The Texan Podcast - Inside the Impeachment: Paxton on Trial — Day 7 (with Matt Mackowiak)

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Read more about the Paxton impeachment: https://thetexan.news/paxton_impeachment/ Today, attorneys in the impeachment trial questioned Ray Chester, attorney for the Mitte Foundation; Drew Wicker, a former personal aide to Ken Paxton; and Blake Brickman, the former deputy attorney general for policy and strategic initiatives. Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton is said to have had an affair, was at the capitol and expected to take the stand, but was deemed “unavailable” in a statement from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.  The House Board of Managers rested their case, and the defense called their first witness to the stand.

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 Ray Chester, attorney for the Mitty Foundation, Drew Wicker, a former personal aide to Ken Paxton, and Blake Brickman, the former Deputy Attorney General for Policy and Strategic Initiatives. Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton is said to have had an affair, was at the Capitol and expected to take the stand, but was deemed unavailable in a statement from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. The House Board of Managers rested their case, and the defense called their

first witness to the stand. Here's a recap. The House Board of Managers presented a motion to amend the Senate impeachment trial rules so Paxton would be automatically barred from running for Texas office in the future if the charges are sustained. Chester testified on Paxton's alleged harm to the charity for Nate Paul and accused Paul of trying to swindle the charity, which he said invested in Paul's companies six times. Paxton's defense contended that the charity made money on at least some of the investments. Wicker, a former personal aide to Paxton, said he bonded with both Angela and Ken Paxton as if they were family and that there is no bad blood between

them. Responding to questions from the House Board of Managers, Wicker said he heard the Paxton's general contractor, Kevin Wood, say he would check with Nate on the cost of countertops and renovations to the cabinetry on three separate occasions. Paxton's defense questioned Wicker about what he knew of the Paxton's home remodel, and Wicker agreed with Busby that the kitchenxton's home remodel, and Wicker agreed with Busby that the kitchen in their home had not been remodeled. Wicker received a stipend from Paxton's campaign after resigning, but later donated it back, considering it an innocent mistake.

Tony Busby, one of Paxton's lawyers, showed Wicker documents that he says proved the Paxtons paid for their home renovations and said he would be willing for the court of impeachment to travel to their home to witness that the kitchen and the countertops had not been updated. Brickman, a former senior employee of the OAG who joined the whistleblower lawsuit and was fired from the agency, gave testimony about his concerns regarding Paxton and Paul's relationship. The former chief of staff for Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin testified that the work environment at the agency was extremely hostile after he and other staff members went to the FBI to report their concerns about Paxton.

Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton is said to have had an extramarital affair, was supposed to be the first witness. Then it was made known she was supposed to be the first witness. Then it was made known she was not eligible until around 4 p.m. due to a notice rule. After a break during the evening, Patrick said they needed to settle a matter outside the presence of the jury of senators. When they returned from the break, Patrick said that Olson was at the Capitol, but deemed unavailable to testify. After wrapping up the questioning of Brickman, lawyer for the House Board of Managers Rusty Hardin very suddenly, and surprisingly, rested their case. Varying motions were fervently filed by both sides, and then just as suddenly dismissed.

Paxton's defense called their first witness, Professor Michael Gerhart of the University of North Carolina School of Law. But the Senate adjourned until tomorrow before the direct examination began. Enjoy the episode. Well, howdy, folks. Mackenzie DeLulo here with Brad Johnson and Matt Stringer. We are joined also by a very special guest today, Matt Makoviak, Republican consultant based here in Austin. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. And I know it's your birthday, so we appreciate you jumping on even when it's your special day. Happy birthday.

