(Texas Scorecard) – On September 18, 2023, just two days after the Senate acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for a full audit of the impeachment’s expenses.
One year later, Speaker Dade Phelan has still refused to provide taxpayers with the information.
In a letter to State Auditor Lisa Collier, Patrick asked for all expenditures incurred by the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate from March 1, 2023, through October 15, 2023.
The Senate quickly provided receipts showing they spent $435,000 during the two months of preparation and the trial. Phelan and the House, however, have not.
In a statement earlier this month marking the anniversary of the start of the trial, Patrick took aim at Phelan for his refusal to comply:
Dade Phelan has refused to comply with the audit for almost a year now, and apparently, he doesn’t believe he needs to tell taxpayers how much he spent on the impeachment. I’m not aware of any legislator refusing to tell taxpayers how they spent taxpayer money.
What is Dade Phelan afraid to show the public? Millions upon millions of your money, spent on high-priced private lawyers who lost the case, in addition to his costly state expenses.
Patrick had previously noted that interference with audits is a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.
Open records requests have revealed a cost of at least $4.3 million in the impeachment, including money given to a public relations firm before and after the trial. The House hired prominent Houston attorneys Dick DeGuerin and Rusty Hardin to lead the prosecution, at the cost of $500 an hour to taxpayers, along with a group of other lawyers providing legal assistance.
That price tag alone well exceeds the $3.3 million cost of the settlement the attorney general’s office reached with a group of former employees, who claimed they were fired unfairly, to avoid further litigation.
House Speaker Dade Phelan said that the settlement—which was not approved by the House—was the impetus for their impeachment of Paxton.
Those same records include thousands of dollars paid to New West Communications, a public relations firm, before and after the trial.
In a statement to Texas Scorecard Paxton called for transparency:
Dade Phelan desperately wants to conceal from Texas taxpayers how much of their money he wasted in his attempt to remove me from office and deprive voters of the leadership they elected. He hired a huge team of expensive lawyers to wage their phony impeachment war against me and failed. He wants to hide the true cost of his stunt, but the public deserves transparency.
Phelan did not respond to a request for comment.
