Texas Republicans Impeach One of Their Own: What Next?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: To Texas now where the state’s Republican attorney general faces an impeachment trial. Ken Paxton was impeached by the Republican majority in May on allegations including bribery and abuse of office. Scott Braddock is editor of “The Quorum Report” and news service dedicated to covering Texas politics. And he’s joining Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how this will affect the state and beyond.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks, Scott Braddock, thanks so much for joining us. Scott, you’re someone based in Texas. You have been covering state legislature and politics for years and years now. And next week, we are heading into an impeachment of the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. For, let’s say, our viewers overseas who might not be following Texas politics closely, what’s he being accused of and why is this so significant?

SCOTT BRADDOCK, EDITOR, THE QUORUM REPORT AND JOURNALIST: Bottom line is, he’s accused of deep seeded corruption in the office of the attorney general, one of the largest law enforcement agencies, basically, in the country. Basically, taking that office and using it as a personnel concierge firm for — you know, for one of his political contributors. There is an allegation of a mistress here that’s tied to a lot of the allegations. And, of course, because he’s one of the top allies of Former President Trump, there’s a lot of national interest around the U.S. as well.

SREENIVASAN: So, what is it that kicked off the Texas House Investigation into the attorney general in the first place?

BRADDOCK: This is fascinating because the supporters of Ken Paxton will say that almost all of the allegations that have been made against him were made before he was reelected last year, and some of that is true. Some of the things that he’s accused of were known to voters both in the March primary last year and the general election as well. But something that’s very different is that he had several people in his office who basically told on him to federal investigators, they blew the whistle on what they said was corruption in the attorney general’s office. Those rock rib conservative attorneys who ended up losing their jobs at the attorney general’s office, they have been in settlement talks with the attorney general about, you know, violation of what is the Whistleblower Act in the state and the attorney general had been accused of retaliation against those employees in his office. Well, he had asked for Texas taxpayers to flip (ph) the bill for the $3 million settlements to settle up with these whistleblowers. And when he was asked by the legislature why taxpayers should be on the hook for that, he wouldn’t answer the questions. And so, the Texas house took an investigation under its own auspices and they basically set out to answer the question themselves to try to figure out why this money should be paid to these people and not only the Texas house Republicans say that, no, taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for that. They say, instead, that, in fact, what we found here is such deep seeded corruption that not only should we not pay money, but we should also impeach this guy and throw him out of office.

SREENIVASAN: Give us some perspective, because state attorneys general are supposed to be the most powerful law enforcement in the state. But Ken Paxton has had an outsized reputation over the past few years. Why?

BRADDOCK: Number one, around the country he would be known as the attorney general who was there at January 6th, before that riot broke out, that violent, you know, insurrection in Washington, D.C., sort of egging on the crowd. But keep in mind, he’s also the attorney general who is the only one in the country to lead the charge when Former President Donald Trump tried to overturn election results in other states. He sort of made this fight against what he calls voter fraud and others call voter fraud when really it’s maybe kind of the other way around, ironically, he’s made that a center piece of his campaigns. And so, he’s become very well known for that.

SREENIVASAN: And there are a couple of other characters in this, after that investigation, there’s a real estate developer, a mistress, kind of — lay out the playing cards, so to speak.