Not at all. My pleasure. I'd love to go ahead and jump in. We will get into the details of the day a little bit later. But right now we are watching as the Senate is doing something pretty remarkable. And we'll just live react to what we're seeing right now in the Senate chamber. Matt, why don't you go ahead and give us a quick rundown of what's going on in the Senate right now? Yeah, and you know, this is for some of us who aren't who have don't have a law degree and aren't practicing lawyers, we're learning a lot through this, this trial, even though it's technically not a legal trial, it's more of a political trial. But

but you know, the typical rules of evidence and motions available to courtroom lawyers are available. And so it's been it's been an interesting day with several witnesses. I guess where we are right now here at about what is it? the 6 p.m. Central Time on Wednesday, September 13th, is the lead attorney for the prosecution arrested, Rusty Hardin. Not entirely clear whether he totally intended to do that or not, although he's an extremely experienced and high-profile lawyer. And so the option to present a defense was given over to the defense team led by Tony Busby. You know, we kind of expected,

I certainly expected him to call his first witness, whoever that was going to be. And instead of doing so, he preserves that option, but he has now filed a motion for a directed verdict, which as I understand it, forces a vote of the jurors, which are the senators,

all 31 senators, the vote of the jurors, which are the senators, all 31 senators, the exception of Angela Paxton, who can't vote and can't be part of deliberations because of a conflict of interest, given that her husband is the person who's who's being considered for impeachment. So as I understand it, this now forces a vote of it's basically sort of a motion to dismiss the charges. I don't know if it's going to be one overall vote or one individual vote. I think it may be an individual vote. And what's interesting about this is two things, but maybe three things. One, this does give you an idea where things stand. Now, this is a majority vote. It is different from the vote that we will have at the end of the trial, if there is a vote at the end of the trial, because that vote is a two-thirds vote to impeach and to remove. This is a majority vote. So it is a higher threshold for the Paxton team. But the first benefit for them is it shows them where the

votes are at the moment. And so I can see that as perhaps that being the first benefit. The second benefit is there's a potential, and we're kind of watching this in real time for the rest of the trial, but also may change who they need to call as witnesses and who they now don't need to call as witnesses. So I think that's kind of the second benefit. The third benefit here is obviously there's a chance that they're going to prevail. Now, I don't think they will, but what it may show is that they have 10 votes to dismiss or to not convict on maybe all of the individual articles of impeachment, but not 16 votes on all of them. Maybe they'll have 16 on, let's say, six or seven, and then maybe they'll have 10 or more on everything that remains, or maybe they'll be short of 10, right? 10 Republicans can basically save Paxton here.

And so that's the vote we'll have at the end after the defense calls witnesses and is able to present their own case and present their own evidence. So I read this as a sign. And again, I'm not a trial lawyer. I don't have any experience. I've watched law and order a little bit over the years. Other than that, I'm sort of a layman. But it seems to me this is a sign of confidence by the by the Paxton defense team. If you know, if this if these votes were to go very poorly, let's say they didn't even have 10 votes for any of them. I guess that would be useful knowledge to have now rather than have it at the end. It may change what they're going to do, but it certainly would not be

helpful. So my sense is they think they're going to prevail on some number of these charges with 16 votes. Now, if you remember, if you go back to the motion to dismiss votes, which occurred at the beginning, at the very beginning, really almost in the pretrial phase, they needed a majority vote there. And my memory was they were anywhere between six and eight, maybe nine votes on the individual motions to dismiss. So they weren't at 10 when this started. We'll have to see if they're at 16 on any of these individual 16 articles of impeachment as this vote gets held. And it appears to me we're going to have this vote tonight here, as far as we can tell. Yeah, and deliberation among the senators, like you were saying,

Matt, is happening as we speak. And to be fair, also, this is something that we expected probably to happen Thursday. This is Wednesday being part of the equation was not really what we thought or was expected when estimates were, you know, said or talked about from the dais from the Lieutenant Governor of when the trial would be wrapping up. I think in large part that has to do with Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton is said to have had an extramarital affair, who was supposed to take the stand today, not ending up taking the stand, which we can get into as well. But that just means right off the bat, the House Board of Managers is down a witness. And that probably would have been a very lengthy portion of questioning. And now we're not seeing that happen. And we're here with the senators deliberating emotions on the table. And it seems that both sides have rested their case. Brad, what are your takeaways

from this going on right now? It's been absolutely wild. I'm telling you. I mean, Laura Olson was supposed to be the first one called today. And then we heard that the defense objected well the defense objected because the uh the prosecution had not given 24 hours notice and so she couldn't be brought up until like 3 45 roughly today and so uh the testimony from blake brickman and drew wicker kind of dragged on and on into the evening and um what time was it that they announced that it was like 4.30ish? Yeah. They announced that she would not be called after an agreement.

