Live Updates From the Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial’s Second Day Texas Monthly 9/6/2023
Tuesday, Texas senators decided that the Texas attorney general must stand trial. Today we’ll get straight to testimony.
Why Tony Buzbee Keeps Bringing Up George P. BushAlexandra Samuels, 3:22 p.m.
Buzbee’s questions and occasional editorial comments on testimony are trying to suggest that the impeachment proceeding has been orchestrated by a group of Republicans in Name Only, including Jeff Mateer, currently on the stand, and . . . former land commissioner George P. Bush. In various instances, Buzbee has pushed Mateer, one of the staffers who blew the whistle on Paxton, to elaborate on the timeline of the whistleblower lawsuit and his communication with the attorney general about it. Specifically, Buzbee is angling for an answer as to why the eight former aides didn’t tell Paxton that they went to the FBI until October 1, 2020—the same day, Buzbee noted, that Bush applied to reactivate his law license.
Bush is one of several Republicans who levied a primary challenge against Paxton in 2022. Paxton routed him in a runoff. Buzbee hasn’t said it directly, but it seems like he’s trying to get Mateer to admit, under oath, that the whistleblowers, Bush, and leadership-aligned groups such as Texans for Lawsuit Reform were trying to get Paxton out of office. It’s unclear whether this argument will pass muster—especially because one doesn’t need a law license to serve as attorney general of Texas.
The Jury Is Starting to Get RestlessMimi Swartz, 2:55 pm.
Tony Buzbee scored his points early in his cross-examination of Jeff Mateer, as I wrote before. Now the examination has devolved, for a seeming eternity, into a back-and-forth concerning the hiring of Brandon Cammack, a lawyer Paxton brought on to investigate complaints Nate Paul had raised about the FBI raid of his home. Hardin, who stayed quiet during the cross-examination before the lunch break, finally objected to the line of questioning.
The senators, for the most part, are trying to stay alert, though degrees of slumping can be observed. Donna Campbell of New Braunfels was momentarily curled over her desk in a position of seeming abject despair. Angela Paxton, crisp in a blue-and-white-checked jacket and a matching blue shirt, meanwhile, is watching intently. Her husband is still MIA.
Why One Allegation Against Paxton Keeps Getting Considerable Play
Christopher Hooks, 1:50 p.m.
The flashiest allegations levied against Ken Paxton involve personal misconduct or venal corruption, and they have gotten a lot of attention: Nate Paul hired Paxton’s mistress, Nate Paul paid for Paxton’s kitchen renovation, that sort of thing. But a much lesser-known incident has already surfaced a couple times, and it has to do with an unexpected topic: Ken Paxton’s conditional appreciation for COVID restrictions.
Knowledge of the incident in question is not new. According to House investigators, Paul’s real estate empire was floundering, and he needed breathing room. In a remarkable coincidence, Paxton’s AG’s office fired off an opinion that public foreclosure sales could not be held because of restrictions limiting crowd size during the early days of the pandemic. (Side note: his office asked Senator Bryan Hughes, of Mineola, to request the opinion—creating the circumstances for what would become one of the impeachment proceeding’s many conflicts of interest.) When the employee tasked with writing the opinion initially opined that foreclosure sales were fine, he was allegedly told that Paxton wanted it to say otherwise.
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