The Republican-controlled Texas House has voted to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and sent 20 articles of impeachment to the state Senate.
It makes Paxton only the third sitting official in Texas’s nearly 200-year history to have been impeached.
“BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the State of Texas, That Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr., Attorney General of the State of Texas, is impeached and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the Texas Senate,” read Texas House Resolution No. 2377.
Paxton denounced the impeachment as “never meant to be fair or just” and was “politically motivated.”
“I look forward to a quick resolution in the Texas Senate, where I have full confidence the process will be fair and just,” he said in a statement.
The 121–23 vote triggers Paxton’s immediate suspension from office pending the outcome of a trial in the state Senate and empowers Gov. Greg Abbott to appoint someone else as Texas’s top lawyer in the interim.
Paxton is one of the GOP’s most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a significant election integrity case related to the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Trump denounced the impeachment attempt right before the Texas vote.
“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,” he said in a social media post within half an hour before the state House was set to vote.
The 20 Articles of Impeachment
The 20 articles of impeachment include allegations of bribery and abuse of public trust.
The Texas House alleged that Paxton improperly issued legal opinions to benefit real estate developer Nate Paul, and fired whistleblower staffers.
Bribery charges stem from Paul allegedly employing a woman with whom Paxton had an affair in exchange for legal help and Paul allegedly paying for renovations to Paxton’s home. Other charges date back to Paxton’s pending 2015 felony securities fraud case, including lying to state investigators.
By Allen Zhong
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