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It’s been nearly a month since Texas’ Republican-led state Senate acquitted state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a closely watched impeachment trial, allowing the scandal-plagued GOP lawyer to get back to work. It appears the ordeal did little to change his perspective.
We learned last week, for example, that Paxton has picked a fight with Yelp because the site has accurately told the public that crisis pregnancy centers — which aim to dissuade people from having abortions —may not have licensed medical professionals on staff.
This week, the Republican state attorney general has new targets in mind. NBC News reported:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton plans to file criminal complaints against the House legislators who led his impeachment, alleging they doxxed him when they released documents that included his home address last week. The news was first reported by The Daily Caller and local outlets, including The Texas Tribune.
In case anyone needs a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
By any measure, Texas’ attorney general is among the most scandal-plagued officials currently serving in elected office anywhere in the country. Paxton was, for example, indicted over alleged securities fraud. He’s also facing a state bar investigation over his ridiculous efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. There’s also ample evidence that he weaponized his office in pursuit of political goals.
But what’s proven to be his 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 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 the Republican majority in the Texas House felt compelled to impeach Paxton on a 121-23 vote in May. Even the state attorney general’s most ardent backers struggled to come up with any kind of credible defense for his alleged misconduct.
The revelations continued to unfold, even after his impeachment. In August, for example, The Texas Tribune reported that state House investigators also accused Paxton of engaging in “a complex cover-up to hide his relationship with real estate investor Nate Paul as senior aides grew increasingly concerned about Paxton’s willingness to use his office to benefit Paul.”
The article added that the subterfuge allegedly included Paxton and Paul “creating an Uber account under an alias so they could meet each other and so the attorney general could visit the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.”
In the state Senate, none of this seemed to matter. Facing intense partisan pressure, GOP members put the evidence aside and acquitted the defendant last month.
It appears Paxton isn’t prepared to simply move on with his career and legal defenses; he also intends to go after the Republican legislators who impeached him.
As NBC News’ report added, “Last week, House impeachment managers released a large trove of documents they said had not been brought up at the trial because of time constraints, procedural decisions and other reasons. The documents reportedly included Paxton’s home address before it was redacted.”
And because of this, Paxton is on the offensive against his former accusers, citing “a new anti-doxxing law that makes it illegal to release or leak personal information with the intent to harm them.”
If congressional Republicans were serious about rooting out examples of the government being “weaponized” against political adversaries, I have a tip for them.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.