The Texan Podcast - Inside the Impeachment: Paxton on Trial — Day 5

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Read more about the impeachment: https://thetexan.news/paxton_impeachment/ Today, attorneys in the impeachment trial questioned Mark Penley, called to the stand by the House Board of Managers. Penley served as the Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice at the Attorney General’s Office under Ken Paxton, and is one of the four former employees who joined the lawsuit under the Texas Whistleblowers Act. The prosecution then called Katherine “Missy” Cary, Paxton’s former chief of staff, to the stand, a long-time employee of the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) who provided details about Paxton’s affair and the inner workings of the agency.  Gregg Cox, a former employee of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, was called to testify, along with Margaret Moore, the former Travis County district attorney herself.  Some big parts of the day included:Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the trial, said that time for witness examination should be up by Thursday evening. The Senate would then begin deliberations, and Patrick said there would be no days off until a verdict is reached.In regards to Paxton requesting staff to look into Nate Paul’s allegations against federal authorities, Penley testified he thought it was “insane” that the OAG would investigate a U.S. magistrate and federal agents. Penley said Paxton was “under Paul’s influence,” “biased against law enforcement to his detriment,” and that he feared he would be fired by Paxton if he could not convince the attorney general to distance himself from the Austin real estate developer. Paxton and Penley reportedly met in McKinney four days before Penley and his colleagues went to the FBI.Penley testified that he had “circumstantial evidence” that the attorney general was being bribed, and Paxton’s defense questioned him as to why he did not tell his boss. The defense argued that Penley, like other whistleblowers, didn’t do his due diligence in investigating Paul’s allegations before reporting Paxton to law enforcement. Cary testified that she overheard a conversation at an Austin restaurant regarding some personal information of the attorney general between a man and a woman she did not recognize. She took a photo of the woman, and spoke privately with Paxton about what she heard. Paxton told her that the woman was his realtor, and did not appear concerned. Cary later found out the woman was Laura Olson, with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair.Recalling a meeting where Paxton, with his wife Sen. Angela Paxton (R-McKinney) in attendance, confessed to the affair in September of 2018, Cary said her “heart broke” for Sen. Paxton and that she believed the affair had ended at that point. She later testified that she found out the affair had continued in the summer of 2019. Cary said that morale among OAG employees was low, particularly among the security detail and travel aides. She testified that Sen. Paxton would call the office to ask about the attorney general’s whereabouts, and that “the staff was sometimes uncomfortable answering those questions.”Cox was asked by the prosecution to describe “potential” crimes Paxton may have committed while in office. The defense brought forward the fact that Cox has applied for a job with the OAG after writing a memo outlining Paxton’s potential crimes. 

Howdy, folks. This is Mackenzie DeLullo, Senior Editor at The Texan. Welcome back to another episode of Inside the Impeachment, Paxton on Trial. Today, attorneys in the impeachment trial questioned Mark Penley, called to the stand by the House Board of Managers. Penley served as the Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice at the Attorney General's Office under Ken Paxton, and is one of the four former employees who joined the lawsuit under the Texas Whistleblowers Act. The prosecution then called Catherine Missy Carey, Paxton's former Chief of Staff, to the stand, a longtime employee of the Office of the Attorney General, who provided details about Paxton's affair.

Greg Cox, a former employee of the Travis County District Attorney's Office, was also called to the stand. Here's a recap. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the trial, said that time for witness examination should be up by Thursday evening. The Senate would then begin deliberations, and Patrick said there would be no days off until a verdict is reached. In regards to Paxton requesting staff to look into Nate Paul's allegations against federal authorities, Penley testified he thought it was insane that the OAG would investigate a U.S.

magistrate and federal agents. Penley said Paxton was under Paul's influence, biased against law enforcement to his detriment, and that he feared he would be fired by Paxton if he could not convince the Attorney General to distance himself from the Austin real estate developer. Paxton and Penley reportedly met in McKinney four days before Penley and his colleagues went to the FBI. Penley testified that he had circumstantial evidence that the Attorney General was being bribed, and Paxton's defense questioned him as to why he did not tell his boss. The defense argued that Penley, like other whistleblowers, didn't do his due diligence in investigating Paul's allegations before reporting

