The Texan Podcast - Inside the Impeachment: Paxton on Trial — Day 8 (with Phil Prazan)

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Read more about the impeachment: https://thetexan.news/paxton_impeachment/Today, suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton’s defense team called their first and last witnesses. The House Board of Managers errantly rested their case yesterday, yielding their authority to call witnesses, and today ended with the defense resting its case, as well.Here’s a recap:The defense called Justin Gordon, the current open records division chief at the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), as their first witness to testify on law enforcement exceptions to open records law. Paxton is accused of abusing the open records process by allowing Austin real estate developer Nate Paul access to a confidential Department of Public Safety (DPS) file.Austin Kinghorn, the associate deputy attorney general for legal counsel at the OAG, was called to testify next. Kinghorn expressed belief that no illegal activities occurred at the OAG — saying he would have left if he believed otherwise — and pride in serving under Ken Paxton.On cross examination, counsel for the House Board of Managers asked Kinghorn who his “client” is as an employee of the OAG. He responded that Paxton was, while counsel contended his client is the State of Texas.Henry De La Garza, the human resources director at the OAG, testified that the government, not an elected official, is the proper defendant under the Texas Whistleblower Act.De La Garza spoke of alleged insubordination from whistleblowers in their final days at the OAG, and testified that he supported the decisions made by First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster to terminate their employment.Grant Dorfman, deputy first assistant attorney general, joined the OAG after the whistleblowers had left the office. He said he knew of the controversy surrounding the office from news reports, and sat down with Webster to talk through his concerns. He was sufficiently put at ease after the conversation and accepted a job with the agency.Dorfman spoke extensively about his work on the whistleblower lawsuit and settlement, and explained the OAG’s approach to seeking a settlement instead of a jury trial.During cross examination, Dorfman conceded he does not have firsthand knowledge of whether the allegations found in the whistleblower lawsuit Yesterday, the House Board of Managers aimed to amend the trial rules so Paxton would be automatically barred from running for Texas office in the future if the charges are sustained. Today, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced the motion was withdrawn.Tony Buzbee rested the case for the defense, and counsel for both sides agreed to begin their closing arguments at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Howdy folks, this is Mackenzie DeLullo, Senior Editor at The Texan. Welcome back to another episode of Inside the Impeachment, Paxton on Trial. Today, suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton's defense team called their first and last witnesses. The House Board of Managers errantly rested their case yesterday, yielding their authority to call witnesses. And today ended with the defense resting its case as well. Here's a recap. The defense called Justin Gordon, the current Open Records Division Chief at the Office of the Attorney General,

as their first witness to testify on law enforcement exceptions to open records law. Paxton is accused of abusing the open records process by allowing Austin real estate developer Nate Paul access to a confidential DPS file. Austin Kinghorn, the Associate Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel, was called to testify next. Kinghorn expressed belief that no illegal activities occurred at the OAG, saying he would have left if he believed otherwise, and pride in serving under Ken Paxton. On cross-examination, counsel for the House Board of Managers asked Kinghorn who his client is as an employee of the OAG. He responded that Paxton was, while counsel contended his client is the state of Texas. Henry De La Garza, the human resources director at the OAG, testified that the

government, not an elected official, is the proper defendant under the Texas Whistleblower Act. Garza spoke of alleged insubordination from whistleblowers in their final days at the OAG and testified that he supported the decisions made by First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster to terminate their employment. Grant Dorfman, Deputy First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster to terminate their employment. Grant Dorfman, Deputy First Assistant Attorney General, joined the OAG after the whistleblowers had left the office. He said he knew of the controversy surrounding the office from news reports and sat down with Webster to talk through his concerns. He was sufficiently put at ease after the conversation and accepted a job with the agency.

Dorfman spoke extensively about his work on the whistleblower lawsuit and settlement and explained the office's approach to seeking a settlement instead of a jury trial. During cross-examination, Dorfman conceded he does not have firsthand knowledge of whether the allegations found in the whistleblower lawsuit are true. Yesterday, the House Board of Managers aimed to amend the trial rules so Paxton would be automatically barred from running for office in Texas again if the charges are sustained. Today, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced the motion was withdrawn. Tony Busby rested the case for the defense, and counsel for both sides agreed to begin their closing arguments at 9am tomorrow.

