The House Republicans in Texas have just announced that they’ll be voting to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton tomorrow at 1PM. This comes just days after Paxton called on the House speaker to resign for being drunk on the House floor.
The Texas House just announced that they are going to vote on a resolution to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton tomorrow at 1 pm.
This comes less than a week after Paxton called on Speaker Dade Phelan to resign for being drunk on the House floor in between appointing Democrats… pic.twitter.com/gA7gPyDAdN
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 26, 2023
Here’s more on this from Newsmax:
The Republican-led Texas House of Representatives has set a historic Saturday vote to possibly impeach embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton and suspend him from office, just as some prominent conservatives began to rally around him.
Paxton, a 60-year-old Republican, finds himself on the brink of impeachment after years of scandal, criminal charges and corruption accusations. The House will consider a resolution calling for Paxton’s impeachment at 1 p.m. Saturday, according to a statement released Friday by the House Committee on General Investigating.
If impeached, Paxton would be forced to leave office immediately. He would be just the third person in the state’s nearly 200-year history to be impeached and the first statewide officer since former Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson in 1917.
The GOP-led committee spent months quietly looking into Paxton and recommended Thursday that the state’s top lawyer be impeached on 20 articles including bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust.
“…hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims”
Paxton has criticized the impeachment effort as an attempt to “overthrow the will of the people and disenfranchise the voters of our state.” He has said the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims.”
Prominent conservatives had been notably quiet on Paxton until Friday, but some began to rally around him by late morning. The chairman of the state Republican Party, Matt Rinaldi, criticized the process as “sham” and called on the GOP-controlled Senate to acquit Paxton when the cases reaches trial in that chamber.
Like Paxton, he took aim at Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan.
“It is based on allegations already litigated by voters, led by a liberal speaker trying to undermine his conservative adversaries,” Rinaldi said.
“It seems Texas Republicans will have to rely yet again on the principled leadership of the Texas Senate to restore sanity and reason for our state,” Rinaldi said.
If the House successfully votes to impeach Paxton, he will have to leave office immediately pending a trial in the Senate which would have the final say:
First will come the House vote, where the investigation panel proposed at least 40 minutes to lay out the charges against Paxton and four hours for the members to debate.
It’s unclear how many supporters Paxton may have in the House, where he served five terms before becoming a state senator.
Impeachment requires a majority vote of the state’s usually 150-member House chamber, which Republicans now control 85-64, since a GOP representative resigned ahead of an expected vote to expel him.
Unlike in Congress, impeachment in Texas requires immediate removal from office until a trial is held in the Senate. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott could appoint an interim replacement. Abbott’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the impeachment counts.
Final removal would require two-thirds support in the Senate, where Paxton’s wife’s, Angela, is a member. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican and leader of the Senate, did not respond to requests for comment.
I don’t really pay much attention to Texas politics so this is pretty shocking. We’ll be watching to see what happens with this tomorrow, so stay tuned.