Paxton to law enforcement. Carrie testified that she overheard a conversation at an Austin restaurant regarding some personal information of the Attorney General between a man and a woman she did not recognize. She took a photo of the woman and spoke privately with Paxton about what she heard. Paxton told her the woman was his realtor and did not appear concerned. Carey later found out the woman was Laura Olson, with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair. Recalling a meeting where Paxton, with his wife, Senator Angela Paxton, in attendance, confessed to the affair in September of 2018, Kerry said her heart broke for Senator Paxton and that she believed the affair had ended

at that point. She later testified that she found out the affair had continued in 2019. Kerry said that morale among OAG employees was low, particularly among the security detail and travel aides. She testified that Senator Paxton, who is sitting feet away in the Senate chamber, would call the office to ask about the Attorney General's whereabouts and that the staff was sometimes uncomfortable answering those questions. Senator Paxton has been in attendance every day of the

trial. Ken Paxton has not made an appearance in the chamber since lunchtime on day one. Enjoy this episode. howdy folks mackenzie delulo here and we are on day five the first day of week two of the impeachment trial of suspended attorney general ken paxton in the texas senate i'm joined by two gentlemen from our team brad johnson and matt stringer to discuss the proceedings of today and boy do we have a lot to talk about our office is abuzz with all sorts of different takes on what is going on today. And honestly, we're going to try and go in chronological order. I think we're going to want to skip to the end, but let's go in chronological order. Brad and Matt, let's do our best to stay on track. We'll get to the spicy stuff as we go on. Honestly, all of it was spicy

too, like even the Penley testimony. So let's get into that. Brad, I'll have you start. We started off the day with Mark Penley, one of the former Office of the Attorney General staff members who joined the whistleblowers lawsuit. Talk to us a little bit about what the prosecution was using his testimony to try and make a point for. So they were basically using it as, at least it struck me, as a review of everything that had been said by the other whistleblowers. That's Jeff Mateer, Ryan Vassar, Ryan Bangert, and then, who was the law enforcement official last week? David Maxwell. Oh, thank you. And Penley was more involved kind of along the same lines as Maxwell in the allegations that Attorney General Paxton asked his officials to look into this complaint by Paul that the FBI abused its authority when it raided him in response to the Mitty Foundation lawsuit. And so, Penley had more firsthand knowledge of that.

You know, he said things like, we were asked to obstruct a federal investigation. That's a felony. They also tried to, the prosecution tried to lay some groundwork to avoid the trap that ryan vassar fell in and saying we had no evidence and they got out ahead of that um by penley saying that we had circumstantial evidence we had our observations of paxton's and paul's actions that was the evidence we took to the fbi We were witnesses. Basically what Vassar said eventually after that one very detrimental soundbite occurred. But they kind of tried to solidify the case, the credibility of what these whistleblowers are alleging. They talked about Penley. He was involved in reviewing the complaint

by Paul about the FBI. He said he found it ultimately to be inconclusive. And that is why he recommended that the attorney general close close the case drop it because there's nothing here um now he alleged that that that paxton pushed back on that um especially in a meeting um at a dunkin donuts with between the two four days before the whistleblowers went to the fbi yes yes and um Yes, yes. And they also discussed Paxton's apparent displeasure at Penley refusing to do what he wanted, which was open a full-fledged investigation into these allegations of FBI corruption or at least improper altering of documents, specifically the, was it subpoena or the, um, uh, search warrant. And so he, Penley, along with Maxwell, who was also part of more hands-on in that aspect of things, decided that it was inconclusive and did not, uh, want to go further. Um, apparently during that, uh, one of those conversations, Paxton told Penley to his face that he's acting like Chip Roy, former first assistant to the attorney general, who left. Now a congressman.

