Best mugshot ever
Attorney General Ken Paxton has blasted his indictments and other legal problems – including a previously undisclosed IRS investigation and frozen accounts – as a political witch-hunt fueled by fellow conservatives and the media.
At a Tarrant County tea party meeting Saturday that also featured Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, Paxton asked the crowd to imagine a trusted neighbor who gets a new job and then is plagued by all kinds of problems – including having his accounts frozen and being subject to an IRS audit.
“He’s got some of his bank accounts have been shut down. Some of his retirement accounts are being shut down,” said Paxton. “You find out the guy is being investigated by the Travis County DA, and then the Dallas County DA, and then the Collin County DA. And then you find out the person is being investigated by the SEC.”
He then added, “You have to ask yourself, ‘Is there a character problem here? This person has been no trouble for 35 years and then, suddenly, they’re having all this trouble.’ Well that’s, in that sense, what’s happened to me. I have no speeding ticket in my life. Never been audited by the IRS. Never been investigated by—never, no bar grievances with the state bar. I get sworn into office and everything I just mentioned happened.”
[…]
Also on Saturday, Paxton said that one of his biggest challenges in state government has been Republican disunity.
“Since been running for AG, you may have noticed I’ve been under a little bit of a political attack. You might have noticed the media doesn’t cover me very well, says a few unflattering things,” he said. “The reality is when you go down to Austin and you’re going to stick to your conservative principles, there are people in our own party often times that find that too enlightening.”
Poor, poor baby. There’s audio at the link if you can stomach it. It may well be that Ken Paxton was a complete choirboy for the first forty-something years of his life, and then he got corrupted by his years in Austin. We know Paxton has made a tidy little fortune since first being elected, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine. And isn’t that “power corrupts” narrative something that teabaggers love to believe?
Anyway. Turns out Paxton is not being audited, just hyperbolic. That link has video of the speech, if you’re even more morbid. It may well be that Texas voters will tolerate a scoundrel or two – or at least, it may well be that the current Republican voting majority will tolerate a Republican scoundrel – but a whiner? There’s also the inconvenient fact that our scoundrels have for the most part not gotten themselves convicted. Someone who gets accused and gets off is an underdog who beat the system. Someone who gets convicted (if it sticks, anyway), is just another crook. That story has not yet been written about Ken Paxton.