Closer to five, I think. Closer to five. Yeah. After an agreement between, well, after a 30, 45-minute meeting behind closed doors and an agreement, according to Lieutenant Governor Patrick, between the two sides, the two parties. Yeah, Patrick said they needed to settle a matter outside the presence of the jury or the senators. And then when they returned from break, that's when he made that announcement. And obviously that was the matter that they were considering. Who knows if there was any, you know, what the decision making was, you know, is it, is it Patrick not wanting Senator Paxton to have to sit through that?

Was it, I saw reporting that she was planning on pleading the fifth. What good would that do the prosecution? So maybe they just wiped their hands away with it and said, all right, we're not going to make the jurors sit through that. Did the defense give in on anything? A motion that they were intending to file or a witness they were intending to call uh it's really up in the air we don't really know what it was specifically although it sounds like uh that pleading the fifth aspect was was probably there are few reports out about that right now stringer what about you well what confuses what i initially thought about it was the Fifth Amendment aspect and them wasting a bunch of time, which is now precious for the prosecution.

They don't have a lot of time on the clock left. So if you get up there and she literally says, I plead the fifth to every question, you burn up a lot of time. But then the prosecution rests it. And then they rest. And now we're seeing reports that Rusty Hardin is literally saying, and I'm seeing several journalists out there quoting this on Twitter, that he is now saying that I screwed up. Yeah, made a mistake. Rested too early, which I guess would make sense if, you know, perhaps that was their plan was preserve the time on the clock to use for other witnesses and then the only explanation there is is rusty made a boo-boo no and it's wild to watch this happen in real time i mean this is all very quickly turning into a while

it's already been a wild day in that we were anticipating laura olsen taking the stand for hours like she was the first person whose name was uttered by lieutenant governor this morning as a witness and then nope she's not she's not eligible. We're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting. Nope, she's not taking the stand. Nope, the prosecution rests its case. Oh, motions, here we are. And to Matt's point, I also want to say that we don't know exactly what these motions, what the votes are going to look like. I believe Tony Busby made some sort of allusion to a grouping of different articles kind of being grouped together i don't know if votes will be taken that way but it's a very wild day it's all happening very

quickly and as i'm watching the live stream of the senate chamber right now no senators are there i did see senator angela paxton walk off the floor she is not privy to the deliberations happening behind closed doors wild to watch this all happen. Matt, before we let you go and enjoy the rest of your birthday, why don't you kind of give us a little bit of a rundown of your impression of the trial up to this point? What have been your big takeaways? Yeah, I think if you, you know, I'll start kind of with an overview, which is, you know, I think going into this at the very beginning, I really thought that the votes on the motions to dismiss were going to be instructive. And I think they were. I think they showed, you know, what you might call a high floor for Paxton's defense, that he had, you know, somewhere between six and eight pretty solid votes.

If they're willing to move to dismiss before any evidence or any case is presented, then they're probably not willing to convict at the end. So that said, I do think the month or so before the trial, we saw sort of a drip, drip, drip of news during the gag order that I thought was not helpful to Paxton overall politically. And so I probably would have put, you know, the odds of him succeeding and surviving and maybe something like 40%. I think, and I thought this before Rusty Hardin apparently mistakenly rested early today, that really that Paxton's lawyers have outperformed the prosecuting lawyers, really almost on every witness so far. And maybe that's just the nature of cross-examination, that you're there to raise doubt and to, you know, point holes, pointed holes in

their testimony. But I think if you just look at today, you know, there was this perception that Drew Wicker kind of heard something salacious, and that that kind of generated this whole idea that Nate Paul provided the renovations. When at the, you know, by the time he was done testifying, he admitted that that's not what happened and that in the end he doesn't think there's anything wrong with how things were done. So you had a witness that was essentially a prosecution witness who effectively became a defense witness in a sense. I thought Blake Brickman's testimony was perhaps the strongest of anyone we've seen. And I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, Blake's a friend of mine, but I thought he had kind of the clearest language and was kind of the most confident witness

