Texas Speaker Phelan bitterly laments Paxton acquittal

Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, greeted yesterday’s acquittal of Attorney General Ken Paxton with a very public, very bitter lament. He ended with what sounded like a threat to pursue Paxton in other ways. But other members of the Texas State House renewed calls for Phelan to step down from his Speakership.

A Texas sized donnybrook

In May 2023, Phelan presided over a House that voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton on several financial corruption charges. At issue was his friendship with Nate Paul, who frequently supports Paxton’s reelection campaigns financially. Charges varied from acceptance of improper gifts to finding a job for Paul’s wife. Perhaps the most serious charges alleged misappropriation of State taxpayer funds.

But Ryan Vassar, formerly a Deputy Attorney General, had no evidence for his charges, either for the FBI in Fall of 2020 or before the Texas Senate over the eleven-day trial. Accordingly, the Senate acquitted Paxton, 16-14 with one abstention. (Angela Paxton, Ken Paxton’s wife, also serves as a State Senator, so she had no vote.)

X user DC Draino named the two Republican Senators who joined the twelve Democrats in voting to convict.

(It would have taken twenty or twenty-one Senators to convict Paxton in any case.)

Paxton thanked his supporters, including his wife, and also warned the Biden Administration that he, now that he can resume the powers and duties of his office, would be pursuing that Administration in the federal courts.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) also expressed his support and his eagerness to work with Paxton on several pending legal cases.

(Texas faces a lawsuit over the ballards, interspersed with serrated-edged disks, they have strung along part of the Rio Grande.)

A RINO’s lament

But Dade Phelan bitterly accused the Senate, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, of “cheating the people of Texas of justice.” He then darkly hinted that Paxton faces “multiple other lawsuits, indictments, and investigations.”

The “drunk jackass” remark refers to an incident, also in May, in which Phelan tried to speak, and slurred his words.

Several of his colleagues, and Attorney General Paxton, called on him to resign even then.

And they are calling on him to resign now. Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Nacogdoches), who voted against impeachment, accused Phelan and other Republican leaders of betraying the Party, collaborating with Democrats, pressuring Republicans to vote for impeachment, and bringing the Texas House into disrepute. In fact, he has called for the State Auditor to investigate the total cost of the impeachment process.

The next generation is on the line; with every freedom and liberty being eroded. Yet instead of securing the border, passing school choice, banning COVID mandates, fixing our grid and energy market, reining in emergency executive powers, cutting spending, ending property taxes, deregulating our economy, or stopping communist governments from buying Texas land, the Speaker of the House prioritized the impeachment of a recently re-elected Attorney General who has proven he is up to the most important task of our time: fighting the out of control federal government, which seeks to destroy our rights, our freedoms, our liberties, our state sovereignty, and the Constitution.

Harrison also has a bone to pick with Phelan for appointing Democrats to chair key committees. Almost no other majority leader or other presiding officer awards chairmanships to the minority.