but he’s craftier than that. He’s throwing up dust before someone tries yet again to hold him accountable for his corruption.

In this case, though, it won’t be the Legislature. It will be the feds.

New court developments suggest that an FBI investigation reportedly launched in 2020 over Paxton’s favors for friend and donor Nate Paul continues. And Paxton, true to form, has tried to use the power of the office to stymie it — only to be shut down by a federal appellate court.

A recent 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling denies an unnamed state agency’s attempts to prevent employees from testifying before a federal grand jury. Though it does not name Paxton, the details match a document unveiled as part of Paxton’s impeachment trial.

The agency tried to argue that attorney-client privilege exempted the employees from having to testify. Three Republican-appointed judges on the 5th Circuit unanimously slapped it down, noting a clear exemption to the privilege if the employees in question have evidence of a crime.

In other words: The Department of Justice asserted that Paxton employees know facts that will implicate him. And Paxton tried to use the powers of the office itself to derail the investigation.

It was plain in his impeachment trial that several top aides — Paxton loyalists all — saw him twist his agency’s priorities to help Paul, who was himself a target of federal prosecutors. They saw the attorney general go to abnormal lengths to help one man in an arena in which the AG’s office had no role.

The Senate’s Republican majority, of course, passed on convicting and removing Paxton from office as a political matter. If the grand jury indicts Paxton, it will be useful for him to have implied that the villains in his already-established narrative, the House impeachment crew, is somehow behind the federal charges.

As the old joke goes, you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you. But in Paxton’s case, paranoia is useful. It plays to the hardcore Trump base of the GOP that sees the entire world aligned against them and their preferred candidates. Paxton’s statement mentions Trump three times in five paragraphs. Supporters donate money and raise a ruckus that casts doubt on any charges, no matter how well-supported, against their man.

Many Texans are no doubt predisposed to distrust an indictment from the Biden administration’s Justice Department. And the fact that the investigation is going into its fourth year will only raise suspicions that it’s a deep dive to find something, anything to get Paxton.

Federal public corruption cases often take years to build, though. The FBI is thorough and methodical. To be fair, they don’t always make their case — they spent years pursuing Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, and the Democratic stalwart was found not guilty.

That was a failure of the evidence. We’ll see what the feds have on Paxton, but he won’t be able to beat a federal indictment on politics alone.

And as the Senate trial showed, the evidence that Paxton went out of his way to help Paul is strong. He had no answer for it, other than to say that as AG, he could do what he wanted.

He’ll need better than that in federal court. By kicking up dirt now, Paxton is trying to cloud a pretty clear picture.