The NPR Politics Podcast - Putting The 'Ex' In Texas? AG Ken Paxton Faces Permanent Removal

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Texas' top law enforcement official, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been removed — at least temporarily — from his post by fellow Republicans, following years of allegations concerning ethical lapses and criminal conduct. A final vote in the state senate will decide his fate.Republican lawmakers in the state are also working to change how elections are overseen in the Texas' largest county. Good governance advocates have raised concerns that the new rules could jeopardize election integrity in one of the nation's most populous metropolitan areas.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider, and voting correspondent Miles Parks.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Tom in Morgantown, West Virginia. I'm getting ready for my last day of work after 33 years as a physical therapist at the local hospital. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on Monday, the 5th of June. The news may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be retired and relaxing on the patio with a cup of tea. Okay, here's the show. It sounds so relaxed and so deserving of all that relaxation. A cup of tea and a bunch of birds. That was a lovely birdscape I heard there. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover

politics. And Andrew Schneider is here with us from Houston Public Media. Hey, Andrew. Hello. So there has been a lot of drama in the Texas Statehouse recently. And let us start with the Attorney General Ken Paxton. He's a Republican, a very high profile national Republican for various lawsuits that he's filed in recent years. And he was impeached by the state house, a Republican majority state house over alleged criminal activity. Please, Andrew, tell us who we're talking about here. Well, Attorney General Paxton is looking at 20 individual charges against him. A lot of them deal with assistance that he allegedly provided to a wealthy friend and donor, a real estate investor by the name of Nate Paul.

There are also charges that Paxton misused his official powers to retaliate against whistleblowers that brought complaints about those initial acts to light. There's a bribery charge relating to allegations that Paxton got Paul to employ a woman with whom Paxton was involved in an extramarital affair. And it's worth noting that Paxton's wife is one of the senators that will be sitting in judgment on him. And then there are a number of charges related to Paxton's alleged misuse of his office to delay prosecution of a state securities fraud charge against him, which has been pending almost as long as he's been in office.

This is pretty stunning because obviously every branch of government in Texas is run by Republicans. But I will say I'm a little less surprised just because this has been, for anyone who's watched Texas politics, a little bit in the making for years now. I mean, Ken Paxton, who we should say, like, is probably best known nationally for being an attorney general who has made it his career to basically sue every day of his life, whoever the Democratic president is. And that has been true during the Biden administration. I mean, he has also in that time been under scrutiny for ethical issues while he's been in office. And that includes possible

securities fraud. He was indicted years ago and that like trial has still like sort of lingered over him. So I always figured at some point, like this might shake out despite the fact that, you know, he like Texas is run by people in his party, but it's just been, you know, he's been mired in controversy for so long that part of me is surprised, part of me is really not. And how has he responded to all of this? He's tweeted that the House's charges are based on totally false claims. He's called it, quote, illegal, unethical, and profoundly unjust. He called unsuccessfully for his supporters to protest his removal at the Capitol. He's also delivered a packet to senators' offices

outlining his defense. And the vice chair of the Board of Impeachment Managers, a Democrat, Representative Ann Johnson, said this could be considered, quote, tampering or attempting to interfere with a lawful process. Wow. So I guess we should explain what the lawful process is and how this works. So the House has already voted to impeach him. What happens next? What's happening now, I guess? Well, as of the impeachment, he's been removed from office. It's temporary at the moment. He's been replaced in the interim by a former secretary of state, a man who oversaw the elections for the state of Texas, an appointed official

named John Scott. John Scott is perhaps best known for being one of the people that defended President Trump in his unsuccessful attempt to overturn some of the results of the 2020 election. Next up is that the Senate needs to set the rules for an impeachment trial under the time frame set by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. It will consider those rules on June 20th and start the trial no later than August 28th. So if Paxton is permanently removed from office, does that leave any sort of a conservative legal vacuum given his high-profile actions at the national level or not really?

I don't think so. I mean, I think particularly the fact that Scott has been lined up as his interim replacement is a pretty good indication that whoever winds up in the attorney general's job, whether Paxton is allowed to continue or not, it's going to be somebody that feels very comfortable taking lawsuits to the Biden administration on a regular basis. I think that's part of the reason that the Republicans felt that they could bring these charges in the first place, that perhaps Paxton had outlived his usefulness and that they could do just as well without him. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, more on elections in Texas.

A lot of work went into the episode you're listening to right now. Work from our journalists in front of the microphone, and also from people whose voices you don't always hear. Yeah, so producing is kind of like the IKEA instruction manual. We assemble all of the pieces. Hear what it takes to produce the NPR Politics podcast. That's in our recent bonus episode, out now for NPR Politics Plus listeners. If that's you, thanks so much for your support. And if it's not, it could be. Learn more at the link in our episode notes. And we are back. And in Texas, the legislature is also moving to take away local control of elections from a really big county there, Harris County.