Enjoy this episode. Howdy, folks. Mackenzie DeLillo here, and we are on day eight of the impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton. I'm joined by two of our guys from the team, Brad Johnson and Matt Stringer, to discuss the proceedings of today. And we are joined by a very special guest, Phil Prazen of NBC-DFW and co-anchor of Lone Star Politics. Phil, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Huge fan of your guys' work here at the Texans, so I'm an avid reader. I love to hear, and he walked here in the rain, so that like major bonus points.

Yeah, that's a major commitment. Phil, I want to know before we dive into the details of today, just your general 30,000 foot perspective on what you've seen so far in the trial, what it stood out to you, and where do you think we're at? I think the big picture, two things that really pop into my mind is one, kind of the human drama of it. You know, we are talking about a husband and a wife and an alleged mistress, bribery, abuse of power. I mean, this is impacting everybody that we've been covering for years and years. So it's just a human drama on a huge scale. And then the second thing is we're really just seeing how your government actually works, right? I mean, as in the guts of state government are just spilling out all in public.

We're learning about public records requests and who's on a black, who gets responded to and who doesn't. Yeah, we care a lot about that here in this room. You know, and then, you know, how power and influence actually works, which is kind of interesting to see. Yeah. And even how staff like the behind the scenes of how agency staff work. And that's one thing that's interesting is, you know, senators are sitting there with a lot of information themselves being state officials. But every agency is so isolated in its own way too so they're sitting there learning a lot about the inner workings of the oag which is massive it's was that like 800 employees or something well 4 000 across the state and that's saying they have different bureaus across the state right so

it's not just 4 000 people working hundreds here. Hundreds. Yeah. Imagine trying to run that office. Oh my gosh. You have enough trouble with, what is it, six here? Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, I can't imagine. So let's go ahead and start with our first witness of the day. Well, actually, first, Matt, I want to know real fast, run us through yesterday. It was wild. It was crazy. How did today differ from the chaos that ensued at the end of the day yesterday? Well, the best way to describe yesterday was a exciting roller coaster with some false alarms, but then some unexpected occurrences. You know, what kind of got everybody's attention was first thing off the bat in the morning, the prosecution announced that they were going to call the alleged lover, mistress, whatever you call it, to the witness stand. The defense threw up a motion objecting to that, saying that she hadn't been given the full 24 hours notice required yet to call her to the stand. Patrick announced at 3.58 she'd be eligible. So right before four o'clock, a whole bunch of us other reporters started showing up

and filling up the galleries. And she made a dramatic appearance outside the chambers, went behind closed doors. Everybody felt like this was about to happen. And then Patrick made this announcement that was kind of vague, but intentionally vague, and that she wasn't going to testify. The main assumption or what everybody has been able to pretty well extract from that is that she was going to plead the fifth and that the prosecution didn't want to waste what little time they had on a witness who was going to sit up there and say, I plead the fifth. Yeah. Since their clock was running out. So she exited the building. And so there was that kind of anticlimactic moment there.

And then came the surprise moment with another witness being called. And whenever the prosecution, Rusty Hardin, prosecution attorney, was done doing an initial questioning that was kind of brief, instead of yielding the witness, he arrested the prosecution's case. And, of course, those were not the words he meant to use, but Tony Busby, you saw him really quickly key up and be like, I accept. I accept the arrest.

And at that point, what that meant was that the prosecution was no longer able to call any witnesses, specifically. Only the defense could. They still had the time

on the clock, but they could not call any witnesses to the stand. So that, you kind of have to have that little recap there to understand what happened today was the defense show with the defense getting to call witnesses, of course, strategic on their part. A lot of O.A.G. employees who gave what I could perceive as favorable testimony to their defense. But overall, largely a mundane day. No major occurrences, nothing striking other than maybe a couple of more slang terms and that sort of stuff to add to the Texas Ledge tweeter-y,

such as hearsay squared, objection hearsay squared, some things like that. But overall, much more calm day. Yeah, after yesterday, today looked like a walk in the park. Yes. Brian, let's go ahead and get through some of these witnesses here. So first witness of the day was Justin Gordon, who's the current Open Records Division Chief at the OAG. Michael Gerhart, who we heard the name of yesterday, is the first called witness of the defense.

And he sat down, I think. Oh, that's right. Yeah, he did. He sat down and then he did not end up testifying due to an objection from the House managers. Which I thought would have been fascinating to listen to. He's the most renowned impeachment scholar in the country, from what I understand. UNC, School of Law. The level of history that he could discuss in this context would have been fascinating, but alas. Alas, we did not get to eat our cake.

