The national split within the Republican Party between “conservatives” and “moderates” is ever widening as the race continues for the 2024 Republican nomination. In Texas, conservative Attorney General Ken Paxton has become a target of his own party in the past week. Both the timing and content of the happenings echo the attacks on then-President Donald Trump at the end of his first term.
It seems that just days after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan resign from office for being drunk on the job, Phelan’s lieutenants announced plans to retaliate against the AG.
Phelan launched an impeachment against Paxton, only the third officeholder to be impeached in almost 200 years of Texas history. Paxton’s impeachment has been overseen by anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats, as reported by the National Pulse. Two days after the announcement a vote was held confirming that the attack will proceed.
Fox News reported that Paxton’s ousting comes after the Texas House Committee on General Investigating, comprising three Republicans and two Democrats, wrote up 20 articles of impeachment for the state attorney general over years of alleged abuse of power, bribery, and other accusations.
Texas House Republicans just voted overwhelmingly to impeach Trump-endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton after he took on Biden, Big Pharma, and our country’s Open Borders
Looks like the RINO Swamp in Texas may be deeper than the Swamp in DC
Texas voters deserve so much better
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) May 27, 2023
Former President Trump has already voiced his support for the Texas Attorney General, writing in a Truth Social post “The RINO [Republican in name only] Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard-working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States, Ken Paxton, who just won re-election with a large number of American Patriots strongly voting for him,” the former president’s first message wrote. “You would think that any issue would have been fully adjudicated by the voters of Texas, especially when that vote was so conclusive….
And he posted further:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/110441843862377919
In a Facebook Live on Thursday afternoon, State Rep. Steve Toth (R–The Woodlands) quoted from the code:
“It’s really clear. You can’t remove a statewide officeholder under an alleged accusation that occurred before the person was elected, and that’s exactly what they are doing right now,” said Toth. “This is an illegal act.”
Texas Government Code 665.081 states, “An officer in this state may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer’s election to office.”
On Friday night Attorney General Paxton was interviewed by Matt Gaetz on Newsmax TV. Paxton explained to viewers how the Texas GOP lawmakers engaging in an illegal impeachment with the move.
“When you expose what these liberal Republicans do, which is basically cut deals with liberal Democrats, they get really angry that the last thing they want is somebody around like me who exposes what they do,” Paxton said.
“And I’ve done that with Phelan. They tried to sneak through legislation two years ago where they were reducing the penalty for illegal voting, where I would now have to prove that they knew the law when they did it, which meant no prosecutions. We caught him, we exposed it. Those are the types of things that Phelan finds infuriating. And unfortunately for him, we caught him and we exposed it, despite the fact that he’s a Republican.”
“Are you confident that you have the votes to block an impeachment by the Texas State House?” Gaetz asked.
“No, this has been done,” Paxton replied. “I think they decided they thought I was going to lose my election to Bush, and they became very disturbed when I won. And they concocted this plan, I think months and months ago, maybe right after my reelection, thinking that the voters just were not smart enough to figure this out. They’re going to fix it.
And they started working on this about four months ago in secret. I literally first heard about this on Tuesday, where they announced they subpoenaed us. On Wednesday, they announced an investigation. On Thursday, they announced impeachment. And now on Saturday, the impeachment is going forward. The members haven’t seen all the information.
They haven’t allowed us to participate. We have lots of information that would change the results of their investigation. They have refused to let us testify. They have refused to let us give them information. They have refused to allow us to correct things that even they know are wrong. And that’s the process we’re in. They want this done because the voters, in their opinion, weren’t smart enough to get it right, and they’re going to fix it.”
The vote also follows an incredibly successful legislative session where key topics like transgender minors, abortion, and university diversity were addressed. DC Enquirer reported.
As a consequence of the vote, Paxton has immediately been suspended from his position until further notice. “Every politician that supports this deceitful attempt will inflict lasting damage on the credibility of the Texas House which I served in,” Paxton commented on Friday,
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