So tell us about the county and why it's drawing so much scrutiny. Well, Harris County is the largest in the state by far. It is home to Houston. It's got more than two and a half million registered voters. It's extremely diverse. A lot of demographers have said this is what Texas as a whole is going to look like by mid-century. And for much of the past decade, the county's been trending Democratic. And Texas Republicans see that as a threat to their political dominance. They spent a huge amount of money and other resources trying to flip the county in 2022. They were unsuccessful for the most part.

And because there were some problems with the conduct of elections, notably a couple of dozen Republican-leaning precincts that weren't provided with enough ballot paper, state and county Republicans have been arguing that the elections were intentionally mismanaged and that the election system in Harris County is broken and needs to be fixed. Is there merit to those claims or those concerns? We at Houston Public Media conducted a five-month investigation into this. We found quite a few problems, some of which dated back prior to 2018, which is when Republican elected office holders had run elections in Harris County. We didn't find any evidence that the problems with the 2022 elections were deliberate on the part of the appointed Harris County elections administrator,

nor did we find any evidence that enough voters were turned away as a result of those problems that it would have made any material difference to the outcome of most election contests. So what is the proposed solution here? And does it address the problems that your investigation found? Republicans proposed more than 20 bills in response. There were two in particular that passed that would address the problems but not necessarily solve them. One is Senate Bill 1750 that would do away with the appointed elections administrator position in Harris County and Harris County alone and hand control of elections back to the two elected officials

who were in charge prior to 2020. That would be the county clerk and the county tax assessor collector. Republicans have argued that elected officials would be more responsive to the voters. They argue that because those two offices are currently held by Democrats, that shows that they're doing this as a matter of policy rather than a matter of politics. But then there's Senate Bill 1933, and that would let the appointed Secretary of State, who's a Republican, impose administrative oversight of Harris County elections, again, Harris County alone, potentially overriding or even replacing those two elected officials. And as I mentioned before, when the Republicans held control of elections prior to 2018, we still had some of these same problems. So there's no guarantee that either of these solutions would solve the problems that Republicans are saying are currently the responsibility of the Democratic officeholders or Democratic appointed officials. So you keep saying Harris County and Harris County alone.

That it's like legislating for a single county that seems extremely targeted, especially given that that county is the source of a lot of Democratic votes. The language that was put into these bills and they were put in in amendments after the bills were initially proposed was what they call bracketing. In one case, it was saying this bill will apply to only counties of over three and a half million people. In the other one, it was said this bill will apply to counties only of over four million people.

And conceivably, other Texas counties could reach that population at some point. But currently, those numbers only apply to Harris County. And that was in language that was proposed by a Harris County-based senator, a man by the name of Paul Bettencourt. He was the former tax assessor collector many moons ago, which means that he was responsible for overseeing the voter rolls at the time. And he has made the idea of combating alleged election fraud one of his main goals in the legislature. When I mentioned before that more than 20 bills had been passed, he was responsible for at least 12 of them.

And some of this is on its way to the governor. It's like on the governor's desk just waiting to be signed. Exactly, exactly. The regular legislative session ended on Memorial Day. And so everything that passed during the regular session is now either awaiting his signature or has already been signed. Actually, just to broaden out, there are a lot of Republican-run states with Republican legislatures that are passing laws aimed at election security, but that could have the effect of limiting the ability of Democratic constituencies to vote. What I think is interesting about this is like I have talked to local officials in Harris County and also voting advocates sort of

statewide about this before. And I think for at least the past couple of years, this is an outcome that everyone was expecting. State lawmakers have put a bullseye on Harris County for a really long time. Like even if it hasn't been as explicit as like writing a bill that only affects one county, like so many voting laws have been written with Harris County in mind. Some of it was in reaction to the sort of changes they made during the pandemic to make voting a little easier and safer for some voters, which the state thought also opened the door for more fraud. Like Harris County has been at the center of lawmakers' minds, especially, I mean, we're talking Republican lawmakers' minds when they think about voting laws, that it is not surprising at all that they're just like at this point, like outright

zeroing in on Harris County. County election officials have told me before, you know, different narrations of them at this point, that they have largely expected that, you know, at one point it would just be the state versus the county. And I think that's where we are right now. And so I think what's most interesting about this is like the Texas election model is that elections are run by local officials and the state doesn't really usually play a role beyond a supervisory role. They give like advice to local officials and they give them the resources to do their job. But usually like the state doesn't play such a big hand in elections. And I think like this is one of the first years that we could say that like that is starting to change. Well, and Ashley, this legislation, it's like

legislation in other Republican run states, right, where they are looking to crack down on election fraud or whatever you want to call it that doesn't actually exist in a widespread way, but that is going to change the way people vote or sort of change the relationship that people have to elections. Yeah, I mean, I think this is like a broad trend, which is under the guise of making elections more secure. And this is causing like a big structural change to how elections are run and whether or not it was intentional. There's a lot of ramifications, including that it is making it harder for local election officials to do their job. And it, in some cases, is making it harder for some people to vote, which I think is a pretty interesting dynamic that has been going on for a while now. And I don't think that's likely to

change anytime soon. All right. Well, we have to leave it there for today. Andrew Schneider of Houston Public Media, thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.