The historic impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is plunging Republicans into a bruising fight over whether to banish one of their own in America’s biggest red state.
For now, Texas' three-term attorney general is immediately suspended after the state House of Representatives on Saturday impeached Paxton on 20 articles that included bribery and abuse of public trust.Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
It is not year clear when the Senate trial will take place. Final removal of Paxton would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, where Republican members are generally aligned with the party's hard right. The Senate is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has served as state chairman for former President Donald Trump's campaigns in Texas.
Paxton, 60, decried the outcome in the House moments after scores of his fellow partisans voted for impeachment. His office pointed to internal reports that found no wrongdoing. “I perceive it could be political weaponization,” Rep. Tony Tinderholt, one of the House’s most conservative members, said before the vote. Republican Rep. John Smithee compared the proceeding to"a Saturday mob out for an afternoon lynching.”
He opened a legal defense fund and accepted $100,000 from an executive whose company was under investigation by Paxton’s office for Medicaid fraud. An additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but soon was fired after displaying child pornography in a meeting. In 2020, Paxton intervened in a Colorado mountain community where a Texas donor and college classmate faced removal from his lakeside home under coronavirus orders.
In 2020, eight top aides told the FBI they were concerned Paxton was misusing his office to help Paul over the developer's unproven claims about an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of his properties. The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. Paxton also told staff members he had an affair with a woman who, it later emerged, worked for Paul.
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