The Texan Podcast - Inside the Impeachment: Paxton on Trial — Day 2 (with Patrick Svitek)

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Subscribe to support The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The second day of the impeachment trial continued with more testimony from Jeff Mateer, the former first assistant attorney general appointed under Paxton who was one of the eight employees to raise allegations of bribery and abuse of office to the FBI in 2020. For this episode, The Texan reporters Brad Johnson and Matt Stringer are joined by Patrick Svitek of The Texas Tribune. We’ll get into more details of some of these highlights from today:Paxton, who left after the lunch break on the first day of the trial, did not return to the chamber for the proceedings.Attorneys for the House and Paxton began the day with an agreement on which evidence to pre-admit, and Paxton’s team said that the suspended attorney general has “nothing to hide” and would drop their objection to evidence on the grounds of privileged communication.With repeated objections of leading the witness from Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee, House attorney Rusty Hardin questioned Mateer regarding the timeline and reasoning he had when raising allegations to the FBI.The first name drop of Anthony Fauci, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and George P. Bush.Mateer said he believed Mr. Paxton was “under the influence” or being “blackmailed” because he could not explain why he was working so hard to help Nate Paul, but that Mateer ultimately became convinced it was due to an extramarital affair.During the cross-examination, Buzbee attempted to draw a distinction between state code and the first article of impeachment regarding the attorney general’s authority to become involved in lawsuits related to charitable organizations — an apparent attempt to throw that article into doubt.Buzbee accused Mateer and the other whistleblowers for staging a coup against Attorney General Paxton.After finishing the questioning of Mateer late in the day, the House impeachment team called another former employee, Ryan Bangert, to the stand.

Hey, this is Brad Johnson, senior reporter with The Texan. The second day of the impeachment trial continued with more testimony from Jeff Mateer, the former first assistant attorney general appointed under Paxton, who was one of eight employees to raise allegations of bribery and abuse of office to the FBI in 2020. For this episode, I'm joined by Matt Stringer with The Texan and Patrick Svitek of The Texas Tribune. We'll get into more details of some of these highlights from today. Paxton, who left after the lunch break on the first day of the trial, did not return to the chamber for the proceedings. Attorneys for the House and Paxton

began the day with an agreement on which evidence to pre-admit, and Paxton's team said that the suspended attorney general has nothing to hide and would drop their objection to evidence on the grounds of privileged communication. With repeated objections of leading the witnesses from Paxton attorney Tony Busby, House attorney Rusty Hardin questioned Mateer regarding the timeline and reasoning he had when raising the allegations to the FBI. The first name drop of Anthony Fauci, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and George P. Bush? Mateer said he believed Mr. Paxton was under the influence or being blackmailed because he could not explain why he was working so hard to help Napal, but that Mateer ultimately

became convinced it was due to an extramarital affair. During the cross-examination, Busby attempted to draw a distinction between state code and the first article of impeachment regarding the Attorney General's authority to become involved in lawsuits related to charitable organizations. In an apparent attempt to throw that article into doubt, Busby accused Mateer and the other whistleblowers for staging a coup against Attorney General Paxton. And after finishing the questioning of Mateer late in the day, the House impeachment team called another former employee,

Ryan Banger, to the stand. Hello, everybody. This is Brad Johnson, senior reporter with The Texan. I'm filling in again for our senior editor, Mackenzie DeLulo, on day two of The Texan's impeachment podcast. Today, I'm joined by Matt Stringer, as we were yesterday, of The Texan, but also Patrick Svitek of The Texas Tribune. Patrick, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. So today, we just kind of picked up where the trial left off abruptly on Tuesday. The two parties convened over the evening and settled the dispute that they had over how to admit exhibits and what should be admitted. But once they reconvened, they jumped back into testimony from Jeff Mateer, the former first assistant attorney general, who is probably the prosecution's,

