The Dispatch Podcast - Ken Paxton's Impeachment Trial

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been dodging accusations of malfeasance for years, but now they might be catching up with him. Show Notes: -Kel Seliger's biography -Oprah sued for defamation in Amarillo -Food libel laws -Kevin's article on Paxton impeachment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Champions out again Welcome to the Seven Time World's Best Leisure Airline Champions Air Transat Welcome to the Dispatch podcast This is Kevin Williamson hosting this week I don't know why it's me I guess I snuck in when some other people were on

vacation slash maternity leave or whatever else they're doing with their lives We talk a little bit about Texas politics today in the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton. And I have here with me on an interesting figure, a guy who's been around the Texas political scene for a lot. Kel Seliger, who's a former state senator, and before that he was the mayor of Amarillo, Texas,

and a guy who has really been in the thick of the intra-Republican intranesine factional politics in Texas. So let's get started. All right, I'd like to welcome our guest today, who is Kel Seller, who has held a number of political offices, one of which was mayor of Amarillo, Texas, where I was born. And so now I have a bone to pick with you, which is that in 50 years, there's still no Kevin Williamson Memorial Birthplace Museum in Amarillo. I think the program made very little progress under your administration. have to get with this one of these, one of these days. But for our viewers, listeners, and readers

who are less familiar with your career than I am, tell us a little about yourself and where you've been and what you've done. Well, I grew up in the Texas Panhandle. And after I went to college, I went back to Amarillo, Texas, and went into business with my brother and my father, where I worked for about 35 years. During that time, I was a city councilman for two terms and mayor for four terms. When were you mayor? I was mayor from 93 to 2001. And a member of the Texas Alcoholic Beveridge Commission and first ran for the state senate

and special session in late 2004. Gotcha. And then after that, from 2000 and actually 2004 until, until 2023. I was a state senator representing. It ended up being 37 counties in West Texas, the Permian base, and the Panhandle. It was a big district going all the way down to Midlands, all right? A little larger than the state of Indiana. Yeah, those are fun. Well, the reason I have you today is because I wanted to talk to you about the Ken Paxton impeachment in Texas, which is, I think, an interesting story and not just interesting for people in Texas.

I think maybe there's some lessons to be had for the rest of the country, too, and some questions about the direction of the Republican Party and what this process says about all that. But I thought we would begin with some of what my colleague, Jonah Goldberg, calls rank punditry. And this is when we make predictions about stuff. So what do you think is going to happen with the impeachment? Do you think he's going to be convicted and removed from office, or do you think not, or do you have views about that? There's some contingencies in there you have to consider, Kevin. One would think that because a number of Republicans in the House voted in favor of the articles of impeachment, and then a number of Republicans voted not to quash the subpoenas or to quash the articles that there may be some inclination on Republicans upon which all this pivots to hold the Attorney General to the high standard.

we should all meet when elected offices like that. And here's where things are going to be a little bit clear, because we know there's been some really threatening sounds made by groups on the far right, like Empower Texans, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, vote against Ken Paxton, and you will have a very well-funded opponent in the primary, which is what they do. Happens all the time. And certain happen to me.

And so it's too early to say what the merits are as things unravel and what those are impeachable offenses instead of just bad behavior. We have to make that distinction. And so I'm not really willing to jump to conclusions that say, yes, there will be conviction or no. But at this point is far different than anything concerning impeachment we've seen, I think, in this country in a long time. So the last time Texas removed someone from office, I want to say, was a little over 100 years ago.

Was it 1917? It was about 1917, yes. Yeah, so not something that happens, happens every day. How much faith do you have in this process? I mean, obviously there's political pressure being brought to bear on the Republican senators in particular, but also some pretty compelling evidence. How much do you think they are influenceable? or intimidatable by the organizations that are promising to primary in them and that sort of thing?

Profoundly influenceable, and we've seen this time and time again, as Republicans, not in Texas, but in other places, have moved farther to the right into authoritarianism and supporters of big government since now in Texas, Republicans are the government. and so how much faith do I have in the process? Very, very little, but nobody should have faith in the impeachment process, either on a state or national. It's a phenomenon, and it happens, and I guess occasionally the right thing can be done,

but our experience with impeachment is really more grounds for cynicism than anything else. Anybody has any faith in that system, that's a little goal. Why do you think it's more grounds for cynicism than anything else? Because it is so political and it is not, it's a very drawn-out, it's a quasi-judicial process, the really outcome doesn't rest on things that other judicial processes do, things like the facts and evidence.