that the prosecution had. You know, maybe he wasn't privy to every single conversation and every meeting and didn't have every single, you know, experience firsthand wasn't privy to every single conversation and every meeting and didn't have every single, you know, experience firsthand, but the ones that he did, I thought he was very clear on. And I think, so I think he may have been their strongest witness. I would say now, as I sit here, I think it's a 60% chance Paxton somehow survives this. Now, I do think the biggest threat to him is he doesn't have to go, you know, he doesn't have to win a majority, you know, of the 16 articles. He's got to go 16 for 16. If he is acquitted on 15 of them and convicted on one, he is immediately removed from office. And then it's unclear whether they're also going to be voting simultaneously to prevent him from ever holding state office

in the future. That obviously would not apply to federal office, which is something to watch. But, but so look overall, if you look at, if you look at it from Paxson's defense team's perspective, their goal was to raise, raise doubt among the jurors. They're not out here saying that Ken Paxson's behavior has been perfect or has been above reproach in every way, or that he didn't make mistakes or make bad decisions here or there. It seems to me there was just a pretty fundamental disagreement about whether Nate Paul's accusations were credible or not. And the attorney general who was the elected statewide official believed they were and believed they needed to be investigated. And the top five or six officials in the office didn't. And so, you know, there'll be a lot to analyze once this is all said and done. It may be that this was kind of a cascading series of misinterpretations and miscommunications that eventually got so far down the road that no one can sort of walk them back.

And again, I'm not here to defend every decision or, you know, choice that Ken Paxton made. The question that senators have is, is this person fundamentally corrupt? And does he have to be removed from office in a way that has been only used, I think, two other times in our state's history. And again, I think Tony Busby and his team have done a pretty good job. I was going to be very interested to see who their witnesses were going to be. I think they feel like they've done enough, which is why they've done this motion for a directed verdict. Now, again, that's probably not going to absolve him of all 16 charges. I think they hope that it can succeed on some of them and narrow the charges that remain and may give them more of a clear sense of where they need to focus as the time remains.

Yeah, absolutely. And to your point, Matt, I think Brickman was one of the most passionate and showed conviction in terms of the witnesses we've seen so far. There wasn't as much fear or trepidation as we saw with other whistleblowers who were up there on the stand. And that was it was interesting to watch because he has the same pedigree story job title as a lot of the folks we've seen up on the stand. But his approach was very different. And we'll certainly get into that later on in the podcast. Matt, we so appreciate you taking the time. We'll keep an eye on what is going on in the Senate, but we'll let you get back to your evening. And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you all. Thanks for all you do. Take care. Bye. Okay, gentlemen, well, let's get into what is going on. We have a little bit of an update here. So Brad, why don't we talk about this? We were waiting as senators deliberated in a separate room while we were talking to Matt McCoback, waiting to hear what would happen to these motions that were filed by both sides. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick just announced that both motions were dismissed. So that is no longer on the table for the evening. I think a lot of us were wondering,

okay, does this actually end tonight? Is the trial done? And the defense has called its first witness to the stand. And that witness is Michael Gerhart. From what I could find, it sounds like he is a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina. But he has not taken the stand yet. And they are deliberating at the dais as we speak. So we'll see what it is they want to get out of him. I'm guessing something like about the history of impeachments and what's an impeachable offense, broadly speaking, that kind of thing. I would guess it's something along those lines, but we shall see. We did mention earlier on the pod that Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton is said to

have had an extramarital affair, was supposed to take the stand first today, but then it was made known she was not eligible until around 4 p.m. due to a notice rule during a break in the evening just a bit ago. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said that they needed to settle a matter outside the presence of a jury and senators or the jury who are the senators. And when they returned from that break, Patrick said that Olson was at the Capitol but deemed unavailable to testify, basically said an agreement had been reached between the parties. Matt, you were over there when the announcement was made. Give us the inside scoop. Yeah, that's right. Whenever Patrick announced that he was very,

well, it wasn't very loud. You couldn't really hear what he said. It was very brief. It caused a lot of people. You could hear people up in the gallery and senators on the floor. And I think even one senator kind of shouted out to Patrick to clarify what he means. And so Patrick leaned forward and clearly said loudly in the mic that she is here, but she is unavailable to testify. I'm not trying to be vague or evasive with you, but that is the language that both parties agreed for me to use to describe this. And then shortly thereafter, a reporter tweeted a picture outside the Capitol of her exiting the Capitol and walking across the road and tweeted out saying she has left the building.