Yes, he was pushed out. It sounded like he resigned before he got fired. There was a lot this was back i think in like 2015 2016 um when paxton first took office but basically paxton was not happy with how roy was was doing the job um roy's take would be that paxton was mad that roy was getting too much attention as the first assistant not the attorney general regardless penley said he paxton likened him to chip roy by quote not doing what paxton wanted and so which is paxton's team's whole narrative is that there was a pattern of staff in his office who would not who would

actively go against the wishes of him as the duly elected attorney general for the state in you know either not finishing projects that the attorney general deemed were important or not you know adhering to policy that he thought was you know pertinent or going rogue in some way or another we've heard that term thrown around too and so of course chip roy being mentioned here is also something that goes to show okay this is a history of you know regardless of which side actually is correct in this whether it was the employees or the attorney general there's some sort of history of discontent between the attorney general and his employees yeah and like i said

this was used as the foundation for what would come later and and um specifically the abrasion between paxton and the feds and also paul and the feds and so um that was that was the case that the prosecution really tried to shore up. And then when it went to the defense, there was another tense cross-examination. It was Mitch Little who did, I forget, I think he did Ryan Bangert's cross-examination. And he was just hammering the witness with questions. So yeah, let's talk about the defense then. What did Penley's defense questioning cross-examination look like?

They touched on things like, you said, the attorney general's, it's up to his discretion on a lot of these things. First of all, whether or not his employees do what he wants, you know, that's whether they're employed at the discretion of the attorney general. That was one theme. Another one that I thought was really interesting that Little brought up right before a break, he said that he was questioning Penley about other case precedents, specifically from a couple of appeals courts that said obstruction of an FBI investigation is not obstruction of justice because that investigation is, quote, not an official proceeding. Now, Penley said that he was concerned that the actions the attorney general was asking him to take constituted obstruction of justice. And so this arrow lobbed in there from Little basically would have said that, I mean, you're

a top-level attorney and you didn't know that this doesn't qualify as obstruction of justice. And I looked at, I found some of the precedents he was talking about. There's one from the Ninth Circuit, one from the Fifth Circuit. Those ruled that, in fact, an FBI investigation is not an official proceeding under the obstruction of justice statute. Now, there was one counter, a ruling from the second circuit in usv hector gonzalez had a different take um basically that it does count and so we have these competing precedents what shocker competing precedents i know right shocking that never happens well the controlling precedent is going to be the fifth Circuit ruling for the state. And I think what you saw the defense kind of attack this narrative on is the fact that the nature of the state investigation wouldn't be so much as getting involved in interfering with the actual workings of the federal investigation.

It's investigating whether or not there was forgery or perjury committed in the alteration of the federal search warrant. So simply, you know, the nature of the investigation wouldn't even touch what's going on with the active federal activities. It's extracting metadata, and they went over that quite a bit, what metadata was, et cetera, et cetera, and all the back and forth. And he described, and across examination, he drilled down in this instance with Penley, where they had a meeting with Nate Paul, and he informed them, and Paxton was present for this, that the IT guy for the Attorney General's office had told him that he looked at metadata and didn't see anything, or it was inconclusive, actually, is what it was. And you saw Penley's description of that kind of evolve through it,

that IT didn't find anything. And then whenever Little drilled down on that, it suddenly became, well, it was inconclusive. And Little was like, well, does that not mean that there's still a possibility? And you kind of saw Penley bow up to that and not really want to answer that question. And it took a little bit to get there, and I think they finally did. But whenever they got in the room, Nate Paul asked to get his laptop and bring it in and do a presentation to him where he essentially said in rebuttal to the news from the IT department that he had evidence that he could show him that

IT was wrong if that was their position. And he asked him, well, what did Nate Paul show you? And he's like, I don't know. I don't understand what I was looking at was essentially the answer there. All being said, creating doubt and creating the impression to those watching that Nate Paul potentially had a case. It was unknown whether he did or not, you know, shooting holes in the idea that Nate Paul absolutely did not have a case and there was nothing to move forward on. Yeah. And that whole idea that you were saying, Brad, about circumstantial evidence, I mean, that was a big part of the discussion too. And we've seen time and time again, the defense come forward and argue that these whistleblowers, these former staff of the attorney general's

office didn't do their due diligence in looking over whatever Nate Paul had to present to them or didn't do their due diligence in their research as they were considering what was going on, didn't go far enough in investigating. And so, you know, why would you go to the FBI if you didn't have all the information in front of you? You know, I left the first week of the trial thinking of that song, Suspicious Minds. And because everyone. Sing it for us, Matt.

