AUSTIN, Texas — In new filings, Texas House lawyers describe the upcoming impeachment trial of suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as political.
“The whole thing is sort of beginning to look more like an unsavory soap opera than it is a legal proceeding,” said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University.
Paxton’s legal team says because the constitution speaks of impeachment in terms of “conviction” and “acquittal,” this should be a criminal trial. A defendant has the option but is not required to testify in a criminal trial. Paxton’s lawyers don’t want him called to the stand.
“What they don’t want is revealing and embarrassing testimony, not just that would hurt Paxton, but hurt the Senate,” Stein said. “Because if in fact he says these things, and he’s forced to talk about some of the less-than-desirable, salacious behaviors he’s engaged in, then it puts onus on the Republican legislature in the Senate to say, ‘bad boy.’”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Senate and will preside over the trial, said in a Houston TV interview that the impeachment trial is neither civil nor criminal. Instead, he says what the House lawyers are saying: it’s a political trial.
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“[Paxton] wants it to be like a criminal trial, so there’s a lot of procedure, a lot of process, a lot of attention to detail, a lot of technical requirements that can get fouled up in some way,” said David Coale, an appellate lawyer at Lynn Pinker Hurst Schwegmann LLP. “And the plaintiffs don’t want that. They want to be at a high level. They want to tell one story the way they want to tell it, with the themes they want to have. And that’s consistent, sort of theatrically, tactically, with calling it ‘political.’ I mean, they’re trying to get people to vote for them. They want two-thirds of the Senate to back them up. To get that, with some of these Republican senators that have long-standing relationships with Mr. Paxton, they’re going to have to get some voters and some constituents to suggest to the senators how they ought to vote. So that’s political, and that’s what they need to do to move the needle to get the votes they need to get an impeachment.”
The House lawyers say the Senate is a court, so to speak, but it’s not a judicial court. The senators are not a typical jury because they know the defendant and the case.
“That’s very different, and it shows that that’s why this is political,” Coale said. “I mean, these are people whose jobs are to listen to their constituents, and then vote in consultation with the other members of the Senate. And you can’t expect them to just put that up on the shelf and act like something that they aren’t. They’re politicians. They were elected to be politicians.”
Paxton is facing other legal troubles. He has been charged with securities fraud. The FBI is also investigating alleged corruption that was revealed in a whistleblower lawsuit, which sparked the House investigation into Paxton and ultimately led to his impeachment. And the State Bar of Texas is suing Paxton for allegedly trying to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
Paxton could be removed from office if any of the 20 articles of impeachment are approved by two-thirds of the Senators. The trial begins Sept. 5.