And it's, it has, to do with numbers, how many Republicans are in the United States Senate, how many Republicans are in the Texas Senate. Yeah, so if I'm understanding it, it would take nine Republicans to vote along, presuming all the Democrats vote for conviction. All the Democrats will, and they would take nine Republicans, it will be very, very difficult. If they get those nine Republicans, it is because they have been released by the funding organizations or by their putative leader, the lieutenant governor, to go ahead and simply vote your conscience, which really is probably the best way to go because Ken Paxton has been a huge distraction

at this point. If he were to leave office, his replacement would be a conservative Republican because that's who gets elected to statewide offices in the state of Texas. And one of the things that we hear is that one of the people who's interested in running for that office is the lieutenant governor's son. Out of the accusations against Paxton, are there any that you find particularly troubling more than the others, or how do you evaluate it? The ones that have to do truly with corruption. Adultery is not an impeachable offense. As objectionable as we may find it It is, and it's kind of, it's ironic because Ken Paxon, as well as people, would have you think he is the most forthright, upright, and adherent Christian there is, well, obviously, he's on. Then, too, you've got the question of, of, did Mr. Paul give Mr. Paxon's girlfriend a job?

It's not impeachable. is it does it look kind of bad would your mother approve no what is impeachable or if there's an offense where there was a quid pro quo in that as the whistleblowers alleged that the attorney general operated his office and did certain things in there advantageous to mr. and as a result, Mr. Paul did things like refurbishes his kitchen at no expense to him. There we've got a true ethics violation that's something that has to be addressed. And for people who don't know who is Nate Paul? Nate Paul is a real estate developer who in the last few years has been apparently a huge success.

He's currently under federal indictment. I don't know exactly what the substance of that is. we heard in the last few days, what you heard is that he may be cooperating with the prosecutors in the impeachment. This case really sort of hangs upon the activities and contribution of Nate Paul. If he says, yes, I bribed Ken Paxton, even the most obedient and compliant, remember the Senate, is going to have a tough time voting against impeachment. I think one of the things that people are being very careful about, and we can talk about whether he's going to testify or not,

and things like that, some of the biggest lawyers with the biggest reputations in the state of Texas are prosecuting this case and defending this case. That's one of the most interesting things about it, because they are people of long experience and great regard. And there's a lot at play there that we're not seeing. What do you mean? Well, I think that the attorneys practically look at this

and look at the political realities and think whether they impeach him or not, at the end of the day, they would be perfectly satisfied if they found evidence for a state or fain. federal felony. Then it doesn't matter what the political makeup of your legislature is. There's a prosecution of felony under state law or federal law. And my guess is, is that Travis County attorney, the district attorney, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District are watching this very, very careful. What do you make of the two sort of main lawyers there? They seem like

pretty colorful characters. Well, they have just, they have giant red, reputations. Rusty Hart actually was Oprah Winfrey's lawyer when she was sued in Amarillo, Texas. And Dick DeGarren has been a criminal lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer for years and years and years, and is very highly regarded. The one that I have probably know the best, though I don't know him, is Tony Busby, because I chaired the committee on higher education when he was appointed to be a region at Texas A&M. And he and I spent a really interesting afternoon talking about things like that, and he's a really smart guy and was really committed to higher education in the Texas A&M system.

A slight little sidebar here. For people who don't know the story, why was Oprah being sued for defaming meat? She said she was never going to have another cheeseburger because some failed farmer said all kinds of horrible things about American meat. And in point of fact, beef the next day on the Chicago Board of Trade took a dip and a bunch of ranchers in Texas sooner. It played out in federal court in Amarola over six weeks time. She was found to, I don't know, she was, her guilt wasn't betrayed, but her side prevailed. And people sort of made it into a First Amendment.

case, and it was, to an extent, it just, there are still things like libel and slander and harmful statements and things like that. Texas has a specific law about the defamation of agricultural products. Is that not the case? At least it was at the time, maybe. Yeah. And I don't know that anybody, I don't think there's been any litigation under that law since. Clearly, the Oprah Winfrey case pointed out that one must be very, very careful because you

can express an opinion on anything you want. I guess I was lucky I never got sued by my mother for my attitudes about her liver and onions. Gotcha. That's very good. Yeah, the lawyers in charge the case, in spite of the gravity of the situation, do seem to be enjoying themselves. And I guess Tony Busby has also launched another political campaign in the middle of this. He's running for a Houston City Council seat. Yes, I think he ran for mayor before.