if not the top witness for them, one of the top witnesses. And that continued almost all day as we sit here. Ryan Bangert, another one of the whistleblowers, just took the stand. But almost the whole day took Jeff Mateer. So, Matt, let's start with you. Any observations, anything stick out? Kind of got a little fiery during the testimony today, especially in the cross-examination. But from the first part of this with the prosecution finishing its questioning of Mateer, what stuck out to you? Oh, man. The whole afternoon was very, well, the whole day,

actually, was very lively. Movie quality. Essentially, what we saw was Busby going through methodically trying to pick apart accusations raised in the first several articles of impeachment. The first article of impeachment essentially is raised from the whistleblower complaint. So, Mateer and the other former attorney general employees resigned alleging Paxton made, inappropriately used the power of his office benefit Nate Paul, specifically in this instance, authorizing the special counsel to look into the particulars and whether or not Paxton specifically had authorized that. Now, sorry, what we saw was Mateer testified that they had assumed that Paxton had directly ordered certain actions to the benefit of Nate Paul and went and blew the whistle to the FBI. What Busby forced him to essentially concede today was that he made a reasonable assumption that that had occurred, and he'd asked him whether or not at the time he was

aware that the Travis County District Attorney's Office had actually issued a second referral that prompted the Attorney General's Office action without him being aware of it and basically prodded even further and said, well, did you ask Paxton before you go into the FBI or do any further looking? And he essentially said no, that based on the assumptions as it appeared, they felt that there was a criminal activity or wrongdoing. Either Paxton was being bribed or blackmailed. And so, based on what they knew at the time, went to the FBI. And, you know, through the cross-examination, Busby essentially started, you know, revealing evidence such as the second referral that seemed to offer that explanation. That's just kind of one of the many, many elements that came out that stood out to me during the day.

Yeah, the cross-examination got really fiery, and that's kind of Busby's character. He is a fiery guy. He accused Mateer and the other whistleblowers of trying to mount a coup against the attorney general. But before we got to that point, the prosecution tried to lay its groundwork with its presumably star witness on laying out a timeline of what happened when that then Busby tried to poke holes in. Patrick, looking at how the prosecution

handled its first witness called, what stuck out to you? Any, any, anything you've taken from that? Yeah. I mean, I think Busby's questioning of, of Mateer really set the tone for the kind of cross-examination we're going to see from Paxton's side. It's going to be aggressive. It's going to be politically charged. It may not necessarily be super cohesive at times, but we saw from opening statements that Paxton's side is almost casting their defense for an audience outside the Capitol and trying to make the point that this is a political witch hunt. Conspiracy, possibly possibly what'd you say uh i got the impression that they were trying to to uh create the impression that there

was a conspiracy to oust him uh you know by throwing out the line of questionings regarding the involvement of tlr or uh his visits to abbott's office, et cetera, et cetera. And kind of, as you said, what just prompted me to remember those elements was whenever you said, you know, that they were almost speaking to an audience outside of the Capitol, not specifically the jurors in going down that line of questioning. Right. Yeah. I mean, Busby clearly trying to, you know, cast Paxton as the victim of a political conspiracy, you know, involving all these groups and figures thatxton's former primary challenger. That's why you saw Busby mentioned Texans for lawsuit reform, which went against Paxton in the 2022 primary. And so that was, you know, you know, that was striking about Busby's opening statement. But it continued to come through as a strategy today in the questioning of Jeff Mateer. And it wasn't just Busby who had kind of a clippable moment. He had multiple.

But during Mateer's testimony questioning from the prosecution side, from the House manager's side, he had a line that I'm sure will be repeated often. written and forced by the Attorney General to prevent foreclosures of Nate Paul's properties back in 2020. Mateer said during the questioning that it was not written like Ken Paxton as he knew him. It was written like Anthony Fauci, you know, the proponent of lockdown policies that especially conservative Republicans really abhor at the moment. And that distinction, I think, is something we'll probably see come up over and over again. But if not, the prosecution got their one big highlight there. We'll see if they continue to hammer that. But going forward, you know, Mateer is probably the top witness, as I said, maybe that turns out to be something different, but, um, how Patrick, how did his demeanor come off on the stand?