Instead, we got to talk about open records procedures. Yeah, so talk to us about that testimony. My eyes glazed over listening to that. Because we literally live that world every day. Yeah. The Texan. That's true. Even despite that, my eyes glazed over.

But the subject of the main subject of this, other than just laying out the procedure, how things work for ground sitting purposes,, the irregularities or alleged irregularities with an FBI brief, um, that Nate Paul was trying to get ahold of. And they were walking the, uh, the, the employee through the events, what happened, why things were withheld, um, or why they, um, why they found issues with this. And it's too in the weeds to go into the issues but um that was basically the level setting they tried to do there um and they're in that they were taking aim at article three specifically which is the one that focuses on the alleged misuse or abuse of the open records division process. And, you know, it's probably one of the weaker articles just to begin with.

I think it's not that severe. And so that is not one that the senators have on their mind right now as we're about to go potentially start deliberating on votes tomorrow. Right. Absolutely. Phil, what were your thoughts with the first witness? Well, I think it circled back into what the defense, one of the main arguments that defense has put forward this whole time is that voters chose Ken Paxton to be the Texas Attorney General. And he, at the end of the day, is the guy at the top of the agency. And if he wants to help out Nate Paul in this way or that way, whether it's hiring a special

prosecutor or really helping him out with the AG opinion, their argument is he could do that. And the staff that was not doing that, he thought was insubordinate. That was a kind of a common phrase that came up today and they should either get out or be fired. Yeah. Well, and then we pivot to back-to-back witnesses who are current employees of the attorney general's office. The second witness was Austin Kinghorn. And this was very, I think, compelling testimony testimony similar pedigree to the whistleblowers in terms of his legal background he's been in and around texas conservatism legal circles for a very long time

he said he was proud to serve ken paxton the um the direct oh who was it was a council i think it was hilton wasn't it chris hilton was uh sounds like examining him he went up there and said you know are you a rhino i think that's, you know, are you a rhino? I think that's a silly question, but are you a rhino? And he said, I've been called many four-letter words, and that is not one of them, which was a line that I think a lot of folks remember from the day. Out of a one to 10 on the conservative scale, he called himself an 11. So right off the bat, establishing credibility in the same way that the whistleblowers did.

Yeah. And like I said, he's just been in and around Texas politics for a long time as clerked for many justices on different levels of the judiciary here in Texas. It was fascinating to hear from him. It was just like, you know, it started off the same way as the whistleblowers, but it was opposite in a lot of ways. Phil, what were your takeaways from his testimony? I think the one thought that sticks out in my mind from him was really – besides the reinforcing the defense point of everything was done by the book, nothing wrong here. To quote Tony Busby, right, the Macbeth quote that signifies nothing, which we can argue that was used properly. But so it did reinforce kind of the overall point that they were going to make is that these accusations are a bunch of garbage. Yeah. But the thing that stood out to me was the question that he took under cross-examination by Aaron Epley,

who kind of was asking the question to him and also kind of publicly for the senators of, who do you work for? Are you working for Ken Paxton, the man who hired you? Or are you working for the people of Texas? Who is your client? I think was the word that she kept bringing up. And he said that, I think he said something very similar to like, they're one in the same, or they're not in conflict, which I thought was interesting. very similar to like they're one in the same or it's they're not in conflict. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting. I immediately began like texting and calling current and former state employees just to get their thoughts of like when you're hired by a state agency, who are you working for?

Are you working for Governor Abbott or Lieutenant Governor Patrick or or Jane Nelson, or anybody. And most of them, if not pretty much all of them, said we see ourselves working for the state of Texas. And one put it to me like this. Look, if Phil gets arrested for robbing a bank, it is the state of Texas versus Phil Prazen. It's not Ken Paxton versus Phil Prazen. That just stood out to me. The defense is coming at it from a different angle. And they, I think, have some things to grab to.