BRADDOCK: If you put all this in a movie, you would — and watched it and you watched that, you would say, there’s no way this could happen in real- life. But this is Texas politics. There’s an old saying in Texas which is, if ain’t indicted, you ain’t invited. We’ve had, you know, people at the top who have been in legal problems before, legal hot water before. There is the allegation that he had a mistress. And the way that this played out, according to Texas house impeachment managers or the prosecutors in the case, it turns out it looked kind of like mission impossible. I mean, if we’re going to keep with the movie theme. You had the attorney general accused of using burner phones and Uber account using a fake name, which was Dave P., that he and this contributor, Nate Paul, they share this Uber account. That Uber account was used to do things like take Paxton to and from his mistress’s apartment here in Austin. That’s the allegation. And burner phones were being used to — you know, to cover up the — you know, the extramarital affair. And of course, the prosecutors in the case has suggested that, hey, look, even if people think that his personal affairs and personal life that doesn’t matter, obviously, Paxton cared enough to try to keep it from people, the degree to which he went and the length that he went to, to try to keep it secret is pretty significant. But there are other things here as well. Things that — and this is the way the impeachment managers described it, they said that for this character, Nate Paul, who you mentioned, who is a developer here in Austin and an investor, this guy, Paul, basically got the advantage that nobody else in Texas would get, which is to have the OAG, the office of attorney general, at his beck and call doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, including — and this is insane, I’ve never seen anything like this, the allegation from the whistleblowers, one of them — one of the allegations is that Paxton hired an outside attorney from Houston to run interference on an Fbi investigation of that investor. And I should also point out, the Austin American stateman here in town has reported that there is federal grand jury that’s convened in San Antonio taking a look at some of all of that.

SREENIVASAN: Have the real estate developer or the alleged mistress, have they responded to any of this, or I guess, pre-emptively to what might be on the stand next week?

BRADDOCK: No. And it will be really interesting to see what they say or don’t say, what questions they answer and what questions they don’t answer when they are on the stands. And look, the legislative proceeding that’s going to play out, it is a proceeding in which you can be compelled to testify. They can’t just not show up. That’s not going to work. In fact, you can be jailed for a year for refusing to testify to the Texas legislature. And so, a lot of truth may come out if this is a fair and open trial, as the lieutenant governor has promised it will be.

SREENIVASAN: OK. OK. So, to add to the drama here, his wife is a state senator. And she’s going to be sitting for the trial.

BRADDOCK: Yes. His wife, Angela Paxton, a state senator from North Texas, she will be there for the trial. But they’ve had to kind of thread the needle on this. These impeachments, as you know, don’t happen very often. And so, what does it really mean to be an impeachment expert? I don’t know that we really — I mean, this is only the third one in the history of Texas. So, what happens with these senators, you got to break out the Texas constitution. That’s the owner’s manual. Dust it off and see what it says. And it says that senators have to sit for trial, and it says that two- thirds of senators are required, two-thirds of those present are required to vote to remove to make that happen, you know, for the —

SREENIVASAN: So, she doesn’t necessarily have to vote against her husband?

BRADDOCK: Well, she’s not going to get to vote at all. So, the Senate, in trying to thread this needle, what established as part of their rules was that she’ll get to sit for the trial, but she doesn’t get to be in on their private deliberations and she does not get to vote. However, there’s a caveat here, the fact that she sits for the trial means that the threshold for removing her husband, the attorney general, stays at 21 votes in the Texas Senate. There are 31 members, and two-thirds of those present would be 21. But if she was not on the floor when they voted, then the threshold would go down to 20. So, her — you know, he being there, that in and of itself does have an impact on the proceedings.

SREENIVASAN: The lieutenant governor usually oversees this, and this is Dan Patrick, Republican.

BRADDOCK: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Any conflict of interest? Does it come down to any sort of a tiebreaker scenario where the lieutenant governor might have influence?

BRADDOCK: Well, he doesn’t get to vote in this. He does get to be the judge, as you suggest, to sort of access the jurist in the trial. Sort of — it’s going to be a real spectacle to see this play out next week. There is conflicts of interest — there are conflicts of interest everywhere. For example, just before the trial, you did have the lieutenant governor accept $3 million in contributions from some supporters of Ken Paxton. There’s a political action committee here call Defend Texas Liberty Pack, and they have been running billboards, text messages and robo calls and social media posts trying to defend Paxton and say that he should be remove. That same group giving the lieutenant governor $3 million, $2 million of which was a loan, that’s been a source of consternation for the senators. It’s my understanding that, at least, a few of them have gone to him, gone to Patrick and said, hey, don’t you think that that looks, at least, like a conflict of interest? And it’s been my reporting that what he told them was that he didn’t see a problem with it and he doesn’t know why anybody else would have a problem with it. But I would ask this, you know, for the $2 million that’s a loan, what are the conditions for that? If the trial goes a certain way, is that loan forgiven? We just don’t know.

