Dan Patrick appoints new counsel to help him preside over Ken Paxton's impeachment trial

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced he will lean on the legal expertise of retired Justice Lana Myers as he presides over the upcoming impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Myers, who retired as a Texas 5th Court of Appeals justice at the end of 2022, will take on the role of assisting Patrick throughout the trial as he rules on motions and presides over the proceeding, which is expected to last two to three weeks.

Patrick had announced earlier this month that retired Justice Marc Brown would counsel him during the trial, but Brown later rejected the position in light of a political contribution he and his wife made to one of Paxton's GOP primary challengers in 2021.

“Today, pursuant to the rules of impeachment adopted by the members of the Senate, I am pleased to appoint Justice Lana Myers to assist me during the upcoming impeachment trial which starts on Sept. 5," Patrick said in a brief statement Monday.

In 2009, former Gov. Rick Perry appointed Myers to serve in Place 4 on the 5th Court of Appeals. She then won reelection in 2010 and ran unopposed in 2016.

Prior to her appointment to the appeals court — which serves Dallas, Collin, Grayson, Hunt, Rockwall and Kaufman Counties — Myers led the Dallas County state 203rd District Court beginning in 1995. Myers previously worked in the Dallas County district attorney's office as an assistant district attorney starting in 1982, the year after she graduated with a law degree from Baylor University.

More: Will $3M from pro-Paxton group influence Dan Patrick’s impeachment handling? He won’t say.

"Justice Myers is an extremely well-qualified candidate with courtroom experience as an attorney and a judge,” Patrick said.

In a case that gained national attention, Myers in 2021 was on the three-judge panel that heard an appeal by Amber Guyger, a former Dallas police officer convicted of murder in the 2018 killing of Botham Jean. In that case, Guyger went home and mistook Jean's apartment for hers and opened fire, killing the 26-year-old accountant. Myers, and the appeals court, sided with prosecutors to uphold the conviction.

Myers has twice, in 2010 and 2015, donated to the Republican Party of Collin County, where Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, reside.

Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, a member of the Texas House team prosecuting Paxton's impeachment, also resides in Collin County.

Political contributions have continued to be scrutinized in the lead up to Ken Paxton's trial, especially after Patrick accepted $3 million from a pro-Paxton PAC, as well as Brown declining to assist Patrick with the trial since he had previously donated to one of Paxton's election opponents.

At the outset of the Senate trial, the impeachment court will take up and decide a bevy of motions from the Paxton's defense team. Most of those motions will deal with whether to dismiss Paxton's articles of impeachment, which will require a majority vote of the senators who will sit as jurors.

More: New complaint seeks to stop AG Ken Paxton from practicing law in Texas

On Saturday, in response to rumors alleging that Paxton was considering resigning from office ahead of the trial's start, Paxton reiterated on social media that he has no intention of stepping down.

"Wrong! I will never stop fighting for the people of Texas and defending our conservative values," Paxton said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Rumors also circulated that placed Patrick in the middle of pretrial conversations with Paxton.

Patrick vehemently denied those rumblings, calling the rumors "outrageous and irresponsible" and denied that any such conversation took place.

"This is total false reporting," Patrick said, in response to Scott Braddock, editor of the Quorum Report, a Capitol insider publication. "There are no 'back-channel' conversations with any party to the proceedings."

Patrick, at his discretion and with Myers' assistance, will have the authority to rule on all motions not tied to throwing out an impeachment charge.

That includes a motion from Paxton's team that seeks to disqualify three Democratic senators — Sens. José Menéndez, Roland Gutierrez and Nathan Johnson — from serving as jurors based on public comments by them that Paxton’s lawyers say show bias against the suspended attorney general.

Statesman reporter Ryan Autullo contributed to this report

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas impeachment: Dan Patrick appoints legal counsel for trial