Other states may have bad or incompetent attorney generals, but Texas has the worst. He is not only incompetent, but criminal also.He has had felony charges pending for about 5 years now, but has successfully delayed their adjudication. And within the past few months has accusations of bribery lodged against him.
Those accusations are not made by political opponents, but by his own aides.
Now he adds misuse of his public office to his growing list of misdeeds. He has filed suit against four other states (all of whom voted for Biden), claiming that they violated election law. His suit has no merit, but will probably make Trump happy -- which is probably the only reason it was filed.
Here is part of CNN's coverage of Paxton's ridiculous lawsuit:
Ken Paxton is a lawman being chased by the law. And when the Texas Republican attorney general filed a suit on Tuesday with the US Supreme Court on behalf of his state, he also became an even more rank hypocrite.
Paxton, who has been indicted on securities fraud and accused by top aides of bribery, abuse of office and other potentially criminal offenses -- charges that he has denied -- argued that a handful of battleground states destroyed the integrity of the 2020 election vote totals. He insists the US Constitution was violated by allowing their legislatures to make last-minute changes that ignored federal electoral regulations.
Earlier in the campaign, Paxton played a key role in President Donald Trump's fight against expanding mail-in ballots. Now Paxton's plea to the Court is that Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia must be found to have used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to manipulate outcomes.
If that argument has merit, he ought to have included his home state in the lawsuit.
Texas' Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott extended early voting by a week and expanded the period in which mail-in ballots could be hand-delivered. "Using his emergency authority because of the pandemic," Glenn Smith, a Texas Democratic political consultant, told me, "our governor accomplished exactly what his attorney general is saying other states did, improperly. Nonsense. None of this harmed the presidential election. It helped turnout."
But apparently, to Paxton, it's only legal if the rule changes help the GOP win.
To make his case, the Texas AG marches out the same unproven allegations numerous courts have already found specious. His paranoia includes hidden suitcases full of ballots, a secret laptop and several USB drives supposedly used to program favorable Democratic results in Pennsylvania, and even alleged videos of poll workers cheering as poll watchers are ordered out of counting rooms. Credible evidence of such allegations has never been produced, and the US Supreme Court rejected another GOP bid to block certification of the Pennsylvania result on the same day that Paxton filed his suit.
There is, meanwhile, an accumulating body of allegations against Paxton. A letter obtained in October by the Austin American-Statesman and television station KVUE, noted that a number of Paxton's top aides had reported to "the appropriate law enforcement authority" a "potential violation of law" by Paxton. The staffers insisted they had "a good faith belief that the Attorney General is violating federal and/or state law, including prohibitions relating to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses." . . .
Paxton has already been indicted for felony securities fraud, accused of failing to register with the State Securities Board while selling stock to investors without disclosing he was making a commission. The case has been hung up on questions of venue, and payment and replacement of county prosecutors, and has slogged through appeals that have dragged it out for five years without adjudication. . . .
It's hard to believe the Supreme Court will bother to hear Paxton's case, which has the potential to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters, especially after its Tuesday ruling on Pennsylvania. But at one point it also seemed improbable that the narcissistic host of a reality TV television show could become the President of the United States.