SREENIVASAN: Wow. So, you could have a trial where the person presiding over it can take $2 million or $3 million from people supporting the person on trial, and the lieutenant governor cannot understand what is wrong with that? OK.

BRADDOCK: Yes. And I would also point out that he doesn’t really need the money. Even if he didn’t accept the $3 million, he’d still have about $20 million in the bank. So, that looks extra bad to a lot of people around here.

SREENIVASAN: This is a Republican controlled house, a Republican controlled Senate with a Republican lieutenant governor that presides over this. What does that tell you about how this party is going to have to kind of look at itself through this process?

BRADDOCK: You know, I’ve often said that the Republican primary in Texas is one of the most important elections on earth that nobody pays attention to. In the state of 31 million people, you have about 2 million who vote generally in that primary. So, that means 750,000 to a million people get to set the course for this state. And you have not had Democrats be competitive in a general election in a generation in this state. And so, that means that any corruption that exists in state government is going to be in the Republican Party. And, you know, I think nationally what you see is always just tribalism, right, it’s Democrats versus Republicans when it came to the impeachment of President Trump. Now, in Washington, they’re talking, as you know, about, you know, maybe impeaching President Biden, and that’s Republican going against the Democrat. But here in Texas, it’s basically a one-party state at this point at the state level. And so, here you have an example that flips the script on all of that where you have Republicans potentially policing one of their own. And I think that’s why this is sort of gotten the attention of people, not just in Texas but around the country and internationally as well.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you reported recently that there was a possibility that Ken Paxton could resign to sort of, well, prevent all of this from coming out in the light of day as on-camera spectacle? Any possibility of that happening now?

BRADDOCK: It looks like he’s not going to resign, but there was some serious chatter about that among top Republicans last week. I can tell you that people at the capitol, people who are in charge were taking that seriously. And there’s been sort of an off and on rumor mill about whether he would resign to try avoid testimony. And look, the testimony is going to will get ugly, right? I mean, we’ve already talked about the fact that he’s got an alleged mistress who is on the witness list, by the way. And all of these allegations are going to be, you know, litigated in just a nasty way in this trial for sure. You have some legendry attorneys on both sides who are really going to fight this — you know, fight each other, tooth and nail, during this. And maybe he would just rather avoid it all.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

BRADDOCK: There’s a report out last weekend that he was considering resigning. He said, no, that he wasn’t. And so, we’ll take him at his word for now. I would say, there’s a good legal reason for him to not to resign because the walls are sort of closing in on him. You don’t just have this impeachment trial in Austin, there’s a state level prosecution of him for securities fraud in Houston. And as I mentioned, there is that federal grand jury that has convened down in San Antonio taking a look at him as well. And if you’re somebody who holds a constitutional office, like the office of attorney general, that may be your only bargaining chip if you’re trying to get a lighter sentence, if there is a federal prosecution.

SREENIVASAN: In response to your report about the possible resignation, Ken Paxton said he would not resign. Did he say anything about the specific allegations, the impeachment that he is facing?

BRADDOCK: No. And it’s been interesting that the supporters of Paxton almost never talk about the allegations against him. Instead, they say that he’s one of the most conservatism attorney generals in the entire country, that he’s done such a great job of fighting the Biden administration. But the folks that are supporting him almost never talk about the actual allegations against him. And so, I think that’s a pretty telling fact.

SREENIVASAN: You know, what have his attorneys done in this lead-up? Are there any kind of legal moves that they’ve made that might make — well, that might tip it in his favor or at least give him less of a disadvantage?

