Texas impeachment managers submit 4,000 pages of exhibits against Ken Paxton

Texas House impeachment managers have submitted nearly 4,000 pages of exhibits ahead of next month’s impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The Senate, which is conducting the trial, published the exhibits Thursday night. The document dump provides granular detail of how Paxton allegedly abused his office to help Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and campaign donor.

Paxton’s lawyers last week called for all 20 articles of impeachment to be dismissed, relying in part on an argument that the House had not produced evidence to support them. Through the document dump, a remarkable public disclosure before the trial has started, the House managers have essentially called their bluff.

The managers’ responses to Paxton’s pretrial motions offer new allegations against Paxton, including that he used a burner phone, secret email account and fake Uber name to hide his relationship with Paul.

There are 150 exhibits across three documents totaling 3,760 pages. They include:

▪ An interview with Paxton’s former personal aide who said he ferried documents to Paul on Paxton’s behalf and witnessed conversations about the renovations to Paxton’s home that suggested Paul had paid for it.

▪ Emails showing how Paul and his lawyer directed a special prosecutor authorized by Paxton to investigate Paul’s business rivals and law enforcement officials that had raided his home.

▪ Memoranda documenting numerous instances in which Paxton’s senior advisers unsuccessfully urged him to cut ties with Paul, whom they suspected was a liar and criminal.

▪ Trip records obtained from Uber showing an account Paul created under the alias “Dave P” which Paxton used to travel to the home of Paul and the apartment of the woman with whom the attorney general was allegedly having an extramarital affair. Paxton is married to state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney.

▪ An employment contract proving Paul had hired Paxton’s alleged girlfriend to work at his business.

The exhibits also add evidence to the allegation that Paxton recruited a state senator, Bryan Hughes, to request a legal opinion that helped avoid foreclosure on properties owned by Paul and his businesses. On Sept. 30, 2020, Paxton’s former deputy first assistant attorney general, Ryan Bangert, emailed fellow another aide, Ryan Vassar, a timeline of events leading up to the opinion.

“[Paxton] agreed that we could reach out to Senator Bryan Hughes, which we did, and ask that he make a request, which he did,” Bangert wrote. “We then prepared the response and sent it to Senator Hughes.” Bangert and Vassar are among the seven former attorney general staffers who reported Paxton to law enforcement in 2020 for alleged abuses of office.

The Senate posted the exhibit records Thursday night on a website the chamber maintains for impeachment-related documents. The records are dated Tuesday, meaning the managers filed them on the day that responses to pretrial motions were due to the Senate.

The trial is set to begin Sept. 5. A special committee is reviewing the motions and responses. That committee has until Aug. 28 to prepare a confidential report with recommendations on the motions for the trial judge, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. He can rule on all motions except for those that seek dismissal of any articles, which requires a majority vote of the Senate. Patrick also can ask senators to decide other pretrial motions, with approval granted by a majority vote.

The breadth of the evidence could put more pressure on senators to at least proceed to trial. Assuming all 12 Democrats oppose Paxton’s motions to dismiss, managers would have to convince at least four of the 19 Republican senators to side with the Democrats and clear the way for a trial. One of those GOP senators is Paxton’s wife, and she does not get to vote under the trial rules.