Yeah, and he ran for State House, I guess. So far hasn't been successful in any of those races. But it seems like an odd thing to do to launch a political campaign in the middle of being the principal defense lawyer in an impeachment hearing. But I suppose that's just an issue of timing. For people who aren't as familiar with Texas politics as you are, people outside, if you talk to people and say, you know, Connecticut or New Jersey, Texas is just a Republican state. They think, you know, there are no Democrats in Texas. Democrats have no power in Texas. And, of course, that's not really the case.

Texas isn't as Republican a state as people think it is, although it's consistently so. Democrats prevail in all the big cities, pretty much. Maddie Parker in Fort Worth is the, I think nationwide now, the Republican mayor of the largest city. Fort Worth is the biggest city in the country with the Republican mayor, I believe. I think that's right. In reality, Democrats do have some political power in Texas. They're Democrats who are chairman of House committees, things like that.

The legislature does in some ways run on a occasionally bipartisan basis. But there's also, of course, the more important divide in Texas, which is the factional divides within the Republican Party. In a sense, Texas has two political parties that are both called the Republican Party. You've got the sort of be really hardcore right-wing populace. You've got the more traditional kind of moderate conservative Republicans in the state. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between those two? camps and how that really defines politics in Texas?

Well, it's what happens when you sort of have unopposed power for so long. It's corrupt in a way, not in the legalistic sense, but it's corrupting. And there hasn't been a Democrat elected the statewide office since 1994, and keep in mind, Ken Paxson was was already indicted and had signed a consent decree and paid some money on securities violation, no problem of getting reelected. And so we have the moderate conservatives, the people who were conservatives in the 80s and the people who are conservative now. And I think I find myself in that group.

And you find the people on the very, very far right. A lot of that influence is, it has to do with Donald Trump. And I, Donald Trump portrayed himself as somebody who hated the government as much as the people hated the government. And they do. And that, that, that he was right along with the mainstream of the Republican Party when it came to everything, when it came to abortion. and evangelical Christianity. But it's just part of that people being what they needed to be to get elected. But it has brought us to a political crossroads where we're going to squander our leadership here

because we're not leading. We're winning elections, but we're not leading. And this is no longer a small government Republican Party. When you pass a law for Donald Trump, essentially, that says Twitter can't throw you off a Twitter for doing things that you think are wrong, that's big government. And it has nothing to do with whether they have 150 million people subscribe. What does that have to do with it? We were in debate on that issue, on the Twitter bill. And I asked the author of the bill in open section,

I said, if you write an op-in to your local paper and they don't print it, is it censorship? Of course, the answer is no. Why is it if you send something to Twitter or X or whatever, and they don't publish it, refuse to publish your stuff, why is that censorship? It is not. When a state legislature passes a law that says cities cannot by ordinance determine how many goats you have in your backyard, that is big government.

When a state spends $25 million to buy a big facility, $25 million in cash for the Texas State gold depository, the only state that has one, interesting about that in 2021, which was the last section, the state of Texas has no gold bullion. We've got a gold bullion depository. We just have no gold bullion. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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within the Republican Party. And I'm interested in a few figures in how they influence that. There's a pair of brothers known as the Wilkes brothers, who are some oil guys, I guess started in the masonry business, and a fella called Tim Dunn, who are big, big players in that world. Can you tell me a little bit about them and how they influence things in Texas Republican politics? I've never met the Wilkes Brothers. As you know, they're billionaires in Cisco, Texas. How do they get to be billionaires? They sold a fracking company.

Apparently was a very good one and made them an absolute fortune. And they are the dunce to characterize them, they broke a code in a way. And they are far far right to dominionists and Christian dominionists and things like that. But they broke the code in that why would you contribute to a political race when you can own the office? it just costs more money. There was an article, I think, in Texas Monthly that showed what percentage of politicians' contributions came from single sources or just for a few sources.

The Works Brothers have been very active in that, and it is what I have called the Russian-style oligarchy in Texas, that very, very wealthy people essentially own certain offices. Nobody would admit to that, But that's the way it works. Tim Dunn is an oil man in Midland, whom I know, and a very smart guy, very, very devout, who started his own Christian school. Apparently, he didn't like the secular education. His kids were getting in Midland Independent School District, and it stands to reason he would love to have some state money for his school.

and he supports candidates, and he's been supporting candidates to run against me since, my heavens, 2008. He's very influential with the lieutenant governor and a number of the members of the Republican caucus. He essentially owns Texas Public Policy Foundation, and my successor in the Texas Senate left their board to join the Texas Senate. Texas Public Policy Foundation was essentially founded by a gentleman by the name of James Lininger to seek public school vouchers. And there's a problem there because people who don't like secular education and would like to have religious beliefs taught in school. But they want their religious beliefs taught in school. And what they don't get was when you get government money, you get government. And we have hundreds and hundreds of what are called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills

and things that teachers must teach in our public schools. They've got a checklist and they check them off as they do them. They're the same things you and I learn, Jaron's and participles and things like that. But now we number them and they're mandatory. They are unwieldy. There's too many of them. we're going to teach the same things, whether we categorize them or not. And which religious essential knowledge and skills are we going to teach?

