AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton began Tuesday and hurtled Republicans into a reckoning over whether to oust a prominent member of their party after years of alleged corruption or stand with one of former President Donald Trump's biggest defenders.
The historic trial — the first impeachment proceedings in Texas in nearly a half-century — is the gravest threat to date for Paxton after spending nearly his entire three terms in office under felony indictment and, later, the clouds of an ongoing FBI investigation.
In an era of bitter partisanship across the U.S., the trial is a rare instance of a political party seeking to hold one of its own to account for allegations of wrongdoing. For years in Texas, many Republicans have resisted criticizing or facing head-on the litany of legal troubles surrounding Paxton, who has remained popular among the party's hard right by aligning himself closely to Trump and rushing his office into lawsuits that have halted priorities of the Biden administration.
“None of us have ever been a part of a trial of this nature,” Republican state Sen. Phil King said while leading a prayer as the proceedings got underway.
The fate of Paxton, 60, is in the hands of GOP senators with whom he served before winning a statewide race to take charge of the attorney general's office in 2015. The chamber includes his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, who can attend the trial but is barred from voting on whether her husband should be convicted or acquitted.
Shortly before the trial began, Ken and Angela Paxton spoke for a few minutes on the Senate floor and shared a briefed kiss.
The start of the trial suggested that Senate Republicans were prepared to entertain the case against him: Paxton had filed several motions seeking to dismiss the case right from the start, but those efforts were getting knocked down by the GOP's dominant majority in the chamber.
“It is the Austin swamp,” said Kaci Sisk, who heads a group of conservative Paxton supporters near San Antonio and who arrived before sunrise to get a seat in the gallery. “This thing has been a sham from the start.”
Senators were sworn-in one by one as Paxton supporters, many wearing red shirts, watched from the upper floor gallery that was about half full. Other onlookers cheered when impeachment managers who will present the case against Paxton entered the chamber.
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton in May, largely based on his former deputies' claims that the attorney general used his power to help a wealthy donor who reciprocated with favors, including hiring a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair. The 20 articles of impeachment include abuse of public trust, unfitness for office and bribery.
The 121-23 vote immediately suspended Paxton and made him only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached.
Paxton has decried the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and an effort to disenfranchise his voters. The attorney general's lawyers say he won’t testify in the Senate trial. He has said he expects to be acquitted.
Paxton faces trial by a jury — the 31 state senators — stacked with his ideological allies and a "judge," Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who loaned $125,000 to his last reelection campaign. Two other senators play a role in the allegations against Paxton.
As reporters and members of the public filed into the Senate gallery, Angela Paxton walked the chamber floor dressed in a bright red skirt and jacket and talked with the chamber's secretary.
Over the weekend, Ken and Angela Paxton rallied supporters at a picnic near their hometown in suburban Dallas. It was a rare public appearance for Paxton, who told the crowd he could not discuss the trial due to a gag order but attacked Republicans who led his impeachment in the Texas House.
“Let’s clean house," Paxton told the crowd.
Peter Bowen, 74, drove from Houston at 3:30 a.m. to be in line for the Senate before sunrise. He said Paxton, who was reelected to a third term last November, was impeached because of his support for Trump, and that voters have already made clear where they stand.
“We all knew about them, and we elected him. What they are doing is taking away the vote of the majority of the people of Texas," Bowen said.
A two-thirds majority — or 21 senators — is required for conviction, meaning that if all 12 Senate Democrats vote against Paxton, they still need at least nine of the 19 Republicans to join them.
The trial will likely bring forth new evidence. But the outline of the allegations against Paxton has been public since 2020, when eight of his top deputies told the FBI that the attorney general was breaking the law to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
The deputies — largely conservatives whom Paxton handpicked for their jobs — told investigators that Paxton had gone against their advice and hired an outside lawyer to probe the FBI's allegations of Paul's wrongdoing. They also said Paxton pressured his staff to take other actions that helped Paul.
In return, Paul allegedly hired a former aide to a Republican state senator with whom Paxton acknowledged having had an affair and bankrolled the renovations of one of the attorney general's properties, a million-dollar home in Austin.
Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges that he made false statements to banks to secure more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty and has broadly denied wrongdoing in his dealings with Paxton.
The two men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial. The Senate is not taking up, at least initially, three impeachment articles about the alleged securities fraud and a fourth related to Paxton's ethics filings.
Federal prosecutors continue to examine Paul and Paxton's relationship, so the evidence presented during his impeachment trial poses a legal as well as a political risk to the attorney general.
After going to the FBI, all eight of Paxton's deputies quit or were fired. Their departures led to an exodus of other seasoned lawyers and saw the attorney general's office consumed by dysfunction behind the scenes.
Four of the deputies later sued Paxton under the state whistleblower act. The bipartisan group of lawmakers who led Paxton's impeachment in the House said it was him seeking $3.3 million in taxpayer funds to settle with the group that prompted them to investigate his dealings.
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