It’s that there’s just no accountability, barring the election result we’re all desperately hoping for.
Best mugshot ever
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Republican officials around the country have been giving increasing attention and resources to investigating election crimes. Most have focused on the alleged wrongdoing of voters.
But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is also working a different angle: His office has been criminally investigating the people who help run elections.
Over the past two years, Paxton’s office opened at least 10 investigations into alleged crimes by election workers, a more extensive effort than previously known, according to records obtained by ProPublica. One of his probes was spurred by a complaint from a county GOP chair, who lost her reelection bid in a landslide. She then refused to certify the results, citing “an active investigation” by the attorney general.
In at least two of the cases, Paxton’s office unsuccessfully tried to indict election workers, attempts that were first reported by the Austin American-Statesman. In the remaining eight investigations identified by ProPublica, it is unclear just how far the probes went. As of mid-October, none of the cases resulted in criminal charges.
The story covers the ordeals of Dana DeBeauvoir and Rob Icsezen, both of whom Paxton tried to indict for incidents that any unbiased observer would have taken to be at worst honest misunderstandings. He even pursued those charges in neighboring Republican counties instead of the counties where the “crime” allegedly happened. Put aside for the moment the mess and dysfunction going on in that office, and the alleged criminality of Paxton himself. The office of Attorney General is traditionally one that pursues civil cases, not criminal ones, yet the guy in charge is off pursuing quixotic political indictments while letting human traffickers go free because they can’t keep track of witnesses. I’m old enough to remember when that sort of thing would have been a huge scandal, the kid of screwup that might force an official to resign because they had lost the faith of the public.
Not anymore, though. Short of it becoming a national story, there’s no way to focus enough attention on that kind of scandal to make it become an issue for anyone but the most plugged-in news-watcher. Republican voters don’t care, and neither do Greg Abbott or Dan Patrick or the Republicans in the Legislature, who at least nominally have some oversight of the Attorney General. At this point, Ken Paxton could murder someone on Sixth Street, and I doubt more than a handful of Republican legislators would call for him to step down. The only way that this Legislature will become interested in that oversight role will be if Rochelle Garza wins, at which point they’ll become very invested in having a say over what the AG does and does not do. Ken Paxton is what happens when people with power believe, with complete justification, that they can act with impunity.