Yep. So a lot of speculation about what happened there. One of the common theories being floated is that she potentially invoked the Fifth Amendment behind closed doors and said, you know, I'm not going to answer anything. And the prosecution running short on time probably didn't want to waste a whole bunch of their time on a witness who's not going to say anything. And we were confused about that, as we kind of mentioned earlier about why then Harden arrested and then Harden admitted I messed up. Yeah quite the situation so let's backtrack to the very beginning of the day as we kind of watch this all go down right now Brad the very first witness of the day was Ray Chester he is a legal counsel for the Middy Foundation which is the charitable organization involved in this financial dispute with nate paul that preceded paxton's alleged involvement with paul um

misconduct altogether give us a rundown of that beginning testimony yeah it's a subject of specifically article one um and it was real short testimony there was not a lot to it uh an odd note the midi foundation is run by rj midi the son of the guy who um who started it but rj is an actor who played walt jr in breaking bad just another weird term wild wild um so during the testimony, again, brief testimony, he talked about he being Chester, discussed the problems they had with Nate Paul, specifically the foundation invested $3 million in some of his holdings. And there were not returns made. There were problems with transparency with Paul in terms of this money, and that sparked this lawsuit. On cross examination, defense attorney Mitch Little asserted he ran through the various investments that the Middy Foundation had in Paul's company,

companies, and he ended with the quote quote they had a total of six investments and the first three they made money on the fourth one Paul tried to swindle them they still made money and now there's two remaining so all in all what he's asserting there is that they didn't so far there's no they're not at a loss yeah um and despite these claims of fraud but uh that was just a very very brief chapter in in today's hearing yeah there's a lot more drew wicker was the witness who took up most of the day he was a personal aid for ken paxton while um with the attorney general's office he described his relationship with the paxtons as if they were like family um so that angela paxton was very

like a mother to him in a lot of ways took care of him and as she knew that he was away from his family very often he was very young when he started at the attorney general's office i believe in his like early mid-20s somewhere in there there. So talk to us about his testimony. He said during it that he probably spent more time with the attorney general than the attorney general's wife did. That's how much time and how close he was to Paxton. First, the prosecution asked him to lay out his history, as they have done with every witness basically you know this

is a conservative republican um who ideologically aligns with ken paxton he worked for don huffines he worked for don huffines during his senate run and of course it's interesting backstory huffines brother philip right um was in the was uh running ran ran against Angela Paxton for the Senate seat that she currently holds. And it was a very bloody race. But just these political names, it's a spider web. Yeah, it really is. his testimony wicker said um well his role is especially prevalent in the allegations of of bribery specifically that paul paid for renovations to the paxton's home in austin wicker testified that he overheard a contractor kevin wood tell paxton that he would need

to quote check with nate before completing renovations on Angela and Ken Paxton's home. He said that he got the impression that Paul was involved in an inappropriate relationship with Paxton and eventually approached the attorney general who told him it wasn't what he thought it was. Even so, Wicker remained skeptical and concerned. He eventually went to some of the big sparks that caused this abusive office allegations, these abusive office allegations, uh, other nuggets in, in this testimony, uh, Wicker testified that Paxton not only used burner phones, but used Wicker's phone. And this was an interesting moment when aaron epley the council for the house managers said okay if you don't agree with the term burner phones what term would you use and he was like extra phones right so that's what they continued to say was extra phones

right and um he uh he said that when paxton used his, he would clear the call log. So Wicker never knew who he was calling. It's pretty common for a politician to use their staffer's phone for various reasons. I've seen it done. I wouldn't say it's common practice, but it's not unusual. But as far as the wiping the call log, the prosecution was painting that as suspicious at the very least. After things, as the testimony went on, after things began to escalate overall, you know, as what eventually turned out to be the whistleblowers going to the FBI, Wicker was approached by the FBI. And in interaction, Wicker described between himself and Brent Webster, who was then the new first assistant attorney general. Webster told him he, quote, understood that the FBI had reached out to Wicker and that Wicker should not respond. Overall, the prosecution is trying to uh paint the picture that this kid was being taken advantage of um and because he finally uh you know raised his voice did something about it that's what caused

