Why Texas AG Ken Paxton’s Impeachment Is a Bipartisan Win

The most substantial and meaningful bipartisan act of government in the 88th Texas Legislature occurred last weekend: the historic impeachment of Texas Attorney General Warren Kenneth “Ken” Paxton, Jr.

Paxton—as a state representative, state senator, state attorney general, Trump ally, and Biden (and previously Obama) administration antagonist—has exercised ever-increasing power over his two-decades in office, but that prideful run came to a sudden halt at 5pm Saturday, May 27, when he was impeached and immediately suspended from office in a stunning 121-23 vote in favor of the Texas House twenty-count Articles of Impeachment.

His suspension from office will continue until Mr. Paxton is either acquitted on each of twenty-counts in the Articles of Impeachment or he is convicted on one or more counts. [Shortly after this article was published, it was announced that former Texas Secretary of State John Scott, a loyal ally of Gov. Greg Abbott, would be temporarily leading the Office of Attorney General in Mr. Paxton’s absence.]

The last Texas official to be impeached, District Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975, faced ten counts, and Carrillo was finally convicted and removed from office on one count only. In the matter of impeachment and conviction, once is indeed enough.

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I was one of eight candidates in the 2022 Democratic and Republican primaries who ran against Paxton to deny him a third term as state attorney general. That’s because we—Democrats and Republicans—were repulsed by his long history of serial corruption.

Paxton beat his three primary opponents and the Democratic nominee all by wide, convincing margins. Last November he seemed bulletproof in victory; now he’s likely working from home, crafting his defense for a consequential summer impeachment trial in the Texas Senate. There he will be convicted and permanently removed from office (and possibly banished from ever holding office in the future) or acquitted and restored to lead the Office of Attorney General, assuredly more powerful than ever and ready to punish those who crossed him.

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America’s toxic political environment burns while partisans rejoice in their opponents’ defeat, but Paxton’s remarkable fall should instead elicit somber reflection on the state of our politics.

Impeachment of an official is not intended to punish the individual, rather it is to preserve the institution of government. Paxton’s verdict this summer—the Senate trial will commence in late August—will determine whether Texas’ state government is in this instance defined by bipartisan cooperation or partisan nuclear war.

There are national implications, too, as Paxton and Donald Trump are collaborators. As an example, Trump (explicitly) and Paxton (reportedly) threatened retaliation against certain Texas House members during the impeachment hearing Saturday. The political consensus is that Paxton will do anything to survive this trial. No defense is too extreme; every imaginable play is on the table.

Paxton’s impeachment trial is a national event because Texas is the Union’s most consequential Republican state. All statewide executive and judicial offices in Texas are held by Republicans, as has been the case for nearly three decades. Both chambers of the Texas Legislature are majority Republican, and both U.S. Senators and a majority of the Texas congressional caucus are Republican. Texas has 38 electoral college votes.

But, in a masterpiece of bipartisan leadership, the Texas House’s 121 votes in support of Paxton’s Articles of Impeachment were nearly evenly split: 60 Republican members and 61 Democratic members joined in the final days of the 140-day legislative session to demonstrate that Paxton’s corruption, present and past, was no longer tolerable.

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Why now?

Paxton has faced allegations of scandalous conduct spanning two decades. These include multiple securities fraud felony indictments, the filching of a law colleague’s Mont Blanc pen at a courthouse security checkpoint (returned to its rightful owner only when Paxton learned his act was caught and recorded on the courthouse camera), the misleading personal and campaign finance reports, the official misconduct, the bribery, the illegal terminations, the mistress and the nefarious donor who later employed the mistress and paid for Mr. and Mrs. Paxton’s home remodel.

Why only now is House Republican leadership finally joining the long-complaining Democratic caucus to draw a line on how much “criming” is acceptable for a state officer?

The tipping point was reached in Feb. 2023, when Paxton suddenly settled a disputed whistleblower/wrongful termination suit brought by four Republican former employees who Paxton fired in late 2020 in retaliation for reporting Paxton’s alleged corruption to the United States Department of Justice.

Paxton had mocked the detailed suit for over a year, and no wonder: the allegations within the suit were plentiful and scandalous. For 16 months Paxton’s private attorneys expertly kept the proceeding in a procedural fog, preventing any substance of the allegations from being discovered. Suddenly, however, in February Paxton approved a full value settlement at mediation for the eye-popping sum of $3.3 million. Paxton then promptly delivered the invoice to pay the full freight of the settlement to the Texas House of Representatives.

The sum, the sudden abandonment of his defense, and Paxton’s presumptuous ask to fund the settlement with tax-payer dollars all combined to catch the wary eye of Texas House leadership.

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A bipartisan House General Investigative Committee was impaneled in March. The Committee hired skilled, experienced investigators to interview witnesses, study revealing documents, and write a report that chronicled Paxton’s long history of alleged malfeasance in office.

Each member of the Texas House of Representatives read the Committee’s Report before the impeachment vote. The vote wasn’t unanimous, but the supermajority margin of 121 out of 150 votes was meaningful and its message unmistakable.

The impeachment trial of Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr. is arguably the most important political event of the year, certainly in Texas, and quite possibly the United States.

The Paxton verdict will be a weathervane for the 2024 elections in Texas. Voters argue just about every issue, but no one supports corruption. Mr. Paxton will soon have an opportunity to explain his conduct, and Texas’ 31 senators—one of which is, in fact, Mr. Paxton’s wife—will sit as jurors, weighing every word.

The Paxton verdict will reveal the deeper meaning of our political moment. And it will determine whether members of both parties can unite over one simple value: our most powerful government officials cannot be above the law.

Editor’s Note: The headline of this story has been updated to reflect that Paxton was impeached, not indicted.

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