Best mugshot ever
Once upon a time, Ken Paxton and Chris Oldner were political allies, dinner companions, and perhaps, even friends.
Not any more, though.
In legal filings and court hearings, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal team has taken a scorched earth approach to attacking Oldner, accusing the veteran Republican jurist of orchestrating a Machiavellian plot to get Paxton indicted by the grand jury that he oversaw.
“It’s a common tactic for criminal defendants; when they have reached a desperate place, they attack the process,” Judge Oldner said in an exclusive interview with News 8. “They attack prosecutors, they attack law enforcement, and they’ll even attack the judge.”
[…]
Last month, Oldner announced that rather than running for his current judicial post — a job he’s held for more than a decade — he was going to run for the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal appeals court.
“Right now, we are facing an unprecedented time,” Oldner said. “The system and the integrity of the system is being attacked, and I think it’s important for strong, good, ethical judges to stand up and push back against the special interest.”
Oldner talks of “dark money agenda groups who use massive email lists and web sites to push an agenda.”
“When you face bullies, you have to stand up and push back,” he said.
See here, here, and here for the relevant background. There’s not a whole lot to learn in the story that we didn’t already know from the court filings and reports about them, but this was another amusing side note in the ongoing Paxton saga, and it might provoke someone on Team Paxton to say something indiscreet. Plus, as noted here, Judge Oldner will be a candidate for the Court of Criminal Appeals next year, and you can be sure this will come up in the primary. How will the seething masses of the GOP base react to Ken Paxton being used as a prop in an attack ad, one way or the other? We may find out.
Two parts of this AG vs. Judge story which nobody has been able to explain are:
1. How did the judge walking into a room or talking with his wife negatively impact the defendant?
2. What benefit would the judge receive from negatively impacting the case?
If the answer to both questions is the same, then the defense has no case. This whole things seems like much ado ’bout nuthin!
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