all these issues and then he was eventually uh he resigned from the office from the campaign um and because in a position like that, also I want to clarify for listeners, it's very common for somebody who is that close with the attorney general professionally and personally to be paid by both the state and the campaign. So there's no allegation of misuse of state resources. So saying like, you know,

if this person goes and picks up the attorney general's dry cleaning, he's paid with campaign funds. So it's not the state money going to pay the person for that purpose right or if he takes care of some sort of campaign need or accompanies the attorney general to a campaign event that there's no violation of a state code there where state resources are being used taxpayer dollars are being used to re-elect an incumbent yes well said thank you but that's why that there was like you know a discussion about campaign funds and to uh kind of delve into a little bit more detail there wicker said that he

was paid from the campaign for my i forget the exact amount of time but it was like yeah months after he had resigned his position he reached out to michelle smith an operative on paxton's campaign team and said do you want the money back like i've been paid and i think paxton was asked about it and he said you can just keep the money wicker said he saw just an innocent oversight kind of thing and that he donated the money back to paxton's campaign and did not keep it in quote because he didn't do the work so he didn't feel like he deserved it yeah very very notable okay so then on cross-examination what was notable busby went through a line of questioning and he was much less uh pointed or confrontational with wicker than he was with let's say the other whistleblowers. He basically walked Wicker through all of the events and Wicker

eventually admitted that, you know, he saw some things that were questionable, but he didn't know anything improper occurred for sure. You know, there's this question about this meeting wherein Wicker was handed this envelope from Nate Paul paul or nate paul's attorney he didn't know what was in it uh the whistleblowers allege you know his eyes money or something um nefarious wicker said he ultimately did not know he did not check what was in it um he also said you know i'm not accusing anybody of anything he He just seems like largely a kid dragged into this, in the middle of this whole thing. But it started off pretty well for the prosecution when they were the ones lobbying the questions. And then I think Busby made some ground during his line of questioning. And one thing I thought was interesting was Erin Epley, who is among, she was one of the investigators hired by the General Investigating Committee.

Of the Texas House. Yeah, that did this secret investigation for a while. She was actually, she was doing questioning instead of rusty harden and that we hadn't seen that yet uh she was also more busby like where she is she raised a lot of assertions yeah she was raising a lot of objective objections um she was not passive and maybe the house decided that they needed to fight fire with fire. Maybe I, I don't know,

but it was definitely a change from how they had been conducting themselves. Yeah, absolutely. And she was very, I think, you know, willing to throw Busby under the bus a little bit too. She'd be like,

Hey, Busby's doing, I'm doing it too. Like she said that multiple times in different ways, which was very interesting to watch. And one part that was um particularly important in the defense's questioning was when busby um got wicker to agree to the fact that there had been no renovations to the paxton's kitchen which was a really big part of the day

when he was trying which is a whole other debacle between uh epley and busby was when he was trying, which is a whole other debacle between Epley and Busby was when he was trying to admit this evidence of this photo of the Paxton's home with metadata that Epley argued was not verified. And Busby was saying this is already admitted into evidence. They were going back and forth. Lawyers, right? Lawyers just do this kind of thing. But that was a huge part of the day was when Wicker basically said, yes, okay, so there

have been no renovations done to the Paxton's kitchen, namely the countertops, which is the big part of the discussion here is that Nate Paul, the allegation is that Nate Paul specifically paid about 20 grand to help the Paxton's redo their kitchen. The Paxtons wanted granite countertops, and the allegation is that Nepal assisted in paying for that in some way, shape, or form. Busby presented, which we didn't get to see, but receipts, bank statements, brought these forward to Wicker, showed pictures of the kitchen that were supposedly taken very recently in the last few weeks. We didn't see any of that, but that was presented to the jury um and that was a huge part was when you know twitter went ablaze when wicker said yes the kitchen has not been remodeled and that no changes were made to the kitchen and the countertops you know we kind of stopped hearing about the countertops after that yeah yeah we're seeing the shifting sands on on what the prosecution thinks is the the gun they have to play you know the the um article 5 with brendan kamek kind of ended on a strong note yesterday uh article 17 which is the

