Government

Ken Paxton Takes Time Off Of Harassing Trans Kids And Pregnant Women To Start Shit With His Own Senator

How does he even find the time?

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Ken Paxton

Last week, Donald Trump ordered Republicans in Congress to kill a comprehensive border security bill to avoid giving President Biden a win. His minions immediately complied, junking the proposal they’d spent months negotiating.

This week, the mad king in exile invited Vladimir Putin to invade our NATO allies, cast doubt on the US’s continued membership in the alliance, and ordered his minions to convert all foreign aid to loans. Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s only land-dwelling remora, rushed to demonstrate his fealty by yelling at a poster of a tweet on the Senate floor.

Take that, Poland!

But 22 Republicans declined the invitation to publicly declare that they’d lost their goddamn minds, voting last night with Democrats to fund aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Luckily House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised that no such tomfoolery will get a vote in the lower chamber. So now Trump’s jackals are turning on the Gippers who dared to cross the Dear Leader.

“Unbelievable that @JohnCornynwould stay up all night to defend other countries borders, but not America,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sniped at his own state’s senior senator on Twitter.

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“To the extent that Paxton was ever on the chain, he is well and truly off it after surviving an impeachment effort led by members of his own party. But after pulling an all-nighter Senator Cornyn was not in the mood for your shit, Ken.

“Ken, your criminal defense lawyers are calling to suggest you spend less time pushing Russian propaganda and more time defending longstanding felony charges against you in Houston, as well as ongoing federal grand jury proceedings in San Antonio that will probably result in further criminal charges,” he shot back.

This is a deeply unfair criticism. Paxton has been huddling with his lawyers overtime, and just last week, they filed a motion to dismiss the securities fraud charges against him in their entirety on the grounds that he’s been denied his right to a speedy trial.

Paxton was indicted back in 2015, and … well, maybe it’s best if we let Texas Monthly’s Dan Solomon explain:

Prosecutors sought in 2017 to move the trial out of Collin County, the North Texas home turf of the attorney general. Paxton had the right to challenge that change of venue, and he did. When he lost that challenge, he had the right to appeal it, and again he did. When he won that appeal, prosecutors had the right to appeal that decision, and they did. The first judge to rule that the trial venue should be moved to Harris County did so in early 2017, and subsequent courts essentially spent several years playing ping-pong, bouncing it back and forth twice in 2020, once more in 2021, and once again in 2023, with the final volley landing the case back in Harris County.

Additionally, Paxton allies, prosecutors, and others have fought a long dispute over the payment of special prosecutors who were hired to try Texas’s case against its attorney general. A Paxton campaign donor, Dallas-area real estate developer Jeff Blackard, first sued way back in 2015, arguing that those prosecutors were overpaid. The commissioners in Collin County refused to pay the lawyers. That spurred another lengthy legal battle—one that is ongoing, with the question of how much the special prosecutors will be paid as yet unresolved.

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At first glance, this looks like Lyle and Erik Menendez crying that they are but poor orphans and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. But at least the Menendez brothers weren’t actual officers of the court, so further glancing probably won’t improve the image.

But that is a problem for another day — theoretically April 15, 2024.

Today, the AG had more pressing matters to attend to.

“Unsurprisingly, America Last RINO @JohnCornyn has once again joined hands with the Biden administration to fund and prioritize foreign wars over the national security crisis at the southern border,” he snapped back at Cornyn.

And then he kicked a puppy and accused it of turning kids trans … probably.

Ken Paxton Argues That Ken Paxton Has Violated Ken Paxton’s Right to a Speedy Trial [Texas Monthly]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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