AUSTIN, Texas — Attorney Tony Buzbee, the lead attorney representing Attorney General Ken Paxton in his upcoming impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, said the charges against Paxton are false. 

“Let me be clear because there have been some Tweets and so forth on this,” said Buzbee, a personal injury lawyer who lost a race for Houston mayor in 2019. “The impeachment articles that have been laid out by the House are baloney. The allegations are untrue. They are false.”

Almost a decade ago, Buzbee led the legal team that defended the then-Gov. Rick Perry against abuse of power charges, charges that ended up being dismissed. Now Buzbee, joined by criminal defense lawyer Dan Cogdell, will defend Paxton against 21 articles of impeachment. Buzbee called the articles of impeachment “hearsay upon hearsay,” “an ugly smear campaign” and “demonstrably false.”

“No prosecutor, no legitimate prosecutor, no credible prosecutor would even try to get a grand jury indictment based on this kind of foolishness,” Buzbee said. “You know, the old saying is you can indict a ham sandwich in the state of Texas. On this evidence, you couldn’t even indict a ham sandwich.”

If Buzbee’s comments sound over the top, they only match the bravado shown by two well-known lawyers the Texas House hired a week ago to try the Paxton impeachment case in the Texas Senate. In comments to reporter Jason Whitely at WFAA, Attorney Rusty Hardin said the evidence against Paxton is much worse than the public knows. Attorney Dick DeGuerin called the House’s evidence “strong as horseradish.”

“(This case) is a matter of cleansing the justice system, to take out somebody who doesn’t respect it and abuses it, as the evidence shows Paxton has done in this case,” said DeGuerin, who has represented politicians, including former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. 

Cogdell, who has been representing Paxton in a pending securities charge case, had his own set of zingers, saying House Investigating Committee Chair Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, had introduced DeGuerin and Hardin to the public after the impeachment vote like the long-time lawyers were the homecoming king and queen of his high school. Cogdell was scornful of claims from the House that the Paxton case was about justice, not politics.

“To say this case is not about politics has the credibility, the believability and the sincerity of the fellow that’s trying to convince his wife that he goes to the strip joint for the food,” Cogdell told reporters. “‘It’s not about the naked women. It’s about the food.’ Nonsense.”

Paxton’s attorneys did not tackle some of the more complicated charges against the attorney general, which involve Paxton’s actions to benefit his financial supporter Austin developer Nate Paul. They tackled an impeachment charge that Paul paid for upgrades to Paxton’s Austin residence, offering a receipt showing that Paxton had paid for his renovations. 

“This is the type of evidence we tried to offer them once we found out this foolishment was going on,” said Buzbee, who called the evidence offered by the House hearsay upon hearsay. “When General Paxton’s team found out and go there and say, ‘Look, we got documents for you. We’d like to be heard,’ and they’re precluded from doing so? Then, every elected official in the state is at risk if this is how things are going to be allowed to be done.”

Similar concerns about the process were raised on the floor of the House when the impeachment vote was taken on May 27. At the time, Murr said it was the House’s duty to act somewhat like the grand jury to determine if evidence was sufficient. The actual merits of the case would be determined during the trial in the Senate, Murr said. 

Click the video link above to learn more about the attorneys defending and prosecuting Paxton, including a one-on-one interview with DeGuerin.