But that's just a quick poll of former and current state employees. Yeah. Well, and Ken Paxton hires you, right? He signs the papers, hires you. It's his name on the door. But at the end of the day, just like you you're saying he is also duly elected as an officer of the state so that argument was interesting to watch go down and it will be interesting to see if they in their closing arguments address that yeah you know very similar to the um the ryan vassar kind of walk back of we brought no evidence they kind of had to walk that back the next day it'll be interesting to see if the defense clarifies that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's what the whole whistleblower argument is contingent upon, right? It's okay. These guys were acting as officers of the state. They were employees of the state. They felt as though

Ken Paxton was not doing his duty to the state or was in fact violating state law. So then they've therefore were like, okay, peace out. We're done. And that was the divide. Brad, what were your observations? Well, Kinghorn, that's his name, right? Yeah. He oversees the legal opinion side of things now in the role that Ryan Vassar or essentially the same role that Ryan Vassar was in. And so that of course focused a lot on this midnight opinion, the foreclosure opinion. King Orton said during the direct examination that the legal opinion process during the COVID pandemic was a unique challenge. Of course, there was something that we hadn't dealt with in a hundred years, laws that we were pulling up that we had not dealt with in decades. Tons and tons of requests for rulings on stuff. And

these things tend to take a while, especially when there's so many. But one thing that I thought was interesting that I kind of happened upon, so that midnight opinion that ruled foreclosure sales violated COVID, uh, local COVID restrictions. Um, that's at the center of at least one or two of these articles, but, uh, that was issued like August 1st, August 2nd, August 3rd, one of those days, a few days later, there was another opinion issued by the Texas Attorney General's office that said evictions could not be restricted by local orders. Entirely different. And Paxton's defense team's contention with this foreclosure opinion is that, oh, it was meant to keep people in their homes during a time of horrible time. Well, this is the exact opposite.

So the house managers didn't bring it up. I don't know if they just happened to not find it or what. Maybe they don't have the time. Maybe. It's a needle in a haystack, right? I mean, there's hundreds of these letters. So if it had gotten brought up, that would have been interesting to hear. But so far, no.

But worthwhile to talk through. The third witness, another employee of the Office of the Attorney General, Henry De La Garza. And this was interesting. He was the HR rep for the OAG. So hearing from him was really interesting. He said the OAG is the ideal place to practice law and was in this case fascinating. He said the government is the proper defendant under the Whistleblower Act rather than the elected official themselves, which is a lot where we're hearing where this

all started. The whistleblower saying, hey, pony up, we are a part of this lawsuit and can Paxton go into the legislature and saying, yeah, let's pay this $3.3 million bill. And the HR rep from the OAG saying, yes, it is the government that is the proper defendant. He talked a lot about the interpersonal workings of his relationships with the whistleblowers from an HR perspective saying, okay, yes, I did think the firings were justified. Talked about insubordination, walked through that. He said that the whistleblowers were high level policymakers who could not sue under the Whistleblower Act. So all sorts of interesting testimony there from his perspective and hearing him talk about specifically Blake Brickman was who he said

was the most insubordinate or difficult person when he was kind of going through this. I don't know, they may have also been Dorfman who talked about that too. But they both were talking about Brickman being very convicted in his stance of wanting to make sure that there was you know a day heard in court well he didn't want to settle right it took him a lot of convincing to to agree to the 3.3 million dollar agreement yeah and he was I think it was uh Dorfman who's we'll get to in a second who said you know part of the frustration from the OEG's office was, yeah, Brickman doesn't want to settle. And he sees this number and it's a pretty sizable number. And then he's all of a sudden on board.

That was the criticism that the OEG had for Brickman in that. And Brickman yesterday gave, we talked about it. There was no fear or trepidation for him in terms of other whistleblowers that we saw on the stand who did. Yeah, Matt. Yeah, just one thing that I wanted to point out from Brigham's testimony yesterday was the fact that he was the one pushing for Paxton to do an apology and retraction of calling them. Rogue employees. Rogue employees. And take the press release down or something like that. And Paxton didn't want to do it, so he countered with upping the number.

Yeah. Yeah, higher dollar number on the settlement there. Brad, what was your takeaway from Garza's testimony? Well, they ran through almost all the whistleblowers and argued that, or made the case that these guys were, if not, on the verge of being fired, well on their way already for various reasons. And subordination was one they talked about with Brickman a lot. So they're trying to hit on the character of these whistleblowers that the prosecution has spent so much time building up. So they're trying to basically say that these firings were justified. whistleblowers that the prosecution has spent so much time building up. Right. Um,

so they're trying to basically say that, you know, these firings were justified and therefore the, this whistleblower act does not apply. Um, it's, they, on the cross,

they got to a point where, um, it was an interesting, I don't know which is correct here both sides have their arguments but um the cross uh attorney daniel dudko asserted that under the whistleblower act if you were to um go tell your boss that you're going to take report them to the fbi and then you're fired on the way to the FBI the whistleblower act doesn't apply to you yeah and so we heard a lot about in the early stages of this trial why didn't they talk to Ken Paxton how many times did Busby say that from the mic it's like why didn't you go to