BRADDOCK: So far, Paxton’s attorneys have tried to dismiss the entire thing as political theater and a witch hunt, the same kind of rhetoric that you would hear from Former President Trump as he deals with his legal issues. The legal moves that they’ve made on Paxton’s side have been to try to get the Texas Senate to dismiss this out of hand, to say that the articles of impeachment against Paxton are unconstitutional. It does not look like the Texas Senate is going to do that. Instead, it looks like the Senate is moving ahead with a full trial. And we’ll get to hear what their actual defense of this is.

SREENIVASAN: You know, speaking of those felony charges back from 2015, where is that at now?

BRADDOCK: That has been hung up in the courts for almost, as you point out, since 2014, 2015. You know, we’ve been looking at the fact that our attorney general has been under indictment for securities fraud in the proceedings in Houston where that’s finally starting to go forward, although it’s sort of on all at once again, because of the impeachment trial that’s about to happen in the Texas Senate. Both sides in that case, the attorneys for Paxton and the prosecutors, have said that if he’s removed from office by the Texas Senate, then the state level prosecutor in Houston would immediately go to a plea-bargaining situation, because Paxton has for, all intents and purposes, he has admitted to engaging in that securities fraud that he’s accused of, which is why his attorneys have tried to drag it out forever and not have it go to trial.

SREENIVASAN: Are there national implications just for the very fact that this impeachment trial is happening and if, in fact, Ken Paxton, the attorney general of the State of Texas is impeached?

BRADDOCK: Hard to tell. You know, I’m wondering every day, you know, how much people can pay attention to things that are in other states when often seems like whole world is on fire with, you know, the former president who is going through his own, you know, impeachments and now, you know, criminal trials as well. Politically, I’m not sure how much folks are going to pay attention in other states to what’s happening here. This seems to be kind of a family affair here in Texas. But I do think that is has, you know, real implications for, you know, what folks are willing to do as Republicans. I mean, keep in mind, this is the only to attorney general who would file that lawsuit for Former President Trump to try to overturn the election in other states, and maybe it turns out that there are Republicans who don’t agree with someone who would do that. And that’s in and of itself has been said to be, you know, another act of corruption. The State Bar of Texas, the — you know, the entity that licenses, you know, lawyers here, there are attorneys in this state who want Paxton to be disbarred over his conduct, and that’s been revealed by the evidence in this impeachment trial so far. So, what the reverberations are going to be, hard to say. But it’s going to be a fascinating month or so as this trial plays out in the Texas Senate.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. Does this entire episode affect how the Republican vote stack up in the state? I mean, it’s a south Republican state over and over again. Does this harm the brand enough where we could see perhaps more competitive races coming up?

BRADDOCK: I think that the brand of Republican that we have in Texas and the brand of Republicans we have nationally right now are different. That’s always been the case. I mean, President Trump talks about when America first and in Texas, I’m sorry, people around here would say, it’s Texas first. That’s kind of a little — it’s sort of a different thing. But, look, if you look at the MAGA influence, the Make America Great Again influence, MAGA as Steve Bannon calls it, Bannon, you may have seen on his shows, the “War Room,” he said that Texas is the heard of the MAGA or one of the hearts of MAGA. I would push back on that a little bit. You know, you had Governor Abbott who was booed by MAGA folks at a MAGA rally last year and still he wins his primary by 60 — you know, with 66 percent against four challengers. The same thing with U.S. Senator John Horhn and our senior senator, he’s been booed by the MAGA folks and he wins his primary with just as many challengers, he gets 76 percent in his primaries. And I would point out that the last time that the Texas Republican primary at the presidential level was contested, that was back in 2016, that Trump didn’t win here. That was Ted Cruz, and it wasn’t close either. Trump, I think, he got 50 delegates to — Cruz got something like 100. So, he got trounced when he was taken on by another Republican in this state.

SREENIVASAN: Scott Braddock of “The Quorum Report,” thanks so much for joining us.

BRADDOCK: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.