Why You Should Pay Attention to the Texas Attorney General’s Impeachment Trial

A battle that’s long been brewing in Texas is finally coming to a head as the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, undergoes an impeachment trial for allegations of corruption, bribery, and abuse of power. It all started after Paxton demanded that $3.3 million in taxpayer money be used to settle a lawsuit against him. (Paxton has maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty this week in his first hearing.)

Paxton is a polarizing political figure, even beyond the allegations of corruption. He’s one of many Republicans who have taken a very steep and sharp turn to the right, becoming an avid supporter of former President Donald Trump. (Paxton spoke at the infamous “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.) In a state that’s solidly conservative, this worked out well for Paxton, earning him support among Texas voters and making him the subject of national headlines. But it has made his impeachment all the more painful for Texas Republicans who hold similar conservative views but simply cannot take Paxton’s drama any longer.

Things really started heating up for him back in May, after the state House impeached Paxton in a pretty decisive vote of 121–23, despite Republicans holding the majority in both chambers. Paxton was suspended from his role as attorney general, but the House vote wasn’t enough to fully oust him from office—the Texas Senate would also have to consider the impeachment articles.

This week, senators voted on whether they should dismiss all impeachment articles against Paxton, resulting in a resounding 24–6 vote in favor of keeping them. Now, over the course of the next week or two, they will consider scores of evidence against Paxton that will detail how he abused the power of the attorney general’s office, including witness testimony possibly from Paxton himself. It will be a test of Texas Republicans’ commitment to holding one of their own accountable.

As the trial is underway, here’s a refresher on what exactly Paxton is accused of, and why he’s become such a controversial political figure.

Paxton started out in 2003 as a representative in the Texas House, where he served for 10 years before getting elected to the Senate. Finally, in 2015, he ran for attorney general and has served in that role ever since, with a total of 21 years in Texas politics.

Since most of his tenure as attorney general, Paxton has been fighting a 2015 indictment on securities fraud charges for allegedly encouraging people to invest in a company without disclosing that he stood to earn a commission. The trial has been delayed for eight years, and Paxton has been aggressively trying to relocate it. But it looks as if a trial date will soon be set.

It was also in 2015, according to an investigation by the Houston Chronicle, that Paxton suddenly moved most of his investments into a blind trust, which shields politicians from potential conflicts of interest by handing control of the investments to a third party. It also prevents Paxton from having to report the trust’s holdings in public financial disclosure filings. The trust is expected to come up during impeachment hearings because prosecutors have documentation of a text message in which Paxton tells his trustee to pay for his home remodel. Impeachment managers argue that the payment was a cover-up for a bribe.

Lawmakers began looking into Paxton’s conduct earlier this year, after he asked the Texas Legislature to approve $3.3 million in public funds to pay off a lawsuit against him.

Back in 2020, four former employees accused Paxton of retaliating against them after they alerted federal authorities to what they believed to be corruption in his office. The employees said the attorney general was engaging in improper influence and bribery. (Paxton has not admitted to any wrongdoing.)

The lawsuit accused Paxton of doing inappropriate favors for Nate Paul, a real estate investor and a donor to Paxton’s campaign, including giving him access to public records related to an FBI raid of Paul’s home and offices. Paxton allegedly directed his office to hire an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s claims that the FBI wrongfully conducted its search. He also allegedly had his office to look into a dispute between Paul’s company and an Austin charity, including writing a legal opinion that protected Paul’s properties from being foreclosed.

He did all this, according to the lawsuit, for two reasons: Paxton wanted Paul to pay for his home in Austin to be renovated. Paxton also wanted the woman he was having an affair with to get a job at Paul’s Austin-based company so he wouldn’t have to commute so far to see her. Paul was arrested in June on eight felony charges related to falsifying financial records.

After Paxton asked to use taxpayer dollars to pay off the lawsuit, Texas House Republicans authorized the House General Investigating Committee to conduct a secret probe into Paxton’s activities. That brought everything in the lawsuit—including 4,000 pages of evidence—into the public eye, and the four investigators charged with the inquiry recommended 20 counts of impeachment against Paxton.

“This whole case is a whole lot of nothing,” Paxton’s lead attorney, Tony Buzbee, said at his first Senate impeachment hearing on Tuesday. He said they have photos of the Paxtons at Home Depot and pay stubs that prove that the couple paid for their home renovations themselves.

