Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday claimed the state House of Representatives is trying to impeach him again after its Ethics Committee scheduled a meeting for next week, in what Paxton says “yet another desperate attempt by the Republican establishment to impeach me. Their bitter obsession with taking me down knows no bounds, and they will stop at nothing to remove me from office,” the Texas Tribune reports on more intra-GOP shit-talk.
A member of the committee, not authorized to go on the record to speak for the entire five-seat panel, told the Tribune there was “no truth whatsoever” to Paxton’s claim. The comically corrupt far right ideologue’s revenge tour against Republicans fell kind of short in this year’s primaries as just 13 of the 60 Republicans who voted to impeach him lost to the challengers he backed and another four declined to run for reelection – and last year’s vote was not a close call. The state House approved the 20 articles against Paxton, 121 to 23, with 60 Republicans among those voting yes, plus all 61 Dems present, in a chamber that’s 86 R – 64 D this session. And those 17 anti-Paxton GOP members are still there until next year anyway, so it’s not like there’s anything stopping them now or later, just as there’s nothing stopping the state Senate’s GOP majority from tossing the articles again – maybe with at least one defection though after Republican Drew Springer asked for a do-over.
The Tribune thinks Paxton’s actually freaking out over a federal grand jury subpoenaing two of his deputies to testify earlier this month in the very long-ongoing criminal investigation into a bribery scam overlapping with a lot of the same shit covered in the impeachment articles.