Did he seem like, um, like he was a little nervous or by the end of it, had he composed himself and really made his case? You know, I think Mateer was, was, you know, relatively composed. He definitely, I think in the initial questioning on Tuesday came off as a little bit nervous. You know, as we, you know, as we all know, he is one of the whistleblowers who has kept a pretty low profile in recent years. I mean, he didn't, he was not part of the whistleblowers who has kept a pretty low profile in recent years. I mean, he was not part of the whistleblower lawsuit. He hasn't been giving media appearances. And so I think in those initial lines of question that he dealt with, he did come off as someone who was maybe a little

unfamiliar with the public spotlight that has been on some of these other whistleblowers. But I think all things considered, now that we've seen his entire testimony, I think he did come off as credible, earnest, and competent, and someone who was in a tough situation trying to figure out how to do the right thing. But at the same time, I think Busby did raise, you know, was able to raise some questions about just how ethically Mateer and his whistleblower's personal attorney, Sutton, I believe was the name, and asking about how days leading up to the FBI whistleblowing complaint and all that sort of stuff, he had hired him as his personal attorney. And then at the same time, in his capacity as first assistant attorney general, approved the appropriation of $50,000 to potentially hire him to serve the attorney general's office and was drilling down, you know, saying, wouldn't that be a conflict of interest for this attorney? Why would you do that? And then took it a very interesting, another direction in saying, I'm trying to figure out how you would – let me think of how he phrased it. Hire – use taxpayer dollars to hire Sutton as your own attorney or something like that.

And I didn't really understand how that worked or what he was accusing him of doing there. Well, the argument was that Mateer hired Sutton as his own personal attorney. And there's a question about hiring Sutton as counsel for the office. That's what the $50,000 in taxpayer money is referring to. That never happened, as Mateer said multiple times on the stand. They ultimately decided not to go that route. But that was something they were considering,

and that was something Busby tried to highlight to poke holes in his credibility. Absolutely. And maybe he was expanding it a little generously than beyond what it was, but I guess he was throwing out the possibility of you know were you trying to use those taxpayer dollars to hire this attorney to benefit you somehow that's kind of the gist of what i i got there the direction he was going yeah well in you know the timeline is something that both sides are trying to establish um their own twist on it and there is there's debate about um there's an email sent that is in the exhibits that busby highlighted sent at 1 30 in the morning allegedly uh that hardened

the manager's council came back and said well that's actually not the accurate time because it's universal time and therefore when it would have been actually sent by uh jeff matier it would have been uh you know not in the middle of the night and not before they started um they made a decision to go the other way uh or talk to the fbi so it's really kind of fuzzy at the moment um i don't know if anyone's getting a real clear picture about the timeline listening to this right now. And both sides are trying to, you know, especially the defense is trying to poke holes in what the whistleblowers say occurred when it occurred. Patrick, people watching, you watching, do you have a clear idea of what happened when listening to this testimony?

Generally speaking, I do as a reporter who's been following this, but there's no doubt that this testimony has been very long and dense at times in terms of going over specific dates, events, actions that were allegedly taken. And I guess you have the senators there as a captive audience and they have to listen. And so I assume that it's penetrating with them a little bit, but I highly doubt the average person outside the Capitol is processing this in the granular detail that it's being communicated in by the lawyers. And that's, again, just I'll go back to what I said earlier, that's why I think Paxson's team is, you know, is focusing on just, you know, really big picture casting this as a political conspiracy, because the, you know, the granular

