Best mugshot ever
I looked into the unusual situation in which the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was asked to rule on its boss. Here’s what happened.
Media organizations requested the video of Paxton’s recent booking into the Collin County Jail. His office denied the requests.
Talk about a conflict of interest.
The lawyers who issued the ruling work for Paxton. What would happen to them if they ruled against their boss and further damaged his reputation?
It’s a legitimate question, especially since the attorney general is the top arbiter in the state of what’s public and what’s not.
So I reached out to the AG’s office and asked officials there to explain how they handled the conflict.
[…]
Cynthia Meyer of the AG’s office told me:
“In this instance, we directed that any open records ruling involving Attorney General Paxton in his personal capacity should obviously be screened from him.
“And to avoid even the appearance of a conflict where none actually exists, we screened such matters from executive staff review.”
Instead, she said, the rulings are handled by longtime career lawyers in the office with extensive open-government experience.
The AG’s office ruled that release of the video would have “interfered with law enforcement.”
How?
Collin County officials argued that the recordings show secure areas of the jail and reveal blind spots not covered by surveillance cameras.
Release of the video could allow the bad guys to develop ways to circumvent the security cameras.
Do you buy that?
Um, no. The justification is lame, the process is sketchy, and in the end all roads lead to the benefit of Ken Paxton. I mean, seriously. All I can say is thank you, Ken Paxton, for making your buffoonish corruption so painfully clear. I just hope that when you run for re-election in 2018, we Democrats have figured out a way to make you own it. The Chron has more.