you have your boss's cell phone yeah give him a phone call yeah you know why don't you call him why don't you ask him well this is the prosecution saying establishing cause for why they did not do that. Now, I think the high-level policymaker part that you mentioned, that's the counterargument. Yeah. So which one applies there? I don't know. But we really saw a lot of almost character assassination there. But there's been a lot of that in this trial, right? Yeah. I mean, it's... It's we really saw a lot of almost character assassination there. But there's been a lot of that this trial.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's the trial. The knives are out for everybody involved in this. Yeah. And Phil, you were talking earlier about how, you know, the defense is coming forward and trying to, you know, present employees, current employees and saying, OK, here's our current team. They dotted their eyes. They crossed their T's, you know, kind of giving insight into how the agency approached a lot of this that was very different from what the prosecution was saying. Yeah, I think that a

lot of their case is, this is our policy. This is common practice. I mean, Chris Hilton has spent a lot of time with Austin Kinghorn, who was kind of a big player in writing that report that cleared Paxton of wrongdoing from the internal AG's perspective. And he, you know, asked him, like, were you directed to write a sham report? No, I wasn't. Were you directed to lie about anything? No, I wasn't. Do you know if anybody was directed to lie about this? No, I wasn't. So you were kind of working in good faith in this, and so that's the argument that they wanted to portray. Same with the HR director. Same with one of the last people they brought up, who I believe is the first deputy assistant attorney general.

Yeah, deputy first assistant attorney general. Spot on. So he would have been the new Ryan Banger, so to speak. Yes. Right at that level. Same kind of thing that we're running an office and we did everything right, according to their side of it. Yeah, which is interesting to hear.

So let's go ahead and move on to, I believe this was the final witness of the day. This is a former state district court judge, Grant Dorfman, who now serves as the deputy first assistant attorney general. he knew of the controversy surrounding the office from news reports, from word of mouth. And I believe it was Austin Kinghorn who called him and said, hey, do you know anybody who wants a job at the OAG? We're looking for folks. And he said, oh, me, I'll take a job. And he went in for an interview with Brent Webster, who is Jeff Mateer's replacement as first assistant attorney general. And that's where they had a conversation where he said that he laid out very bluntly his concerns about the agency and the things he'd heard in news reports. And it seemed as though from that conversation, Webster was able to assuage his concerns enough where he took the job and he was very, he said he was very proud to work for the

office. And he accepted a job with the agency. Yeah, Matt. Well, that just kind of brings to mind some testimony from, it was either yesterday or the day before. You'll have to forgive me. This has been a long trial. But there was the witness who was the former assistant district attorney with the Travis County District Attorney's Office that the prosecution put up there to talk about a brief that he wrote about all of the possible crimes Paxton may have committed.

And on cross-examination, you know, of course, Busby got up there and questioned how appropriate it is to get in there and speculate. And that's whenever the ham sandwich comment circulated, you know, you can indict a ham sandwich, you know. So, you know, you could speculate that Ken could be, you know, indicted for anything. But then he asked him, did you apply for a job at the Attorney General's office after you wrote this? And he said he did. And I was just thinking about that as you were describing, you know, them persuading this guy. And I have to wonder, you know, in the minds of those senators, will they kind of compare those two instances where you have this guy who wrote this speculation, so to speak, of all the crimes Ken may have committed, but then went and applied for a job there. It speaks to what did that guy really think. inside meets with them and is persuaded to hire on because he thinks after talking with them that

the situation is different than how it might have been perceived by reading about it in the news. And this Dwarfen had a lot of connections to outside counsel that had been hired by the OEG more recently, specifically in the case of the whistleblowers and different big cases that they've had to deal with since he came on. So that was interesting. I think he was overseeing the Google lawsuit, right? right yeah i think he was brought on with that in mind yeah he was like the liaison between the office and the outside counsel they hired yeah i think you're right it's a massive job yeah no kidding that that lawsuit has come up multiple times in testimony which i think tells us how big of a deal that was internally um it's been described as like

the biggest case they have right when it comes to resources and how much time they're putting into it. Yeah. It makes sense why it's mentioned so often. What was your impression of Dorfman's testimony, Phil? I think so much of this hinges on the whistleblowers, the credibility of them and the credibility of the settlement and whether, you know, the thing that kind of sparked this whole impeachment saga. I think it was just the defense wanted to get their side of the settlement out there, right? Because