one about paxton using his staff in the office of the attorney general to uh facilitate his affair that one seems uh like it ended on a strong note. But then others, the Middy Foundation one, the very first article, this one, the bribery one, seemed to be losing steam. And obviously, we won't know until the Senate votes, however they vote. But we're seeing the strategies kind of play out and evolve as this thing goes on. Yeah. And maybe saying, okay, this part of the article seems to have to hold more water. This part doesn't. Okay. I think senators are beginning to focus a little bit more on certain allegations over others. And I think the bribery case was in a lot of ways even though wicker did bring a lot of very

pertinent testimony to the table I think the bribery allegation is one of those that a lot of senators are doubting at this point um okay so let's then move on to I can't remember which came first the motion uh an objection or if brickman coming to the stand was brickman testified was first okay let's go to Brickman. So Matt, tell us a little bit about Brickman's testimony, his background, and who Blake Brickman is. So Blake Brickman is an attorney who, once again, like many of these whistleblowers who were former attorneys at the Attorney General's office,

have impressive conservative credentials. In this case, Brickman used to work for the governor of Kentucky, Bevin, who was a conservative, very conservative governor, former U.S. senator, been involved in all kinds of conservative public policy initiatives, et cetera, et cetera. Was he a senator? He worked for a United States senator. The one that came before Rand Paul. Bunning, that's right.

Yeah. And I think he also mentioned that he did some stuff with Rand Paul, but I can't. It's been a long day. It's been a long day. Anyway, I think what set him apart from the other whistleblowers is the defense did a fantastic job essentially taking the other whistleblowers apart from the narrative of, you know, do you have any evidence? You know, what caused you to do this? And essentially getting to them to say, well, you know, I had reasonable belief. And then, you know, pushing back on that reasonable belief, you know, you know, what gave you reasonable belief, all that sort of stuff.

So you really saw the defense after interviewing a whole bunch of them saying lack of evidence, hearsay upon hearsay, et cetera, et cetera. And then you had Brinkman, who was very assertive and stood his ground on a lot of the purpose and reasoning behind him being a part of it. He also hadn't been cross-examined yet. He hadn't been cross-examined. So, yeah. But. It was under friendly questioning that he was. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. But I didn't really, I felt like I caught most of, and you'll have to forgive me, I feel like I caught a good part of the defense's cross-examination, but I don't feel like they were able to undermine Brickman as much. He hasn't been cross-examined. Oh, he hasn't? No, because Harden prematurely rested the case. Oh, that's right. While Brickman was on the stand.

Yeah, Brickman was that witness. Yeah, and so he might still be called by Busby by the defense. No wonder he hasn't been undermined yet. Yeah. But I agree. Your assessment of how he performed under the direct questioning is accurate. The friendly questioning. Yes.

He was a lot more firm than. But I will say this. There was some interesting information coming out from the prosecution's interviewing of him. And that was him talking about the point where they were at settlement negotiations with Ken Paxton. And I was actually in the Senate press gallery while this was going on. And he talked about how they got to this point where I guess they got an offer for some settlement money and he was adamant that he wasn't going to let some comments from paxton go where he had essentially called them uh trying to remember rogue employees rogue employees and maybe some other similar um language and a condition was that he he retract that.

Remove it from the website of the OIG. Of the OIG, et cetera. And Paxton countered with more money. Yeah. Which is part of the money that he was going to the legislature to ask for, which triggered this whole thing. Yeah. Perkins said,