details are pretty hard, I think, for the average, you know, Texan to understand and piece together. Right. Another angle that Busby was trying to paint, and he was doing admittedly a pretty thorough job or pretty good job, I guess, was trying to cast Mateer as the maybe jealous bureaucrat. You know, that bureaucrat word came up several times back and forth between Mateer and Busby, you know, with him constantly pressing, you know, that bureaucrat word came up several times back and forth between Mateer and Busby, you know, with him constantly pressing, you know, the fact that, you know, you're the subordinate. And, you know, did Attorney General Paxton have this authority and that sort of stuff? And, you know, Mateer would respond by speaking to the agency structure and process and everything like that. And he would counter back, but, you know, did that authority reside with Paxton? You know, could he make this unilateral

decision and all that sort of stuff? Was it illegal, et cetera, et cetera? You know, time and time again from many different angles, and so you kind of had that theme about, did this authority reside with Paxton at the end of the day? And by him circumventing the regular process, is this just him cutting the bureaucratic red tape? And are you just an an angry subordinate sort of picture. Another effort we saw from Busby was to try and basically nix the first two articles. The first one, it concerns the role in the attorney general's office in defending charitable organizations in the states. And, uh, he kind of did something similar with the second one, but he highlighted the way the articles were, uh, written and then try to draw a distinction between what state code says. And,

you know, if he's successful at that, that would draw out enough, presumably, at least as he intends, no votes on those two charges to prevent, you know, a two-thirds majority on that. So we can already see the groundwork being laid in this strategy, just, you know, again, poking enough holes in witness credibility, in the manager's case, the house manager's case against the Attorney General. But ultimately, we saw just attention kind of drop off from this. Obviously, we in the press are paying attention to this because that's our job. But there was almost nobody in the Senate gallery today from what I saw. Patrick, I know you weren't there today, but it seemed like there was, there were a good amount of people there yesterday. And obviously that's not the case today. So are we just in for a really long drawn out few weeks of minutiae and eventually this, you know, maybe the results are just baked in without having to,

you know, sit through all this. Yeah. I mean, it clearly attention dropped off today. You know, reports from, you know, other reporters inside the chamber was that there was not a lot of people filling the public section. I mean, even yesterday, the public section wasn't entirely full. And I think to, you know, to senators, especially, it's becoming clear that they are in for a pretty painstaking process in these coming days and weeks. You know, listening to all these witnesses, you know, having to pause proceedings to hash out procedural disputes. So, yeah, I mean, I think attention did drop off today and, you know, it's going to continue to drop off. Yeah. And, you know, as we enter the next few days, you know, presumably more whistleblowers

will testify. Ryan Banger, as I mentioned, is currently testifying. The same tactics are probably going to be used. We'll see to what effect. Matt, anything you're going to be watching for as things go the next few days? Yeah. You know, I've seen this tactic that Busby's been using. We saw it late this afternoon between him and Mateer. It seemed to me kind of like a cat and mouse game where he would ask him, are you aware of this email? Did you send this text? All this sort of stuff. And you'd get a lot of responses from Mateer saying, I don't recall, or I guess you're going to show me an email or that sort of stuff. And a lot of the time you

didn't see Busby actually say, well, you know, here's the email or here's the text message. And so it felt like it was constantly building up to something and then he would move on to another question. So I really wasn't sure if he was looking to try and catch Mateer in a lie or if he plans to circle back around with with evidence? I don't know. What was kind of your impression of that, Patrick? Yeah, I mean, I think what Busby was doing beyond what I mentioned about just hitting on the politics, the alleged politics situation was just, you know, trying to muddy the waters and sow doubt. And look, I mean, you know, that may sound like, you know, a negative comment by me, but the bottom line is that the burden of proof in this trial is beyond a reasonable doubt. So, he has to just, you know, he doesn't necessarily, you know, he doesn't have to prove, you know,

anything 100%, you know, is bulletproof true. He just has to, in the eyes of these jurors, make things look like they're just not fully there, that they're just not fully documented and proven. And so, I think Busby did do an effective job of that today of muddying the waters and sowing doubt. Yeah, you have like, well, him attacking the specific language of the first two articles of impeachment, where in Article 1, Brad Johnson, you tweeted out earlier the exact language where he failed to act as a public protector of charitable organizations as required by Chapter 123 of the Property Code. That's the language under the impeachment charge versus the actual statute of 123 of the property code that says – and this is what Busby pointed out. essentially arguing they're there to intervene against the charitable trust to protect the public's interest as opposed to the fine-tuance of the infamous opinion letter stopping foreclosure sales, where you have Mateer and the prosecution saying, you know, he issued this opinion.