from what I understand, this was the guy who was the key negotiator with the whistleblowers and kind of coming to terms with it. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know how effective, you know, of a character he was for the senators, but just kind of to get on the record their side of this whole thing of how it started, so to speak. Well, even to outline for the senators, hey, there were like major administrative costs for the agency to even have the whistleblower lawsuit be something that is taken care of is interesting, right? Like, I think it's just something that can seem far and distant from the office of the attorney general itself. And I was like, no, there was somebody in the office who was negotiating and overseeing this this is like and hearing the perspective of these whistleblowers who were all talking from their perspective of having worked in the office and all of a sudden we

hear that this testimony from this guy who has replaced one of them and is negotiating the settlement is very i think worthwhile for the defense to paint that picture. Brad, any thoughts on Dorfman? It was fairly boring stuff. You just loved the testimony today. It wasn't the will she won't she that we got to yesterday. After yesterday it was all boring. I think the defense kind of took a lot of the steam out of what they had going, the momentum they had from yesterday.

Now they had their reasons. They're trying to establish these various, on the legal opinion side, they're trying to establish that, again, everything was done within their purview. It's totally fine. The open record stuff, they had their reasons for having delays on these these requests things like that so um there was undoubtedly a purpose but but the order is a little bit odd you can't help but think and part of the it's not up to them because they could only go they can only call witnesses after the the prosecution arrested right so um but you know they had they had some better

moments i would say especially throughout the trial and i think for them they're they would have hoped they ended on a better one yeah but we were talking about that earlier after yesterday and the drama and the defense even motioning for a directed verdict which would have expedited things a lot there was even that like then going to these witnesses who sure they were establishing like what seemed like they were aiming to establish kind of a a nice status quo of saying like okay everything at the oeg's office like we did what we needed to do but that's not a flashy way to end after the craziness of yesterday and trying to get that directed verdict. I also think something with the directed verdict motion and then also the motion from the prosecution to combine, you know, to make this one vote.

I wonder if they were also fishing for information from the jury, right? Like how they would have voted in that direct motion, because from what I understand, it would have been a public vote. Yeah. And then how they would have voted to combine and just make it quicker and easier for the senators. Then that would give both the sides kind of information

to maybe tailor their arguments towards certain people. It was a temperature check. Yeah. Or attempted temperature check. I completely agree. Yeah. That's a great point. And the timing would make a lot of sense in that regard too and if it worked out and it went their

way that's just an added benefit for each side too oh my gosh absolutely absolutely and the yeah the prosecution's motion was to combine the vote for um barring the attorney general from running for office again and i believe just the conviction, right. It was all together. Yeah. Um, okay, gentlemen,

well, let's look to tomorrow. I think the, what we're looking forward to is closing arguments from both sides should start at 9 a.m. Tomorrow. Is it, does both, does both side have an hour to,

okay, they have an hour and they'll make their statements. I'm curious, you know, at the beginning, the house, um, managers reserved a lot of their time. They made i don't know andrew murr the chairman of the

general investigating committee was up there for like 17 minutes or something he did not take up the vast majority of his hour-long stint whereas busby and cogdell certainly did um so i'm curious to see what that will look like tomorrow and what arguments are hammered home it seemed like they wanted to just get to the witness testimony because that's where they knew that they had a lot of cases. They can't just build it on what they say up front. But now you got to wrap it all up nice and put a bow on it. Yeah.

And this is going to be what's sticking in the senator's minds when more than more than most other things, you know, when they're making this decision. I'm going to ask you guys to speculate wildly. Phil, what do you think either side is going to hammer home? Like if you're like, okay, I think the prosecution is going to hit this note or the defense is going to hit this note. Is there any argument you can see either side making that you think would be a pretty solid bet that they tried to imprint on the senator's minds. I think they will just try and reinforce what has already been said. Their arguments, right?

The defense wants to argue kind of three main things, that they did everything correctly, that, you know, on second look, what Ken Paxton is accused of doing isn't really that bad. You know, that's what they're arguing. And then that there's this conspiracy happening. And, you know, the prosecution is, you know, trying to just make their case to say that this is a quid pro quo. This is bribery. This is abuse of power. There was special treatment and a strange amount of special treatment for one client

of the attorney general's office. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little more – two things have been sticking out to me in this whole thing. The one is what Tony Busby said at the beginning of the trial where he kind of openly wondered if he would get a fair trial here because of the political nature of it. And Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick calling it a political trial. I wonder if the prosecution brings up that it may just be less messy politically for a conviction. Yeah.