And which principles from which book are we going to teach and things like that? If I thought Texas public schools were actually teaching kids about jarrans and participles, that would make me very happy. I don't think that's much of that's happening anymore. They've got this long list. It's not, it can't be in great depth because there's so many of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they are requirements and teachers work hard to do it.

And obviously, in an awful lot of cases, do a great job. People with a lot of money have a lot of influence in politics and other things in life. We know that they can have good influence. They can have bad influence. Do you think there needs to be some sort of public policy response to that? I know a lot of people favor more severe limits on independent expenditures and campaign donations and things like that. I'm myself am very skeptical of those things, but I'm wondering what you think. I mean, to describe

Texas politics as a as a Russian-style oligarchy is pretty strong. Those are pretty strong words. They are very strong words, and they are absolutely descriptive. It's the way it works. I mean, without the Putin's and people like that, you have these people who've made enormous amount of monies through honest means, and they're very interested in what goes on in their community around the state, but why contribute to an office when you can buy the office? And then, those people do their bidding. And as we have discussed before, and if they don't do their bidding, they make it very clear that the TPPs and those other groups, Mr. Della Wilkes, will find them an opponent and will fund

it very well. And you have to understand that they spend several millions of dollars a year, but essentially that money comes out of petty cash. It's nothing. And the thing boils down to separation of church and state. I think it was the Warren Court that decided that schools were not going to have religion and things like that. And there's a sound reason behind it. I've generally found that the people who do not believe in the separation of church and state don't believe in the separation of their church and the state. Sure. And do you think that these particular donors are largely religiously driven?

Largely, yes, but there's, I don't know who the entire body of them are. So that brings me to a question I wanted to ask you. So my recollection about your particular career is that you didn't get primary. Do you elected not to run for re-election to the state senate? Is that right? That's great. I understand there's a story leading up to that. Where did that decision come from?

There's a story that it was funny because the gentleman who thought he was going to run against me in 2022. My wife and I decided in 2018 that I wasn't going to run again. I will have done 18 years in the legislature. and the last election was really nasty, and it was really expensive. I had done a lot of good things, but there had been some tribulations at the same time, and where it all came from. In 2017, the United States governor announced that he had 30 priorities, and then some of them were perfectly good legislative goals. A couple of them were public school vouchers, and another one would greatly undermine law. control, that of county judges and mayors and things like that.

I voted against two of those measures, voted for the other 28. 2019, I came in there and lieutenant governor took away my chairmanship. What did you been chairman of? The committee on higher education. And then during the regular session, I had a lot of legislation that got out of committee and came to the floor and got the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, amount of support for it to come to the floor of debate and the lieutenant governor never during an entire session recognized me for a piece of legislation not the entire time so it just wouldn't let you

get anything done i i passed nothing except for the fact and this is a common practice that everybody does it i would find elements of my legislation that were relevant to legislation that had been filed by somebody else and we would take those things to my colleagues both in the house and the Senate and said, can we attach this as an amendment to your bill? And as a general rule, my colleagues were very generous and helpful. So I ended up passing a lot of stuff that came out of my bills, but I was never recognized on the floor to represent a bill for debate. So you could be in the Senate, but you couldn't get anything done. Like I say, I got a great deal done, but I could not do it the way that everybody else did. Right. Okay, yeah. Understandable. Did your wife hate you being in

politics? No. My wife has been, my wife is by far the better politician of the two of us, and she has always been very, very supportive. And we did so many of the things that we did, we did them together. She would spend as much time in Austin as she possibly could. We had kids in school back in Amarillo, and so I would come home every weekend. But it's something that we did together, she also is so competitive. She loves the competition and the race and things like that until it became really, really nasty and a lot of it patently dishonest. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say, yeah, we were trying to recruit XYZ person to run for president or trying to get him to run for the U.S. Senate or something like

that and his wife just said no and every time i hear that story i kind of think i i understand that and the wife sounds like a sensible person it's a it's a it's a tough thing to be involved in electoral politics right now and i sometimes wonder why otherwise happy normal mentally well-adjusted people do it and and it's one is my wife's interest in the subjects and and things like that and the fact that for us, it was generally a bonding experience. I had, originally when I ran 26 counties, and then I had 37 counties. And so we just drove all over West Texas together. And we would drive and talk about stuff and listen to music. And I got my wife to, she went with me and I was doing a town hall meeting. I did about 540 of them. And

