Ken Paxton’s legal team has filed five subpoenas seeking more information relating to the grand jury that indicted him.
Best mugshot ever
The defense seeks a complete transcript and audio recording related to the selection of the grand jurors who indicted him.
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The transcripts would reveal what, if anything, came up about Paxton and possible criminal charges during the selection process of grand jurors who were drawn from Republican-dominant Collin County.
In Collin County, two grand juries are picked by district judges from a random pool of registered voters to serve six-month terms. Only one grand jury heard evidence in Paxton’s case and issued the indictments. But Paxton’s defense team applied for records on the selection of both grand juries serving in the July to December 2015 term.
The defense is also seeking the transcript and audio recording for the selection of the two grand juries that served in the first six months of this year.
Those grand jurors were contacted at their work and their home about the Paxton investigation. One grand juror also sent a letter to the Travis County district attorney’s office seeking its investigative file on Paxton. That letter came before Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis requested the Texas Rangers open an investigation.
Shortly after that, Willis recused himself from the case. Houston defense attorneys Kent Schaffer, Brian Wice and Nicole DeBorde were appointed as special prosecutors in the case against Paxton.
The defense’s final subpoena application seeks documents from the county’s Human Resources Department “related to a personnel action involving a deputy district clerk.”
The records don’t offer any further details. It’s unclear whether this involves the clerk who mistakenly sent out an email in July listing the grand jurors’ names.
According to the Chron story, special prosecutors Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer intend to file a motion opposing the subpoenas. I don’t know what Team Paxton hopes to accomplish with this – the story says they’re claiming the jury was stacked against Paxton, which seems like a stretch given how many friends in the county he has, but I suppose anything is possible – but I’m not the one being paid the big bucks to keep his sorry heinie out of jail. We’ll see what the judge makes of it.
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