You have Article 2 saying, you know, he misuses official power to issue written legal opinions. And Busby throws down the letter in question and says, you know, what does this say on the last page? And literally made Mateer read it off and says, this is not to be construed as a legal opinion issued under Chapter 402 of the government code. So, basically impeaching the fine language of both Article 1 and Article 2 of the articles of impeachment to sow that doubt amongst the jurors. And I think he was doing an effective job as far as I could tell yeah Patrick last question for you I want to throw your way um Lieutenant Governor Patrick is obviously not a judge he's he's new at this and having to deal with all these objections whether to sustain sustain or overrule

them you know it's it's enough to make your spin. How do you think he's done overseeing this whole process in the first two days? Yeah, definitely give him an incomplete grade. He is still finding his way so far, I think, on serving as, you know, effectively the judge in this proceeding. You know, he's having to make, you know, snap judgments on whether to sustain or overrule objections. He's having to quickly huddle with his team of advisors up there, including his impeachment counsel, Lana Myers, a former state appeals court judge from North Texas. So yeah, I think you're seeing him trying to exude competence and surround himself with the right people, but very much a work in progress. And you're already seeing the different lawyers trying to play to him or kind of rope them into

their side of an argument. You saw, I think it was just a few hours ago, but Rusty Hardin, the house lawyer, got up and asked Patrick to really try to police Busby, the the House lawyer, got up and said, you know, and asked Patrick to really try to, you know, police Busby, the Paxton lawyer, for giving little mini speeches while also registering his objections. And Patrick said something to the effect of, well, I've noticed both of you are doing that. So, you know, I'll call it out. But, you know, let's be clear, it's happening on both sides. So, I do think Patrick is still, you know, finding, you know, finding his footing in this new legal role. Yeah. Yeah.

He he is conferring with Justice Myers a lot, but also, you know, I've seen him a couple of times just respond immediately ruling either, you know overruling the objection or sustaining it so you know it seems like he's getting the hang of it a bit but a long way to go you know he hasn't he hasn't been sitting on the bench for for decades in preparation for this second day on the bench yeah yeah um matt any final observations on that well um my my overall kind of, and this is just a very generalized opinion, but I think looking at, we kind of talked about this yesterday on the podcast. The first day seemed to be a lot of victories for the prosecution, you know, getting those votes time and time again to reject the motions to dismiss. Lots of victories there. Today, with the cross-examination by Busby, very showmanship. You have a lot of things that appeal to people outside the Capitol. But you also have a lot of

detailed substance, I guess, for lack of a better way to describe it, you know, of Busby going in and attacking the basis for the impeachment charges and raising that doubt that's going to be necessary to ultimately get an acquittal. So I guess I would characterize it to say is so far from what I've seen. And of course, they're still going. I can hear the TV in the next room of the proceedings still going on. But as I've seen it so far, it felt like to me that things were swinging for the other side today after the cross-examination. So, but ultimately,

the only way to really tell is whenever things shake out. Well, you know, in any trial, it's punch, counterpunch, and that will continue to be a thing as we get through the witnesses, as we get through the various details, uh, some in excruciating detail, uh, but there's a lot, a long way to go, no doubt. Um, so with that, I think we'll, we'll, we'll leave it. Patrick, we appreciate you joining us. Uh, good, good luck the rest of the way. Yeah.

Thank you very much. And good luck to you guys for covering this. We'll see you in the Capitol. Sounds good. All right. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. yeah thank you very much and good luck to you guys for covering this we'll see you in the capital sounds good alright thanks guys appreciate it thanks for joining us and thanks for listening to day two of the Texans podcast