The attorney general’s legal team and members of the Texas House and Senate are forbidden from making public comments about Paxton’s impeachment case. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issued a gag order after Buzbee said the House investigation was an “evil, illegal and unprecedented weaponization of state power,” and Rusty Hardin, the lead prosecutor for the House, said his team had discovered new allegations that “will blow your mind.”

Protecting Paxton’s trial is especially important since, unlike a civil or criminal trial, this jury cannot be replaced—it’s made up of 30 of the 31 members of the Texas Senate.

The entire process is expected to take anywhere from two to three weeks. The senators will consider whether Paxton illegally used the power of the attorney general’s office to benefit Paul while also retaliating against employees who’d reported his actions to the FBI. There are more than 100 potential witnesses, but it’s not clear how many will actually take the stand. At any point during the hearings, a majority of senators could vote to dismiss all the charges against Paxton, effectively ending impeachment proceedings.

The Texas Senate uploaded nearly 4,000 pages of records, which contain interviews, emails, and travel records that should paint a clear picture of Paxton’s actions over the past three years and the extent of his dealings with Paul. The Texas Observer sifted through the document dump and discovered allegations of Paxton using burner phones and a fake name when taking Uber rides in order to cover his tracks when interacting with Paul and his girlfriend—and ditching his government security detail. House investigators also interviewed Paxton’s former executive aide Drew Wicker, who provided some of the most extensive details yet about the allegations of Paxton’s home renovation deal with Paul.

In order to convict Paxton and remove him as attorney general, the Senate needs 21 “yes” votes from the 30 state senators eligible to vote. Currently, there are 12 Democrats and 18 Republicans who can vote in the impeachment trial. If the Senate votes to impeach, Paxton would become only the third person in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached and the first statewide elected official to be impeached since 1917.

Paxton’s wife, Angela—yes, the wife he cheated on—is a state senator and will be present during her husband’s trial. She initially pledged not to recuse herself from the trial, but a new Senate rule bans her from voting or taking part in closed-door discussions during any of the hearings.

Angela Paxton hasn’t publicly commented on her husband’s affair, instead sticking by his side any way she can. She’s said Ken acts as a trusted adviser to her, and some of the far-right political groups that helped elect him have also supported her campaign.

A year before news of her husband’s affair became public, during an interview with a local radio show, Angela said, “The secret to a successful marriage is two sinners who are good, are forgiving.”

Paxton is a Trump loyalist, which complicates his impeachment in a state so soundly conservative. On one side, Paxton has a strong base of ultraconservative supporters who believe that his impeachment is a baseless, politicized attack. It puts those Republicans who voted for Paxton’s impeachment in a tough position, like Rep. Terry Wilson, whose suburban Austin district has started to turn on him, despite him winning reelection in 2022 with almost 60 percent of the vote. Wilson was even ranked among the top 10 most conservative of the 85 Republicans in the Texas House.

Even former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was appointed secretary of energy under the Trump administration, supported Paxton’s impeachment in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “It’s shocking to see some Republicans—through a coordinated effort of texts, emails and social media posts—working to delegitimize the impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Ken Paxton,” he wrote.

Paxton has proved that he isn’t just any old Trump supporter. He spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, filed a lawsuit to the Supreme Court in an attempt to throw out four swing states’ election results, and issued an opinion that advocates for allowing any person or entity to request voters’ ballots as soon as the day after they are counted.

For at least two years now, Paxton has still not said whether he accepts Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 general election. Instead, he’s directed his office to work on voter fraud cases, and an analysis by the Texas Tribune found that since 2005 the state has prosecuted 155 people out of 534 election fraud offenses—about 0.0048 percent of the 11 million votes cast in Texas during the 2020 general election alone.

Paxton’s staunch support for Trump has earned him support from the family. On Tuesday, in light of Paxton’s Senate impeachment trial kicking off, Donald Trump Jr. posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Ken will survive and will continue to combat the Swamp in Texas to put America First.” Back in May, when Paxton was impeached by the Texas House, the former president also posted on Truth Social to defend Paxton, going so far as to threaten anyone who would allow the impeachment to happen. “I will fight you if it does,” wrote Trump.

Despite the allegations of bribery and corruption coming to light in 2020, just last year Paxton was reelected as attorney general with 53 percent of the vote, a solid 10 percentage points above his Democratic opponent.

The first day of his Senate impeachment trial, Paxton drew a crowd of supporters at the state Capitol who questioned Republican senators’ reasons for voting to keep the articles of impeachment against Paxton. “I don’t understand why Republicans are against him,” Tomoko Jones, an Austin resident, told the Texas Tribune. “I want to choose our politicians by our vote.”