A conviction required 21 of 30 eligible senators. It’s a major win for the suspended attorney general, but he still faces a federal investigation and state charges.
Association with scandal has not appeared to chasten Paxton, who has often claimed he is being persecuted by political opponents. Nor did it dissuade voters, who reelected him as recently as 2022, picking him over three prominent primary challengers including then-Land Commissioner George P. Bush.In February, he asked the Texas House to pay for a $3.3 million settlement his office negotiated with four of the whistleblowers who alleged they were improperly fired for reporting him to the FBI.
Paxton’s former top deputy said his boss’s bizarre behavior “finally made sense” when he realized Paul had hired the woman with whom he was having an affair, which allowed her to move to Austin where he could more easily see her. This discovery, coupled with the realization that an outside lawyer hired by Paxton, without their knowledge, hadthat had made loans to Paul’s businesses, prompted the whistleblowers to report the attorney general to the FBI.
Paxton’s team — and his supporters outside the Capitol — also seized on witnesses’ answers about how much evidence they had before reporting Paxton to the FBI. After one whistleblower, Ryan Vassar, testified that they “took no evidence” to the FBI, House lawyer Rusty Hardin had to coach him through a clarification, asserting his witness account was evidence itself.
While Paxton blasted the impeachment as an illegitimate proceeding led by Democrats and liberal Republicans, the whistleblowers’ conservative bona fides challenged that framing. All hired by Paxton, they included a champion of religious liberty whom Trump nominated to a federal judgeship, a longtime federal prosecutor and a decorated former Texas Ranger.
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