Right. maybe just easier to deal with for all of these senators, for all of the House members, for the lieutenant governor, for the governor, than a upset and vengeful sitting attorney general, possible future governor, where money and power could be swayed that way. 100%. I wonder if the prosecution brings that up. Yeah. I think that the defense will definitely do that. Yeah, that's a good point. Matt, what do you think? What do you think he has hammered home tomorrow well to uh first kind of expand on

uh your point there i think the defense is all surrogates for the defense are already kind of doing that where you have former president donald trump and his son son jumping in on social media last night and tonight saying, let rhino season hunting, rhino hunting season open. Yeah. The sabers are rattling already. They might be rattling them a little too early. I don't know. As far as to your question, in my mind, if I was the prosecution, I would drive home and shore up an argument behind every article of impeachment stemming to the use of resources surrounding the affair. I would just about abandon all of the other ones and drive

that one home. And that's just me talking if I was a prosecutor. Is that Article 17? Is that Article 17 is the big one? And there's one or two others that are worded slightly relevant to it, but not as strong as Article 17, whereas essentially he used state resources and abused the staff's capacity, et cetera, et cetera, to carry out and cover up the affair. Why do you think that stands out? Because at no point during all of this was there anything along the lines of, you know, the affair didn't occur, etc. There was no attempting to, for lack of a better word, impeach that that happened. They tried to undermine the witness testimony, et cetera, that substantiated that in completely other directions, like when Missy Carey took the stand, the former chief of staff, you know, giving her eyewitness account of overhearing the mistress talk about her affair at a restaurant,

confronting Paxton about it, Paxton confessing it to the entire staff at campaign headquarters, Paxton then coming to her office to admit that after promising not to do it, he was back in the affair and that he loved this woman, et cetera, et cetera. Staff members on the phone with Senator Angela Paxton, who was unaware of her husband's whereabouts which substantiates the language of the impeachment charge um busby's approach to try and counter that was you know uh you said that she got into a red car would you not be

surprised or are you surprised no she's never owned a red car you know and there was one commentator on Twitter who said, well, you know, it's not impossible for you to drive a car that you don't own, you know, so it just wasn't a solid rebuttal, you know, or he said, whenever you saw her, the next time after you saw her at the restaurant and found out who she was, she said it was at an event in San Antonio, and she recalled it was the National Attorney General's Association meeting. He said, you know, there was no National Attorney General Association meeting. Well, she thought that's what it was, as best as she could remember. But at the end of the day, the impression that you have was that she was at an event in San Antonio where she saw, and there was never,

once again, anything put up there to say, you know, that this didn't happen. So, you have that, and then you have the charge of, you know, did he put, did he abuse the capacity of employees to carry out this affair, you know, did he use state resources, all that sort of stuff? And I just feel like the defense didn't do good enough of a job really undermining those elements on that front. And I feel like, I forget when, but it might have been on Monday when there was the most kind of direct conversation about the affair. I feel like I remember Tony Busby saying, you know,

having an affair is not, it's not illegal, is it? And then they answered no. Yeah. And it's, you know. Honestly, the best thing that Busby brought up to counteract the affair stuff was that if we started impeaching people in Austin for having affairs, we will be here impeaching for the next hundred years. Boy, howdy.

Well, Missy Carey then, who's a longtime Austin staffer, was like, raised her eyebrows and she's like, I'm not talking about that in this chamber, which was fascinating. Like, that even in and of itself was fascinating to hear. They never really have denied it. No. And they've kind of gone there with it like it happened

and it's not that bad. Yeah. You know, and that's something that the senators are, I think, going to be struggling with, you know, because there's a lot of them who are innocent to that end, but also kind of, you know, I can just imagine that they're going to be thinking about this from an ethical, maybe even a biblical standpoint of, you know, I think I saw one commentator say, you know, who are you to judge somebody else, you know, on this front? You know, whenever you got your own skeletons on the exact same thing. So there's a lot of that.