Suspicious. Because I'm coming. I didn't expect you to actually do it. I'm proud of you. Sorry. Keep going. So who is that singer? I'm trying to remember.

Dwight Yoakam. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So who is that singer? Dwight Yoakam. Okay. So back on the impeachment trial. Last week we left the week with each one of the witnesses essentially describing that they had reasonable belief. And you really saw the defense grab a hold of the fact that there was zero evidence being offered by the prosecution or the witnesses. It was a reasonable belief that they would then explore and essentially show for the jury that there were other reasonable explanations that could have been extracted by these witnesses. The legality of Paxton's actions, his authority, the referral from the

district attorney's office being the motivation for the special counsel as opposed to it being strictly on Paxton's sole accord, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I feel like today's testimony changed the feeling for lack of evidence, so to speak. Yeah. And I think that really started happening whenever we got to the one witness, Catherine Missy Carey. Yeah. So let's get to that. So the second witness on the stand was Missy Carey, Catherine Missy Carey, the former chief of staff at the OAG.

She was questioned by counsel for the House Board of Managers, Therese Buse. Okay, how do you say her last name, Brad? Buse. Buse. This is the first time we've seen the prosecution really dig into Paxton's affair and how that affected the staff and the operations of the Office of the Attorney General. And Kerry's testimony opened the door to a lot of new information that was laid before the jury and the senators today. Maybe not new information in terms of documents that have been filed, but new information in terms of what has been heard in trial so let's go ahead and start with um the prosecution laying out the facts of the case here

brian why don't we start with you let's talk about the conversation at galaxy cafe and any other big takeaways you had from this part of that was something i i had no idea about yeah i didn't either um uh carrie said relayed the story of her being at galaxy cafe in austin and overhearing a conversation that apparently discussed attorney general paxton in great detail and according to her alarming detail she then talked about how she took a picture of the woman at the table that was next to her whom she didn't know at the time she didn't identify and then she took it to the attorney general um privately. And he asked her to, he told her, first of all, he told her it was his realtor, uh, later became known that this was the woman with whom he was having an affair, Laura Olson. And that's, um, that led to this, September 2018 meeting with top aides where Paxton confessed.

And Angela Paxton was present, according to Carrie. And it was a tearful meeting. And she said Paxton seemed contrite when he uh confessed to it and then she discussed and the fair was supposedly over then too which is and i want to clarify this was spring of 2018 that we're talking i think september of september 2018 okay uh was when the meeting happened correct i don't know the galaxy cafe had happened in the spring yes yes so carrie later found out that the affair picked back up at some point um she at some point in 2019 yeah it could maybe confronted as too loaded but discussed it with. Well, she said he came to her office and had a pretty rough conversation where he told her.

She described him as being frustrated with her because she didn't understand the love that. He used that word. Yeah. The love that he had for Olson. Yeah. And essentially saying that there were accommodations that needed to be made on a staffing front, whether it be for security or for travel aid, travel aides who would travel with the attorney general and that Paxton was going to carry and saying, hey, I need some accommodations made for this and I don't want to be stonewalled when these requests are made directly from me. And in the context of talking about the affair. Yeah. And she said

to him in this meeting, you know, it's none of my business who you're sleeping with, but when it affects office operations, it becomes my business and I don't appreciate that. And that was part of this very heated exchange in the office. I was in the Senate chamber, in the Senate press pool, as this testimony was being given. And I just want to stress the powerful nature of hearing her testimony. Um, and to that point, whenever she describes the security detail, the travel aides, all the staff that was being affected by the affair, because he was essentially, as she was testifying, using state resources, um, or using them to carry it out, that it became very painful. And one moment that really struck me was whenever she talked about how his wife,

Senator Angela Paxton, would call the office and ask about where Ken was and et cetera, and that they were extremely uncomfortable. The staff was. The staff was having to answer where he might have been. Because you know how it could be that those high-ranking staffers, et cetera, know they probably knew what was going on, where he was, all that sort of stuff, especially whenever it was a moment that was, you know, a moment he was up to no good. And the wife calls and you're expected to, I guess, lie or – Like what are you expected to do? Yeah.

