The Texas Senate has acquitted state Attorney General Ken Paxton on corruption charges and abuse of office, but he still faces other legal issues, such as securities fraud.
The Republican lawmaker survived an impeachment vote in the State Senate over the weekend, but the US Justice Department still has an open investigation. This is over many allegations of corruption and abuse of office against the attorney general.
Ken Paxton Acquitted
Lawyers for Paxton are scheduled to be in court in October with state prosecutors to set a trial date for his pending indictment on two counts of securities fraud. This is an eight-year-old case in which the senators did not take up directly during the weekend's acquittal vote.
The embattled attorney general's lawyer, Dan Cogdell, predicted that the securities case would be dealt with relatively quickly. On Saturday, he said that officials ought to dismiss the case entirely, and if they don't, the defendant's team will try and beat them there, similar to how they did with the corruption case, as per the New York Times.
Cogdell was less willing to predict the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department's public integrity section. He said he does not talk to the FBI and tries not to.
The Texas Attorney General has faced many legal troubles since he was sworn into the position in 2015 when he replaced Greg Abbott. He has been re-elected twice because he aligned himself with the right-leaning politics that former US President Donald Trump champions.
Voters delivered comfortable victories for Paxton even though he faced indictment, and many of his top aides came forward to claim that he abused his office when he helped a wealthy donor. That particular accusation is the subject of the recent attempt to oust him from his position.
Sunday was Paxton's first full day back in office as the Texas attorney general after winning the recent case. He quickly resumed what has long helped make him one of the most resilient political figures in the nation despite facing years of criminal charges and scandal accusations, according to Politico.
Other Legal Troubles
The situation in the Texas Capitol is potentially only the start and threatens to spread to the 2024 elections. That is when conservative allies of Paxton say they will focus their signs on Republican legislators who led the investigation against the state attorney general.
Shortly after Paxton was impeached, Trump posted "free Ken Paxton" on his social media platform, Truth Social, and called the legal efforts against him a form of "election interference" led by "radical left Democrats," criminals, and insufficiently loyal Republicans.
There were more than 100 witnesses who were scheduled to testify, including some people who were associates of the attorney general who accused him of wrongdoing. The efforts to impeach Paxton have divided the GOP between a pro-Trump faction and more traditional conservatives, said BBC.
