Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a motion to dismiss the majority of impeachment articles filed against him by the Texas House of Representatives.
Specifically, Paxton’s attorneys are asking the Senate to throw out Articles 1 through 7 and 9 through 20, leaving only Article 8 remaining.
“Impeachment invokes the Legislature’s awesome power to override the will of the people,” the motion opens.
“Unfortunately, in the impeachment of Attorney General Paxton, ‘the great State of Texas is pointing her heaviest artillery at something that does not even reach the magnitude of a snowbird,’” the motion states, citing a proclamation from the 1893 impeachment proceedings of Land Commissioner W. L. McGaughey.
“The ‘wiser’ course of action is to let the people decide whether to ‘effect the removal’ of an officer at the voting booth,” the filing continues. “In November 2022, Texas voters rendered their judgment by reelecting Attorney General Paxton to serve a third consecutive term.”
However, the motion claims, “Unable to defeat the Attorney General at the polls, the House quickly filed Articles of Impeachment relying on misconduct that occurred, if at all, years before the Attorney General’s most recent election.”
“This Court has never convicted an impeached official based solely on House allegations that occurred before an elected official’s most recent election when they were publicly known at that time,” the motion reads. “This rule, known as the ‘prior-term doctrine,’ is firmly rooted in Texas law, Texas Supreme Court decisions, and Texas impeachment precedents.”
“The alleged acts underlying nineteen of the Articles took place before the Attorney General’s most recent election and were highly publicized,” the motion states. “Under the prior-term doctrine, they therefore cannot factually or legally form the basis for the Attorney General’s removal.”
To prove the widespread knowledge of the charges in question, the motion includes more than 30 pages of citations to news articles prior to his most recent election.
Were the motion to succeed, only Article 8 would remain, which claims, “While holding office as attorney general, Warren Kenneth Paxton misused his official powers by concealing his wrongful acts in connection with whistleblower complaints made by employees whom Paxton had terminated.
“Specifically, Paxton entered into a settlement agreement with the whistleblowers that provides for payment of the settlement from public funds. The settlement agreement stayed the wrongful termination suit and conspicuously delayed the discovery of facts and testimony at trial, to Paxton’s advantage, which deprived the electorate of its opportunity to make an informed decision when voting for attorney general.”
The House voted 121 to 23 to impeach Paxton after a brief period of debate on the floor, as reported by The Dallas Express. The investigation into the attorney general had been kept secret from most of the representatives, only being revealed shortly after Paxton called for Speaker Dade Phelan’s (R-Beaumont) resignation for allegedly being drunk while on the dais.
Many viewed the impeachment as the culmination of political tensions between the House and Paxton, and a number of county-level GOP organizations have denounced Phelan for the way the impeachment was conducted.
Phelan, however, has defended the process, saying, “I stand behind what happened in the House, and I’m proud of the work product that the board of managers put forth. And we have a good team. And it was the right thing to do.”
Since then, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting as the judge over the court of impeachment, has issued a gag order to limit potentially prejudicial out-of-court statements made to the public, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Paxton’s trial is scheduled to begin on September 5.