Yeah. Terrible situation. Yeah. And as a reminder for folks as well, I mean, Senator Angela Paxton was sitting in the Senate chamber the entirety of today listening to all of this testimony, just feet, you know, from Missy Carey as she was testifying to all of this too. And that fact is so easy to lose sight of when you're watching a live stream or you're reading an article but as a reminder for folks that the senator is literally in the chamber and um will be uh will be for the rest of the trial foreseeably but was firsthand listening to all of these accounts and reliving all of this of her and her husband's life yeah and carrie said on the stand that this

dragging in of staffers to this issue caused morale to dip significantly among the the the bag men the the travel aides the security personnel she mentioned jeff matier as well she mentioned matier anytime that the council would ask which staff were affected by this affair. Matera was always listed, which was very interesting. Other than that, it was the travel aid security, the folks who were physically with the attorney general on any given day. Yeah. moved on to uh the brandon kamek contract asking her functional questions about how things are approved and um they asked her specifically if um she had ever seen outside counsel hired for a criminal matter before from by paxton she said she hadn't um and then it concluded with how she left the office she was

not one of the whistleblowers she resigned she retired um retired early she said i wasn't because i quit yes um so she was not fired by the the office of the attorney general for lack of a better word i was a quitter is what she said. Yeah. So that's generally how it went. And obviously very, very tense, very caught up with emotion testimony from her. And you could tell she was, she held herself well together.

Well, but it was not something that was easy for her to do it it was clear well right off the bat if we're gonna pivot to the defense really fast before kind of going on a higher level and talking about what the potential consequences of what today might bring when tony busby got up there which we haven't heard from busby in a couple of days he got back up there to cross-examine carrie He said, you look like you're a little nervous. And she said, I don't think anyone particularly wants to be here, Mr. Busby, which I think sums up a lot of what the witnesses are feeling at this point. And, you know, re-litigating all of these big

plot points in your life that affected both your work and the lives of people close to you, who you were working for. It's not easy. It's very difficult. Now, there was a pretty big bombshell moment I want to discuss with you as Busby was cross-examining Carrie. Who remembers exactly how that went down in terms of asking for specific recollections of the color of the car that she saw at galaxy cafe who was which supposedly belonged to laura olsen and those kinds of things when she first relayed the the meeting she said that after it the woman in question who was at the table left in a red car and so busby asked her about that and pointed out that laura Olson has never owned a red car.

So basically, how can we trust her? Or implied that she never had owned a red car. How can we trust your testimony here on that if you got something so simple wrong? Which Carrie on the stand said, oh, I didn't say it was red, but I can't remember if she did. I can't remember. And to be honest, it's not that bombshell of a moment because there's so many different instances in which you could be in a car that you don't own. Oh, for sure. Yes, but that part that we're talking about is a bombshell.

He used it to segue into asking her how her memory is. And it sounded like she said not very good. Well, that was before they addressed her testimony on her seeing the woman at the Galaxy Cafe again at the event in San Antonio. Yeah. Where she had testified that after I saw the woman at the Galaxy Cafe, I later saw her at an event in San Antonio where she saw on her name tag who she was and identified her, and she testified that this event was the meeting of the National Attorney General's Association. And Busby rebuts that saying there was no meeting of the National Attorney General's Association in San Antonio. And he says, considering that, you know, how good is your memory? And she says, I guess not that good. Yeah, he says, your memory know how good is your memory and she says i guess

not that good yeah he says your memory's not very good is it no it's not that's what i thought that's how it went it was weird she smiled when she said that that was um that was yeah pretty powerful testimony for the defense especially after such she'd given such powerful testimony that i think changed a lot of to sum up, at least this is where I've been at in watching testimony. I think we all know in our jobs far too well, a lot of the details of this. Hayden particularly just knows all the details of this. And this is something that we've covered. We've read stories about, we've heard firsthand accounts of for years now at this point. And so a lot of this for us and a lot of

folks who've been plugged in, a lot of this isn't new. And I think we've been waiting for the hammer to drop. We've been waiting for some big piece of evidence that, you know, okay, the House impeachment managers had these, our House Board of Managers had this big bombshell piece of evidence to bring forward that would convince senators. Like we were all kind of waiting for that moment. And the hearing from the whistleblowers, although powerful in its own way, I think left a lot of folks who were just watching this trial in want of some serious evidence. And after today hearing from Kerry, it was like, okay, there are, there's some major stuff that can, that the prosecution can lean back on and then for busby to get that admission it's like this it's just a roller coaster of back and forth between

