Today's Flying Pigs Report: Ken Paxton Facing Impeachment!!

The Human Slime Trail may not be above accountability in Texas after all!!

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda fun.

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For years, it’s been an open secret that Republican Texas Attorney and Human Slimeball General Ken Paxton has been as corrupt as the day is long. Anyone who’s paid attention to Texas politics for any length of time has known this, yet no one’s been able to do anything about it. As the Lone Star State’s chief law enforcement officer, Paxton, who leaves a slime trail behind him, knows where the bodies are buried. He’s been able to threaten and intimidate those who may have wanted to press for accountability, which explains why he’s still in office.

So the news that he’s been impeached and faces a trial in the Texas Senate comes as welcome news. Yeah, karma’s a real bitch, ain’t it? And seldom has there been more schadenfreude to be liberally spread around and enjoyed. I suspect many cans of Lone Star were raised in celebrations around Austin to toast the (hopefully) impending demise of one of the most venal and oily characters in Texas politics.

Paxton, who's been under indictment for most of his tenure as Attorney General (yes, in any other state this would be a problem…but this is Texas), is finally facing legal issues that might do him in. And as someone with an interest in Texas politics, I'm here for it.

Why? Because the top law enforcement official of a state shouldn't be enforcing laws when he's been under indictment for the past EIGHT years. Never mind the 20 counts that Paxton was impeached for.

The Texas House Committee on General Investigating recommended impeachment for sitting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Thursday afternoon in a shockingly fast turn of events for the embattled Republican leader. The recommendation was unanimous on the part of the four-person investigatory panel.

Paxton came into Thursday's proceedings facing the possibility of an impeachment after a House committee heard testimony from investigators Wednesday that the state's top lawyer used his office to provide confidential FBI documents to his friend and campaign donor Nate Paul.

In a response to the committee's recommendation, Paxton suggested Thursday evening in a tweeted statement that he was offered no opportunity for rebuttal or due process during this week's proceedings, that a senior attorney from his office was unable to "provide the facts," and that the panel's members wanted "nothing more than to sabotage our legal challenges to Biden's extremist agenda by taking me out as the State's Attorney General."

The House investigation comes after Paxton attempted to use $3.3 million in taxpayer money to settle a whistleblower lawsuit which alleges he retaliated against former office aides by firing them after they reported his alleged misconduct to the federal authorities. The committee initially opened its investigation in March. Prosecutors investigating Paxton told the committee that he could have committed felony offenses such as abuse of official capacity and misuse of official information. 

That the Texas House Committee on General Investigating (THCGI) unanimously forwarded 20 counts is breathtaking. And that Paxton was not allowed an opportunity to sabotage the process is almost as surprising. It might just be that Paxton’s fellow Republicans are sick of his shit and the fact that his egregious corruption has become impossible to ignore. After all, when you’ve been under indictment since 2015, you can’t claim to be the champion of good government, can you?

We shouldn’t assume that we’ve seen the last of Ken Paxton, of course. While his political career may be on life support, it’s by no means dead, and he’s been in Texas politics long enough to know where a large number of bodies are buried. Will he attempt to burn down the Texas GOP to save his ass? No one should assume he wouldn’t. It's not like morals and ethics are his strong suit.

After eight years of breathtaking, public corruption, Texas Republicans finally decided to notice that Attorney General Ken Paxton is a fireball of criminality and an embarrassment to the state where he serves as the highest law enforcement officer….

So, bully for them! Although they didn't say a goddamn word about this corrupt sumbitch until they were absolutely forced to do it, so, let's not go overboard with praise here.

The 20 proposed articles of impeachment trace the outlines of a story which has been public for years. The committee charges Paxton with several counts of disregard of his official duty by using his office to benefit Nate Paul, a shady real estate developer who donated $25,000 to Paxton's campaign. After the FBI raided Paul's office in 2019, Paxton not only gave him non-public information about the investigation, but his office paid a private attorney to investigate state and federal law enforcement officials, producing 30 grand jury subpoenas. He also dummied up an official opinion to help Paul block foreclosures on his properties, as well as intervening in a fraud dispute between Paul and a public charity.

Two articles charge Paxton with Constitutional Bribery for accepting a gut rehab of his house at Paul's expense, as well as employment for Paxton's girlfriend.

Staff at the Attorney General's Office eventually revolted, with several filing a whistleblower report, after which Paxton fired them. There are several articles charging him with misapplication and misappropriation of public resources, as well as false statements in relation to the "sham investigation" and "lengthy written report containing false or misleading statements" purporting to refute the whistleblowers' claims. And after all of that, Paxton then "engaged in a public and private campaign to impugn the employees' professional reputations or prejudice their future employment."

Four of the whistleblowers sued, and in February they reached a $3.3 million settlement which would have kept the case out of court. But the Legislature would have to appropriate that cash, and that appears to have sparked the investigation which led to this impeachment. Once they had to look at it, they decided that using public funds to cover up a bribery scandal was actually not cool.

Hmm…whodathunkit? Who knew that using $3.3 million in tax money to tidy up a bribery scandal would be beyond the pale for Texas Republicans? Yeah, it turns out that there’s a line in the sand that even good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexual Texas patriots won’t cross.

So, yeah, Ken Paxton’s used the power of his office for his own benefit for as long as he could get away with it…which has pretty much been since Day One. Most everyone in Texas politics has known it, but Paxton, being the state’s top law enforcement official, has been out of reach. Until the feds got involved, that is.

For the past few years, it’s been a matter of Paxton plugging holes in the dike as necessary, but the holes have been getting bigger, and he’s running out of fingers.

Yesterday, the Texas House of Representatives voted 121-23, with two abstaining, to impeach Paxton. This means he’s immediately removed from office pending a trial in the Texas Senate.

Almost immediately both Paxton and The Former Guy predictably decried the “injustice” of the impeachment process, as if the AG was somehow as pure as the driven snow. Paxton is, also predictably, trying to make this about him being persecuted by the “corrupt establishment.” How convenient that he’s forgotten that he’s been under indictment since 2015 and has a $3.3 million judgment pending against him.

As might be imagined, Democrats in Texas are lining up to piss on Paxton’s grave (figuratively, of course). They may be getting ahead of themselves, but they can see the buzzards circling and all indications are pointing toward the AG’s political career being toast.

Get your popcorn ready, y’all. I have a feeling this is going to get pretty interesting very quickly.

Karma can be a real bitch, no? Few deserve to have a shit-ton of it rain down on them more than Ken Paxton. And from where I sit, I’ll be bathing in schadenfreude- warm, bubbly, refreshing schadenfreude.

If there’s any justice in this world, Ken Paxton will have trouble getting a job as a short-order cook at a choke-and-puke in Laredo. Then again, knowing Conservatives, who tend to look out for one another, he’ll probably end up with a cushy gig at a think tank in DC.

So much for accountability.

If I could say only one thing to Ken Paxton, it would be short and concise:

Hahahahahahahaha…you dumb, corrupt sonofabitch. I hope you roast in Hell.