Texas Panel Recommends Impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton NYT

A Republican-led committee of the Texas House of Representatives recommended on Thursday that the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, be impeached for a range of abuses of his office that the committee’s investigators said may have been crimes.

The recommendation thrust the State Capitol and its Republican leadership into uncharted political territory in the waning days of the legislative session, setting the stage for the House to hold a vote on impeachment, its first in decades and one of the few ever conducted in the state’s history.

If he is impeached, Mr. Paxton, who has been under a separate criminal indictment since 2015, would be required to step down from his post temporarily while he faces trial in the State Senate.

“There’s really no precedent — we’ve really only had two impeachments under the constitution of 1876,” said Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University. They include the governor in 1917, who resigned the day before the Senate convicted him, and a district judge who was convicted and removed in the 1970s.

Before the vote, the committee met in an executive session, outside public view.

“Overturning elections begins behind closed doors,” Mr. Paxton said in a post on Twitter that included video of a lawyer from his office arguing against impeachment to reporters in a nearly empty committee room, while the committee’s deliberations were underway.

The extraordinary developments were likely to test the Republican Party in Texas in new and unpredictable ways, at a time when divisions in the party have increasingly been exposed.

INOKIYAC?
(It's Not OK If You Are Criminal?)

This is a welcome turn of events and some refreshing honesty from the GOP, but things have seemed so publicly broken in that party for so long I have to wonder what it's really about because now seems like a strange time to go after Paxton.

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g=

When the (R) Speaker of the Texas House was after (R) Paxton for his various and sundry misdeeds (including securities fraud, bribery, retaliatory firing of whistleblowers, and of course an extramarital affair), Paxton came up with a countercharge that the Speaker…had presided over the House while drunk.

Ah, such witty repartee in Texas these days.

Where do they find these people?

Quote
pdq
When the (R) Speaker of the Texas House was after (R) Paxton for his various and sundry misdeeds (including securities fraud, bribery, retaliatory firing of whistleblowers, and of course an extramarital affair), Paxton came up with a countercharge that the Speaker…had presided over the House while drunk.

Ah, such witty repartee in Texas these days.

Where do they find these people?

Probably both were true?

... the Speaker had presided over the House while drunk.

You be the judge: YouTube

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Northern California Coast

Quote
pdq
When the (R) Speaker of the Texas House was after (R) Paxton for his various and sundry misdeeds (including securities fraud, bribery, retaliatory firing of whistleblowers, and of course an extramarital affair), Paxton came up with a countercharge that the Speaker…had presided over the House while drunk.

Ah, such witty repartee in Texas these days.

Where do they find these people?

I think Paxton was being an arse, but I saw the video on Twitter and Lordy, Lordy, Phelan was a mumbling mess.

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Quote
$tevie

Quote
pdq
When the (R) Speaker of the Texas House was after (R) Paxton for his various and sundry misdeeds (including securities fraud, bribery, retaliatory firing of whistleblowers, and of course an extramarital affair), Paxton came up with a countercharge that the Speaker…had presided over the House while drunk.

Ah, such witty repartee in Texas these days.

Where do they find these people?

I think Paxton was being an arse, but I saw the video on Twitter and Lordy, Lordy, Phelan was a mumbling mess.

Well, I did ask where they find these people (plural).

Is Paxton sure that being a boozy mess isn't actually a requirement for being a Republican House Speaker?

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

They’ll adjourn before he can be impeached.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

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Speedy
They’ll adjourn before he can be impeached.

Yeah, I'll believe that the Republicans in Texas actually have a scintilla of integrity when Paxton is actually impeached, convicted and removed from office.

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e pluribus unum

Quote
$tevie

Quote
pdq
When the (R) Speaker of the Texas House was after (R) Paxton for his various and sundry misdeeds (including securities fraud, bribery, retaliatory firing of whistleblowers, and of course an extramarital affair), Paxton came up with a countercharge that the Speaker…had presided over the House while drunk.

Ah, such witty repartee in Texas these days.

Where do they find these people?

I think Paxton was being an arse, but I saw the video on Twitter and Lordy, Lordy, Phelan was a mumbling mess.

Remember when there was that video of Pelosi circulating that had been altered to make her appear drunk?

[youtu.be]

Paxton is now calling for supporters to come to the Texas Capitol and protest this usurpation of the sacred will of the voters.

Peacefully, of course.

He has learned The Way from the Great Orange Leader.