okay yes this is actually some pretty big stuff and we'll get into the articles of impeachment of what this actually might mean and then for this admission is interesting to follow up on what you just said yeah i will point out on a technical note that the testimony from Carrie that Busby successfully impeached, for lack of a better term, it was all peripheral elements to her testimony. The color of the car, the name of the event, etc., etc. The other elements of her testimony, who the person was that she identified, the fact that she did hear this person, etc., etc., all that remained intact. Now, what he accomplished was to try and undermine her overall credibility as a witness. And it's anybody's guess whether or not by chipping away at some of those peripheral facts, whether or not.

How effective that is. Yeah. Absolutely. Whether or not in the minds of the senator jurors, you know, whether or not. Well, you know, she got, you know, maybe she was in a borrowed car. For sure. Your mind can wonder all the possibilities. But for Busby, he's sitting there thinking, okay, all this got, you know,

a lot of this information has now been entered into the record. Despite my objections, I raised, okay, how am I going to backtrack from this? And he gets a big moment like that. And it's a big win. It just is. And you're exactly right. Like how effective is it? Who knows? But it was a terrible like that and it's a big win it just is and you're exactly right like how effective is it who knows but it was a terrible sound but it's a big win for the prosecution but a lot of her testimony remains intact yeah absolutely it didn't undermine and

it's the big stuff yeah now i i heard what you guys heard too but i was texting with a friend and they had a theory that she was not responding specifically to uh she was not saying that her memory is bad she was it was a an odd response to a question i don't know i i thought it was pretty clear when i heard it but um that she was saying yes her her memory is bad but regardless kind of those ways and that's not accurate like no it's not like, right. Right. That's the argument that they're making. Yeah.

I feel like that's hard to, I'd have to see it again and we can't really do that at the moment. So for that to really mean anything though, I think Busby would need to continue the cross examination to bring that admittance back and try and apply it towards the big statements in her testimony to try and expressly shoot that down. And instead, I guess he moved on at that point. Now, we've seen a few instances in this week-long trial so far of the defense specifically targeting an article. And, you know, they did it on Article 1 with defense of a charitable trust. They did

it on article two relating to the midnight opinion and whether or not it was actually a formal opinion or an informal opinion. Does that matter at all? You know, that's what, that was what they were trying to throw into doubt. But with this, they're avoiding Article 17, which states, while holding office as Attorney General, Warren Kenneth Paxton misused his official powers by causing employees of his office to perform services for his benefit and the benefit of others. That's what would be addressed here in this testimony about having essentially your staffers run cover for you for the affair. So that's basically why this testimony is as talked about today as it is. Yes. Yes. Because they only need to convict him on one out and what makes this testimony, in essence, the evidence that they've been sorely needing,

is its relevance to Article 17. You have this testimony from this, she was the chief of staff, if I'm not mistaken, describing the morale from the employees for, you know, his security detail, having to go with him, his, I guess, driver, et cetera, et cetera. You know, being used at odd hours, all this sort of stuff. You know, if they end up following up on this by showing that he had a driver ferry him around to go meet a mistress or him with the mistress or, you know, use the security detail to go do that, et cetera, et cetera. It really starts painting the picture of using state resources to carry out this affair. And defense is going to have to try and argue that that's not an abuse of state resources. Of public resources, specifically as the language of Article 17 says. Well, and that's where those calls from Senator Paxton to the office asking where her husband is, those are all added to that docket of potential evidence that could violate Article 17. And you saw Busby try and go the affair angle from an inch. He made a statement that's all over Twitter.

And that is if we, if we started impeaching people in Austin for having an affair, we would be impeaching for the next 100 years or some, something along those lines. That's pretty pretty close quote. But essentially what he's saying is it's no secret that there's a lot of officials that have been involved in these kind of situations, and are we really saying that we're impeaching on these now? Is there any perfect person to which Carrie said, not in my belief system and or there is only one according to my belief system.

