The Texas attorney general was acquitted of corruption charges, but the trial further damaged the Republican brand.
Photograph by Chip Somodevilla / GettyIn 2018, when Ken Paxton ran for reëlection as Texas’s attorney general, he was under state and federal indictments for securities fraud, and he also had a reputation for pettier malfeasance. Justin Nelson, his Democratic opponent, decided to make Paxton’s questionable ethical judgment central to his campaign. “I really just tried to ridicule the dude, and highlight the base venality of the corruption,” Nelson told me recently.
. “This feels a lot like what they’ve tried to do to President Trump,” Jonathan Stickland, the head of Defend Texas Liberty, athat supports far-right candidates, said on Steve Bannon’s show. Paxton denied wrongdoing and one of his lawyers called the impeachment a “political witch hunt.” The testimony was at times dramatic, and the prosecution emphasized that the witnesses testifying against Paxton were not motivated by partisanship. Part of the prosecution’s closing statement was delivered by the state representative Jeff Leach, a Republican, who described Paxton as a friend and mentor. “I have loved Ken Paxton for a long time,” he said, before urging the senators to remove Paxton from office.
Some Republicans were uneasy that statewide concerns seemed to be taking a back seat to grandstanding about national issues. The attorney general’s office also developed a reputation for issuing opinions that aligned with the interests of Paxton’s supporters, a former high-ranking Republican elected official told me. “I can’t imagine that happening under Abbott and certainly not under [John] Cornyn,” now a senator, he said.
Paxton and Paul made for unlikely friends. Paul partied with Leonardo DiCaprio, drove a Lamborghini, and had a reputation as “someone who, you know, would come through a night club and spend a crap ton of money and be there for, like, thirty minutes and be gone,” a woman who worked at a downtown club told me. Paxton, in contrast, portrayed himself as a devout and devoted husband and father.
In late September, one of the banks that had received a subpoena called the attorney general’s office to make sure it was real. “We have a major problem,” Mateer texted his group chat. “The kid has served a subpoena on a bank. Showed up there in person at the bank.” The group gathered in Mateer’s office.
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