Best mugshot ever
The Texas bar association is investigating whether state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on bogus claims of fraud amounted to professional misconduct.
The State Bar of Texas initially declined to take up a Democratic Party activist’s complaint that Paxton’s petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court to block Joe Biden’s victory was frivolous and unethical. But a tribunal that oversees grievances against lawyers overturned that decision late last month and ordered the bar to look into the accusations against the Republican official.
The investigation is yet another liability for the embattled attorney general, who is facing a years-old criminal case, a separate, newer FBI investigation, and a Republican primary opponent who is seeking to make electoral hay of the various controversies. It also makes Paxton one of the highest profile lawyers to face professional blowback over their roles in Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize his defeat.
[…]
Kevin Moran, the 71-year-old president of the Galveston Island Democrats, shared his complaint with The Associated Press along with letters from the State Bar of Texas and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals that confirm the investigation. He said Paxton’s efforts to dismiss other states’ election results was a wasteful embarrassment for which the attorney general should lose his law license.
“He wanted to disenfranchise the voters in four other states,” said Moran. “It’s just crazy.”
Texas’ top appeals lawyer, who would usually argue the state’s cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, notably did not join Paxton in bringing the election suit. The high court threw it out.
Paxton has less than a month to reply to Moran’s claim that the lawsuit to overturn the results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was misleading and brought in bad faith, according to a June 3 letter from the bar. All four of the battleground states voted for Biden in November.
From there, bar staff will take up the case in a proceeding that resembles the grand jury stage of a criminal investigation. Bar investigators are empowered to question witnesses, hold hearings and issue subpoenas to determine whether a lawyer likely committed misconduct. That finding then launches a disciplinary process that could ultimately result in disbarment, suspension or a lesser punishments. A lawyer also could be found to have done nothing wrong.
The bar dismisses thousands of grievances each year and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals, 12 independent lawyers appointed by the Texas Supreme Court, overwhelmingly uphold those decisions. Reversals like that of Moran’s complaint happened less than 7% of the time last year, according to the bar’s annual report.
See here, here, here, and here for the background on Paxton’s lawsuit, which you may recall was an effort by Texas and several other states to get SCOTUS to overturn the election result in four Biden-won states because the plaintiffs didn’t approve of their election laws. One reason why we can credibly claim that this lawsuit was not only without merit but that the lawyers who were filing it knew that it was without merit was that they would scream bloody murder if another state tried to meddle in their own jurisdictions. Following these (dangerous and seditious) legal shenanigans, one national group called for state bars to take action against the instigators. I don’t know if this filing was related to that, but it’s not hard to connect the dots.
Now whether anything comes of this, we don’t know. As the story notes, the odds against the complainants prevailing are slim. Still, it’s another front on which Paxton must battle to save his sorry ass, and I have no doubt that his response brief will provide some content of interest. I fervently hope that one witness who gets called is former Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, who notably declined to argue Paxton’s filing before SCOTUS, which is what someone in his role would normally do. We deserve to know what he thought of all this. A ruling is likely months away, which may be just in time for the 2022 elections to be getting into full swing. Reform Austin has more.
Will the state bar also be going after all the other state AG’s that signed onto the suit with amicus briefs? I mean, why not use lawfare any and every time you have power?
This sounds more like a continuation of the old song, “We can’t beat him at the ballot box, so we’re going to try and beat him in the jury box.” Without Dominion voting machines and Ruby Freeman/Atlanta style cheating, I guess this hail Mary is the absolute best the left can do to try and knock Paxton out of office.
Bill, unless those other AG’s are licensed in Texas, the state bar can’t do anything.
For those seeking cribnotes on Bill’s ravings, I found this on Ruby Freeman:
https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/12/we-need-to-learn-how-to-talk-to-and-about-accidental-conspiracists/
“I bet you don’t know who Ruby Freeman is, and that would make you a normal person. ”
“Her business is called Lady Ruby’s Unique Treasures, and I don’t recommend you look at the Instagram comments for that store anymore. That’s because, on 4chan and far-right blogs, she is some sort of Sith Lord/Al Capone combo, who personally stole the election by doing…something with briefcases?”
Dominion and Ruby Freeman…
Cray Cray. Goes to the old adage, ‘if you keep repeating it, folks will begin to believe it’s true’.