And then he asked that question about him, you know, Austin and propriety. And she said, I'm not talking about that in this room. and not trying to argue the prosecution side here, just observing the facts, Busby's trying to characterize this as, well, we're impeaching people for having affairs, but the article says misappropriation of public resources. It's not that he had an affair that he's being impeached on. It's that, did he use public resources to support it? To carry it out. To carry it out. To carry it out.

And that is the crux of the prosecution's argument. And the defense did, of course, as we keep seeing this contract be brought up, bring up the contract with Brandon Kamek again, talking about specifically in his cross-examination of Kerry, saying, you know, does the Attorney General have the authority to unilaterally approve this contract for outside counsel? She advised against it, but she said there's a way in which he could do it. You know, office protocol is what it is, and she advised the Attorney General to follow it. But had he, you know, he has the authority to approve the contract, which is a huge argument from the defense is saying, OK, if the employees are upset that the attorney general, the duly elected attorney general is going out and, you know, approving a contract, I think, who essentially, as one of his elements of reasonable suspicion, that had testified that Paxton's illegally contracting the special counsel was one of the reasons.

And they countered that by saying, you know, were you not aware of the referral from the Travis County DA's office? Now you have this testimony from Missy. Oh, yes, Missy Carey. Missy Carey, that's right, saying that she had told, she'd reviewed it and told Paxton, here's how you do it legally. So. And it's all back and forth, right? Because then it's just back and forth because the argument from the staff is that it shouldn't

have been approved in the first place because it was, he was being used, CAMEC was being used to investigate things that would get the attorney general in trouble, right? So it's all cyclical, but it keeps coming up, and I think it will continue to. We're adding the final. Well, because there's 16 articles, there's 16 different battlefronts being fought on this. Some more heavily than others. Yes. Especially after today. Yes. And what we saw, there was only one mention of the affair last week, and then it wasn't touched again at all.

And to be honest, the day that it happened it happened in the morning and uh by the time the day was over i there was so much information so many major things coming out to be talked about i didn't even remember it at the end of the day i think we were talking about that podcast effort i was like i completely forgot about the affair being brought up this morning um definitely not the situation today yeah but you know as things happen and minor victories occur both sides are going to home in on what they think is either the most most vulnerable aspects or the strongest case in point, especially the prosecution, which only has to get one. Paxton has to beat them all.

Yeah. I'm going to be watching to see what they do as far as pursuing the usage of public resources aspect and to counter the defensive narrative that's really come up, especially after last week, that there's no evidence, no evidence. I'm going to watch and see what happens on that. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things here. Any final thoughts before I sign us off here, Brad?

It will be interesting to see if and when Drew Wicker, the personal friend, bag man of Paxton, if he's called to the stand. And there will be a lot more, if he does, firsthand knowledge of allegations. Specifically for those kinds of purposes. Yes. Yeah. But we don't know if he's going to be called. Yeah.

Matt, what about you? Anything? I'm just hoping that my Dwight Yoakam karaoke wasn't so good that we get in trouble for copyright violation. You know, I think we might. A couple of programming notes here. So the lieutenant governor said that time for witness testimony should be up by Thursday, which then means after closing statements from both sides, senators would be tasked

with deliberations. Those would be closed door behind the scenes. Public would not be subject to those and senator angela paxton even though she is a member of the senate will not be taking part in those deliberations and the lieutenant governor said that there will not be any days off until a verdict is reached so we could be reaching a verdict very early um or maybe not early six weeks of a trial i know the the narratives out there about how long this would take exactly we're done after two. Exactly. We're a little off.

So that's one thing to keep in mind as we continue this week. We'll be back tomorrow with a guest. There is a witness on the stand right now that we are ignoring entirely as we record this for you. The managers are questioning Gray Cox, who worked for the Travis County DA's office. And he's describing, according to Hayden, who's in the chamber right now, potential crimes that the attorney general may have committed while in office. So we will keep track of that.

Chat about it tomorrow on the next episode. But folks, we so appreciate you listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to Inside the Impeachment, Paxton on Trial. For access to all of our team's coverage on this historic proceeding, visit thetexan.news and subscribe today.