AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faced the most serious threat to his troubled career Tuesday with the start of an impeachment trial that could permanently oust the embattled Republican from office after years of alleged corruption and scandal.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faced the most serious threat to his troubled career Tuesday with the start of an impeachment trial that could permanently oust the embattled Republican from office after years of alleged corruption and scandal.
The fate of Paxton, a 60-year-old Republican, is in the hands of GOP senators with whom he served before winning a statewide race to take charge of the attorney general’s office in 2015.
A handful of Paxton supporters in red shirts began lining up outside the Texas Capitol before sunrise, waiting for state police to open the doors so they could witness Texas’ first impeachment trial in nearly half a century.
“It is the Austin swamp,” said Kaci Sisk, who heads a group of conservative activists near San Antonio who have been looking to line up primary opponents to Republicans who have supported Paxton’s impeachment. “This thing has been a sham from the start.”
In an era of bitter partisanship, the historic proceeding is a rare instance of a political party seeking to hold one of its own to account for allegations of wrongdoing. The impeachment also came as a sudden rebuke to Paxton, who has built a national profile fighting high-profile legal battles, including trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and who won a third term in 2022 despite long-pending state criminal charges and an FBI investigation.
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton in May, largely based on his former deputies’ claims that the attorney general used his power to help a wealthy donor who reciprocated with favors, including hiring a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair.
