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In a monumental decision that threatens to divide the powerful Texas Republican Party, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday after a scandal-plagued decade in which he has been accused in multiple investigations of misusing his office and of retaliating against those who’ve exposed his misdeeds.
Paxton’s impeachment, triggered by a 121-23 vote with overwhelming Republican support, removes the 60-year-old attorney general from office pending a trial in the Senate. An interim replacement must be named by Gov. Greg Abbott.
More:House panel recommends impeaching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton amid allegations
The impeachment, just the third in Texas history and the first in nearly 50 years, punctuates a whirlwind week in the House that began with the three-term attorney general accusing House Speaker Dade Phelan of being intoxicated on the job and continued with a bombshell revelation that Paxton was the unidentified subject of a House investigation that began in March.
That investigation turned up little new dirt on Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 for state securities fraud, but it was noteworthy since it drew support from Phelan and other high-ranking House Republicans. The probe relied greatly on a wrongful termination lawsuit from former attorney general aides who Paxton fired in 2020 after they told federal investigators that he misused the office to help a political donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
The whistleblower allegations are the subject of an ongoing federal investigation into Paxton.
In closing remarks, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, urged members to vote in favor of impeachment.
“The evidence is substantial. It is alarming, and it is unnerving,” he said.
The partisan vote in favor of impeachment was 61 Democrats and 60 Republicans.
“The ugly spectacle in the Texas House today confirmed the outrageous impeachment plot against me was never meant to be fair or just,” Paxton said in a statement. “It was a politically motivated sham from the beginning.”
The basis for the House investigation was a request in February from Paxton to the House to budget $3.3 million in public money to pay a settlement in the whistleblower lawsuit. Phelan, in rejecting the request, said it wasn’t a good use of taxpayer funds. He then quietly launched the investigation. Phelan, who rarely votes on House matters, announced his support Saturday in favor of Paxton’s impeachment.
On the House floor, more than twice the number of reporters and TV and still photographers arrived as much as three hours before the proceedings began Saturday to cover the first impeachment process in the chamber since 1975.
Before the vote, Phelan, who presides over the 149-member House, ceded the floor to the five-member House General Investigating Committee led by Murr.
More:Why is Ken Paxton being impeached? Read the 20 charges against him and Texas AG’s response
Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, revealed that in recent days Paxton phoned several House members and threatened them with political consequences if they voted to impeach him. A House member responded, “Wow!” Geren, in a conversation with the American-Statesman after the vote, declined to identify those members or say how many there were.
Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, revealed new details uncovered by six investigators hired by the House committee. She said that a young man who worked in the attorney general’s office was troubled when he was in Paxton’s home and overheard a contractor make a comment that indicated Paul paid to renovate the kitchen. After the incident, the man said he was offered a job promotion but instead quit, Johnson said. For the next four months, the man continued to receive money from Paxton’s campaign, which he took as payments for his silence, despite asking for it to stop, according to Johnson.
More:Nate Paul, bribery & whistleblowers: Breaking down the investigation into Texas AG Ken Paxton
Johnson also revealed that an internal attorney general’s office document that rebutted the whistleblower complaints was removed from the agency’s website even though the House committee instructed Paxton to preserve all evidence related to the matter. Paxton’s office rejected that claim and posted a link on Twitter to the document.
Saturday’s vote comes with just two days left in the 140-day legislative session, which had already revealed strained relationships among top Republicans. Phelan very publicly quarreled with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on property tax relief, and Republicans in the House and the Senate have fought on whether to appropriate public money for private schools and whether to legalize online sports betting.
The House vote to impeach is analogous to a grand jury indictment in a criminal case in that it does not prove guilt but sets up a trial in the Senate. Paxton’s permanent removal from office requires a two-thirds vote in the 31-member Senate. Paxton, a former member in the House and the Senate, served alongside 21 current senators.
More:How a $3.3M settlement against Texas AG Ken Paxton put him on path to impeachment vote
Republicans outnumber Democrats in the Senate 19 to 12. One of the Republican members is Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton. It’s not immediately clear when the Senate will hold the trial.
Paxton pulled out all stops to avoid impeachment. In a news conference Friday, he called for supporters to come to the Capitol on Saturday to “peacefully protest.” Dozens of them flooded the House gallery and, at one point, prompted Phelan to slam his gavel and demand order when they applauded a floor speech in opposition to Paxton’s impeachment.
Paxton also drew support from the state Republican Party, which released a statement taking his side over Phelan and calling the impeachment proceeding a “sham.” On Friday, Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a far-right House member from Arlington, distributed a recorded phone call encouraging Republican voters to reach out to their state representative to ask them to vote against Paxton’s impeachment.
Paxton on Saturday also received support from former President Donald Trump on whose behalf Paxton had filed a lawsuit in 2020 in a failed effort to overturn Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden. Trump posted on Truth Social that the impeachment proceeding is unfair and “I will fight” any House Republican that lets it happen.
Paxton, at his Friday news conference — during which he never directly addressed the allegations and took no questions — sought to frame the investigation as political retaliation for the dozens of legal actions his office has taken against the Biden administration’s policies. He argued that the basis for the 20 articles of impeachment against him are allegations that have long been in the public, and, despite them, voters twice chose to reelect him.
Paxton said he had hoped the House would vote against impeachment, but “if not, I look forward to a quick resolution in the Texas Senate where I truly believe the process will be fair and just.”
Murr, chair of the investigating committee, took questions from House members before the vote. Tinderholt questioned why the vote was brought to the House floor in the closing days of the legislative session.
“I feel like it’s rushed,” Tinderholt. “I perceived that it could be political weaponization.”
State Rep. John Smithee, an Amarillo Republican who has served in the House since 1985, likened the holiday weekend proceeding to “dumping” bad news on a Friday night.
“When we go home, we will have to defend — each one of us — not only the final results we reached (but we) also have to defend the process by which this determination was made,” Smithee said. “And, members of the House, to me this process is indefensible.”
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