I wanted to be vindicated for what happened to me and my colleagues and that that was the reason why he objected to the settlement. Sure. So I feel like his testimony was, at this point, pretty impactful. We'll see what the defense does to him. And we'll have to see tomorrow because they'll be coming back in for the next day of the trial. But yeah, that was my observations on Brickman. Yeah, he was definitely, I think we said this earlier when we were talking to him,

but part of what I noticed was he had a lot of fervor when he was speaking. He was very passionate, spoke with a lot of conviction. And I think a lot of whistleblowers we've heard from so far were understandably very nervous and maybe when they were cross-examined which brickman admittedly like you said matt has not been cross-examined yet would kind of go back on a little bit of their statements or maybe not say what they said originally with the same veracity like there might have been less conviction behind their words and so far we've not seen that from brickman again he's not been cross-examined but he came out swinging with a lot of his statements. He talked a lot about the hostile work environment that he had been privy to after he went to the

FBI with the other whistleblowers. And as a reminder for folks, this is one of the whistleblowers who both joined the lawsuit and was fired by the OAG. He talked about when Brent Webster, who replaced Mateer as first assistant in the Attorney General's office, brought him in to terminate him. He gave him the option to resign and take severance or be fired. Which is interesting because in the state of Texas, state employees are not allowed to take severance. Now, it has been done kind of through a back door through this thing called emergency leave.

But yeah, he used the word severance. And that's not permitted by these four state employees. And Berkman said he had done nothing wrong. So he declined to resign, and then Webster fired him. So that was kind of the course of action there. And of course, he had to be fired to join the whistleblower lawsuit. Yes. Because if you resign, you can't join it, which is why Mateer was not in Bangor. Yeah, exactly.

They both resigned. What a pretty wild, wild day. And so, like you all have mentioned, Brickman has yet to be cross-examined. So we'll see what happens. And that, again, is because Rusty Hardin, what appears to be prematurely arrested the House Board of Managers case against the attorney general. So we're sitting here without any of the defense being able to use their time to question Brickman. He is subject to recall. Busby made sure to ask the lieutenant governor. question brickman he is subject to recall um busby made sure to ask the lieutenant governor and yeah he's subject to recall so the defense

could bring him back as a witness it was a it was a weird string of events because there was a big break before that happened and i forget what exactly it was that they were breaking maybe it was just the this once a two once every two hours break yeah i think it was just a break okay um so they came back and keep in mind the whole this whole time the house or the the prosecution their time is waning rapidly the uh entering the day i think that the defense had three two or three more hours of allotted time for questioning and so compared to the the house right and throughout the especially during wicker's testimony you saw busby objecting a lot and epley getting increasingly upset that this was a clear strategy to waste time and she asked the lieutenant governor hey can we pause the clock here and there were a couple instances in which they approached the dais and the lieutenant governor did pause the clock but

if objections were raised patrick was not just willy-nilly pausing the clock for the for the house board of managers yeah yeah so you know as this situation is developing the house is getting more and more um uh tense about its time remaining. It sounds like just wires got crossed and you had this long break and Harden probably forgot. They're planning on resting their case at the end of Brickman anyway, it seems like,

but they hadn't quite gotten through his testimony. So yeah, very weird development, but just another weird thing that happened today, I suppose. Wild, wild day. And Rusty Hardin, I believe, is in his 80s. Now, you never know by watching him do his job. He's very effective and very sharp, and he does his job very well, but he is a little bit older. Sharp guy and one of the many legal giants in Texas law.

And in Texas history. I mean, this guy has has done which we talked about a heck of a lot yeah on both sides of this court yeah absolutely we just saw hayden walk back into the office i literally haven't seen hayden in days it's good to see his face okay well um folks as a reminder we are the um we'll tomorrow be watching the defense bring forward their witness the the first witness they brought forward to the stand. So we'll be awaiting that testimony after that. Who knows? We've heard rumors that there's one witness that the defense will call. Who knows?

There might be more, but we'll definitely keep an eye out for that. There are only so many hours left in the witness testimony portion of this trial. And then we'll move on to closing statements. And then we will move on to deliberations. Our senators go behind closed doors and deliberate, decide what their votes will be. And votes will be taken. And Patrick said that once that happens, there's no more breaks. Yeah.

They're not going to break for the weekend. No day off. If it takes all the way through Sunday, they're going to take all the way through Sunday. No more days off. So we'll continue to monitor that. Folks, we will be back with another episode tomorrow. We so appreciate you bearing with us today as we watched the Senate wrap up in quite an extraordinary fashion. And we appreciate you listening each and every day.

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.