There's a lot of dynamics here with who the jury is in particular. Who is the legislature to judge somebody on this front when there are a lot of skeletons along those lines in that building. So, I don't know. That remains to be seen. On the defensive side, I think I would drive home the lack of evidence and the hearsay upon... At first, it was hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay, but I really like this latest one that's hearsay squared. I would just drive that home. You know, I would drive home. I would take the prosecution's words at the beginning of this and hang them with it. You know, whenever Murr got up there on the impeachment hearing on the House floor, he really told the members, you know, we've done this investigation. And man, when this goes to trial, you're going to see evidence and it's going to be damning and all that sort of stuff. And instead,

what you saw was a parade of whistleblower witnesses who had their suspicious minds and had no evidence to substantiate it. You know, that physical piece of paper, that video, that smoking gun, you know, so to speak. To that point, there is a lot of information that we don't have and that has not come out in this trial, the proton mails, the signal accounts. And then also, Kevin, the contractor, who nobody knows where he's at. Yeah. And he supposedly is a key factor in how the kitchen cabinets were done or whatever, right? Yeah.

I just feel like the House General Investigation Committee, they have the power to subpoena anything they want to. Witnesses, evidence, et cetera, extremely power, just like a court could say, you know, go to a phone company and say, turn over the text messages that you have for this device and they have to do it. You know, so that gives the House from the investigation side of this thing the ability to put together a really strong case. And then when this thing goes to trial, both parties have subpoena power. You know, that's where Busby got a lot of the text messages that we actually, I wrote a story about this at the Texan. A lot of the whistleblowers admitted on the stand to deleting text messages and emails and all of that sort of stuff, things that could have been, possibly been public records that they should have retained. And Busby, you know, flat out told this one,

you know, did you send this text? And he's like, yes, I did. And he's like, you know, flat out told this one, you know, did you send this text? And he's like, yes, I did. And he's like, you know, why don't you have it anymore? And he's like, well, I deleted it. And he's like, you know how I got it? He's like, probably because you got it from somebody else. And he's like, you're darn right I did. So.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. How long do we think deliberations take after closing arguments? I think we're getting a verdict before the end of the weekend. I don't think they want to be here over the weekend. Yeah. Yeah. I can't foresee.

Do you think we get it tomorrow? End of the day. I'd probably say so, yeah. Yeah. Phil, what do you think? It's so hard. It could be tomorrow. Yeah.

It could be Friday. It could be, you know, it could be Saturday, but I don't. Yeah. yeah uh it could be friday it could be you know i just it could be saturday but i don't yeah i'm also uh in agreement that i think they want to turn the page on this yeah on this saga or at least to the next chapter yeah or at least get on the road a little bit yeah yeah and the other thing we've constantly talked about throughout this is this is not a typical jury there's not a bunch of people that have no preexisting knowledge on any of this. They all know all the players.

They've heard everything. This has all been well established. This is three-year-old information for some of them. And, you know, the defense could have been very successful in, you know, poking some doubt into certain things. But I just don't. He could be saved by a tiny handful of people. I mean, even if, so we have a good idea that there's maybe six of them going into trial that were very favorable to their arguments.

He needs four. He needs four more. Yep. That's four just individual humans out there in this big old state. That is not, that's a small group of people. Yeah. And the Senate is such a fascinating body in and of itself. And everyone is, in terms of the decorum between the House and the Senate, it's just so different.

Oh my gosh. They're close. They talk. They're in group texts. It's just an entirely different kind of body than the House. I'm curious to know, and they're, and they're notorious for being in lockstep on big issues. This is a very different big issue, but I would be surprised if they aren't able to organize quickly enough to get a vote by Saturday end of day. I wonder if no matter what the first vote is in the back room or, you know, the poll, the unofficial poll, if it's 21 to nine.

I wonder if they come, I wonder if it's just been an avalanche and it ends up being like 28 to two and just because, you know, you want to be on the winning side. Yeah. That's also a big political, you know, motivation. And have an angry incumbent attorney general out there. Yeah. That's a political motivation. And have an angry incumbent attorney general out there. Yeah. That's a political factor. Totally.

And I'm interested to see if there are any law changes that come out of this as well, because our ethics laws kind of stem from a scandal in the 70s, Sharpstown scandal. So the Texas Ethics Commission, I think, was created after that. And I think people could pinpoint, you know, kind of just briefly what we've already talked about is we may need to get our public records laws off the honor system, as one witness described it. Or maybe there's whistleblower changes to be made after this. Or just overall ethics reforms of how public officials should act to their employees in their office. I think that the tale of this story will go far past even this next election. Yeah, I think you're totally right.

Even just knowing the strength of the House behind this impeachment, there's certainly a will there to legislate something come next legislative session. The Senate will have to see. Well, Phil, thank you so much for joining us. This has been so fun, folks. We appreciate you listening and we'll chat with you tomorrow. 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.