To a non-trivial extent, it’s remarkable that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is still serving in that position in the first place.
Paxton has been a target of any number of scandals since first being elected to his position in 2014. By way of brief summary, he was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though has so far managed to avoid having the case come to trial. He was also accused in 2021 by members of his office of abusing his position, leading to a substantial out-of-court settlement. That abuse centered on his alleged relationship with a prominent developer which led to reduced-cost renovations at his home among … other things.
Despite all that, Paxton won the Republican nomination to retain his job last year, with Donald Trump’s endorsement. In November, he won reelection fairly easily.
Over the weekend, though, Paxton was impeached by the Texas House. It seems, according to the astute analysis of Texas Monthly’s Christopher Hooks, that the trigger for the impeachment was the aforementioned settlement with those whistleblowers. Soon after the $3.3 million agreement was reached, the legislature began investigating Paxton’s actions, a probe that led to the 20 articles of impeachment. Legislators approved the articles by a wide margin, with even more than two-thirds of Republicans agreeing to impeach.
Again, this wasn’t really a surprise in the abstract — except that Paxton had to this point managed to retain his position.
“Lawmakers and state leaders hadn’t learned to love Paxton, presumably,” Hooks writes of Paxton’s avoiding accountability. “But taking him on would have eaten up political capital and alienated Paxton’s powerful right-wing backers. So they just … didn’t.”
Those right-wing backers, Hooks notes, mostly didn’t try to defend Paxton’s actions as the impeachment was being debated, instead focusing on the process that led to the impeachment.
Paxton did have a loud coterie of public allies, though: Trumpworld. At first, it was more ancillary figures like Donald Trump Jr. But then, as the vote loomed, Donald Trump himself weighed in repeatedly with posts on his social media platform.
“I love Texas, won it twice in landslides, and watched as many other friends, including Ken Paxton, came along with me,” Trump wrote on Saturday. “Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed — I will fight you if it does. It is the Radical Left Democrats, RINOS, and Criminals that never stop. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Free Ken Paxton, let them wait for the next election!”
Later, he criticized Gov. Greg Abbott (R): “MISSING IN ACTION! Where is the Governor of Texas on his Attorney General’s Impeachment?”
This would seem like an odd fight for a guy running for his party’s nomination to pick. Again, Paxton’s sketchiness was well-established, to the extent that even most elected Republicans in the state legislature decided he deserved to be rebuked. But here comes Trump, deciding to offer Paxton his allegiance.
So: Why?
There are a few likely reasons.
The first is that Trump no doubt recognizes that Paxton’s situation looks a bit like his own. Trump was impeached twice, you’ll recall, with his defense in both cases centering on the same sort of rhetoric that he offered for Paxton: Political enemies are simply trying to subvert an election result. Trump also has an ongoing interest in presenting investigations and punishments as invalid, given the various imminent and established legal threats he faces. The Paxton situation allows him to bolster the idea that conservative Republicans are being unfairly targeted, even if the fairness is often robustly demonstrated.
The second reason Trump might weigh in is that he has some political cover for this position. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) offered his support for Paxton, calling the attorney general “the strongest conservative AG in the country” on Twitter.
“No attorney general has battled the abuses of the Biden admin more ferociously — and more effectively — than has Paxton,” Cruz wrote. Paxton responded to say thanks.
This brings us to the third point: Paxton has, in fact, been one of Trump’s most fervent defenders. Before the 2020 election, he successfully sued the state’s most-populous (and heavily Democratic) county to prevent the use of universal mail-in ballots. Speaking to former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon in 2021, Paxton pointed to this and other lawsuits as the reason Trump won the state.
After the election, when Trump was scrambling to retain power, Paxton filed a cringey lawsuit aiming to invalidate the results in several other states. Trump pinned all of his pre-Jan. 6 hopes on the lawsuit only to see the Supreme Court quickly dismiss it. But Paxton wasn’t done: He showed up at Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally to offer his support.
Such fealty does not necessarily guarantee Trump’s reciprocity. The past few years are littered with people who pledged their allegiance to Trump only to see him decline to offer loyalty in return. But now consider another factor: Paxton is still attorney general and therefore retains the ability to influence the 2024 election.
In order to be removed from office, Paxton would need to be opposed by 21 of the Texas Senate’s 31 members, a two-thirds majority. Nineteen of those members are Republicans — including Paxton’s wife. Nine of them would need to vote to remove Paxton from office.
Here’s where Trump might be able to be the difference maker. He could, for example, pledge to make the reelection bids of those state senators more difficult to try to keep the number of partisan defections at eight or fewer. Paxton reportedly threatened to politically target those in the state House who voted to impeach him; he even tried to apparently preempt the impeachment by calling for the resignation of the chamber’s speaker. Having Trump put similar pressure on senators, even indirectly, might swing just enough votes. And ensure that the former president has an even more loyal attorney general in place next year.
It might not work, of course. Trump’s endorsement in 2022 was not even enough to help Paxton, the two-term incumbent, avoid a runoff. But for Trump, what’s the harm in trying? Will Republican primary voters suddenly raise an eyebrow about Trump’s commitment to honest governance? We’ve seen this play before: If Trump’s position doesn’t prevail, Trump will rapidly explain how it wasn’t his fault.
In the meantime, Paxton is removed from his position. He may never return to it. If so, Trump loses one of the few allies he actually cares about retaining.