late one, I guess it was a winter evening. She went to Kermit, Texas, with me because I assured her that our reservation was at the Ritz Carlton. Well, there's no Ms. Carlton in Kermit, Texas. No, there's not. No, I don't think the drive from Borgar to Midland is not the most beautiful drive in the United States of America. And maybe not the most

exciting one either. So yeah, good to have some music and someone to talk to because there's not a lot to, not a lot to look at. Before we, before we close things off, I wanted to go back to the impeachment just for a moment and ask you what you think of this. So Paxton's best line of defense, in my view anyway, is this. He tells people, and his lawyers have made a point of this, the voters already know about this stuff. And they reelected me, and they reelected me by a pretty wide margin. Why not leave this up to the voters to decide rather than... and having the legislature take this extraordinary action that they haven't taken in more than a century

and impeach and remove someone from office. I'm not saying I'd be persuaded by that argument, but I think it's probably his strongest argument. What do you think about that? Well, because nobody is above the law, not a member of the Texas Senate and not the occupant of the White House. Nobody. In the constitutions of the United States and the state of Texas, there are provisions for treatment in the case of the Commission of High Court. crimes and misdemeanors, whatever those are. The problem with the impeachment process, just like elections, it is profoundly political.

And that's the problem. The impeachment process is a reflection of the will of the people because it's all put together both the impeachment and the trial by representatives of the people. It's the system that we have. It's become increasingly politicized, and there needs to be some recourse of the people against the commission of such crimes, or they can be done with impunity, which means the chief executive for a conviction of state law in the case of the state, the governor can simply grant a pardon, and then there is no implication or effect. thing is true, the President of the United States, that is the final authority in what may be his own conviction. Well, that doesn't work too well either.

And so as part of checks and balances, impeachment has its role. And let me say this also, it's easy not to commit impeachable offenses. And maybe stay out of the way a little bit when it comes to. you the donors wanted to pay for your renovations and such. Are you done with politics? Are you retired now? Never say never, but I'm not going to run for anything else. I've done it, and I had some of the best jobs you can have,

which might surprise some people, being a city councilman and the mayor of Amarillo, Texas, far more progressive community than anybody thinks. And I represented some wonderful people, both in the area where I grew up in the Texas Panhandle and down in the Permian Basin and Midland, Odessa, and Big Spring. But it was never intended to be an occupation. It was based upon my interest in certain things

when I first ran for city council. It was because it was very good reason. Because I thought that government ought to act like a business. That was my background. And I thought provide service, which is that's what government is. It is a service provider. and do it as economically as possible. And Amarillo's tax rate reflected that.

So I had specific goals. One of the biggest goals I had when I ran for the Texas Senate was what could I do to see to it that the bureaucracy did not perform bureaucratically, that it acted as a big service provider. And had opportunities to do that and really valued my time in public education and higher education. I'm one of those people who believes that, well, this is not exclusively true, but if you look at all of the problems that we have in the state of Texas in the country,

be they poverty, unemployment, underemployment, even when you get into a lot of the social problems, intolerance, in white nationalism, you can address all those areas substantively in education. Educate the public to know the things that they know and to be discriminating and be critical things, anchors and things like that, both being in public schools, private schools, in universities. And that's why the lion's share of my involvement was in public ed and in higher education. I am highly skeptical of that, honestly. Two things you said. I don't think you can run government a lack of business because it's not a business.

And I think it's way too optimistic to think we can educate our way out of a lot of those problems. Maybe that's a discussion we can have at some other point. You're more cynical than I am. I'm a lot more cynical than you are, I think. But I was also going to say that, you know, you seem like a happy guy for a guy who was mayor of the one city that people from Lubbock are allowed to make fun of. It's true, and they did, but that's because it's the only diversion they had from defending their own. But when we talk about, and Kevin, we talk about government operating as a business, let's take away the return on investment, motivations and things like that. but in terms of addressing their needs

and address them with a sense of immediacy and responsibility doing the things that people want or need to be done as efficient means as possible, you can do it with a business-like mindset. The paradigm that you work under is entirely different from private business, but the mindset, not at all. Yeah.

Well, I think there's a real good chance we're going to see the U.S. government run like a business in the near future. unfortunately, that business is Twitter. Yeah, that's, yeah, absolutely true. Cal, thanks a lot for your time. I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation a lot.

I enjoyed it, too. Thank you for having me. You know,