Texas Republican Senate Nominee Impeached by his Own Party
Paxton's Career of Crime
In 2023, the Texas House did something it had never done before. It impeached a sitting attorney general, voting 121-23 to suspend Ken Paxton and send him to a Senate trial on 20 articles of impeachment. The vote was overwhelming, and 60 of his fellow Republicans, including the Speaker of the House, voted to remove him.
What He Did
At the center of the impeachment was Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, a friend and political donor. According to a lawsuit filed by Paxton’s own former top deputies, the attorney general used his office repeatedly to benefit Paul, including intervening in an open-records case to help Paul access documents from federal and state investigations into his businesses, pushing his agency to intervene in a private lawsuit on Paul’s behalf, rushing out a legal opinion to help Paul dodge a foreclosure sale, and ignoring his own agency’s hiring rules to bring in an outside lawyer to pursue an investigation that benefited Paul.
In return, the lawsuit alleged, Paul paid for a major renovation of Paxton’s Austin home. Paul also helped Paxton conceal an extramarital affair by giving the woman involved a job. Paul had separately contributed $25,000 to Paxton’s campaign.
House investigators concluded Paxton may have committed multiple felonies, including misusing his office to divert at least $72,000 in staff labor toward helping Paul, and unlawfully sharing investigative information to benefit him.
He Fired the People Who Reported Him
In the fall of 2020, eight senior officials inside the attorney general’s office went to federal and state investigators with concerns about Paxton’s conduct involving Paul. Within months, every one of them had quit or been fired.
Four of them sued, alleging they were illegally retaliated against for reporting their boss to the authorities. The impeachment articles accused Paxton of retaliation and official oppression for pushing them out.
The articles also pointed to felony securities fraud charges that had been pending against Paxton since 2015, just months into his first term, stemming from his work soliciting investors for a company that was secretly paying him. Investigators accused Paxton of obstructing that case for years through legal delays, while a Paxton donor separately pursued litigation that cut off pay to the prosecutors handling it, dragging the case out even further to Paxton’s benefit.
His Own Party Turned on Him
The committee that investigated Paxton included three Republicans and two Democrats. All five voted to send the impeachment articles to the full House.
“We have a duty and an obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain,” said Republican Rep. David Spiller, a committee member, as he presented the case. “As a body, we should not be complicit in allowing that behavior.”
Another committee member, Republican Rep. Charlie Geren, told the House that Paxton had personally called representatives on the floor to threaten them with political consequences if they voted to impeach him.
Every one of the five representatives from Paxton’s own home county of Collin County, where he and his wife had lived for decades, voted to impeach him.
Trump Tried to Save Him Anyway
Donald Trump intervened directly, calling the impeachment an attempt to remove “the most hard working and effective” attorney general and vowing to target any Republican who voted against Paxton. Marjorie Taylor Greene rallied to his defense online. Paxton himself accused the legislature of running a “kangaroo court” and claimed Republicans who supported impeachment showed “absolute contempt for the electoral process.”
It did not matter. The vote was not close. Paxton was suspended from office on the spot, and the case moved to a Senate trial where two-thirds of senators would need to vote for removal.
A complicating wrinkle: Paxton’s own wife, Angela Paxton, sat as a Republican state senator and was required by law to attend the trial as a juror.
The Bigger Picture
An attorney general had never before been impeached in Texas history. Only two state officials had ever been removed by Senate conviction in the prior century combined.
What makes the Paxton case remarkable is not just the scale of the alleged corruption, bribery, abuse of office, obstruction, retaliation against whistleblowers, all documented and laid out in 20 separate articles. It is that it took his own party, in a state Republicans have controlled for a quarter century, to finally say enough.
“This gentleman is no longer fit for service or for office,” said Democratic Rep. Ann Johnson during the floor debate. “Either this is going to be the beginning of the end of his criminal reign, or God help us with the harms that will come to all Texans if he’s allowed to stay the top cop on the take.”
Thank you, Micah. I had to laugh at the end of this interesting article where it referred to Paxton as "this gentleman"!