Collin County, y’all.
Best mugshot ever
Collin County lawmakers debated intervening in Ken Paxton’s legal woes by pressuring county leaders to cut funding for the case, according to a series of private text messages exchanged last week.
Taxpayers in Paxton’s home county are on the hook to pay for his prosecution, which has dragged on for months as he’s appealed three felony indictments for violating state securities laws. Local Republican leaders have expressed concern about the case’s six-figure cost but have said the law leaves them no choice but to pay up.
But five Collin County lawmakers thought otherwise.
In a series of texts sent last week, which The Dallas Morning News obtained through open records laws, they discuss how to persuade County Judge Keith Self to violate a court order requiring him to pay three special prosecutors.
Should they send a signed letter to the Commissioners Court? Should they get lawyers involved? Or should they simply pressure Self to refuse to pay the prosecutors, a decision for which he could be found in contempt of court?
“All of us agree (hopefully) on the end goal. Question is what can we do to move the ball toward that goal line,” Plano Republican Rep. Jeff Leach sent in a text on Monday, to which Rep. Matt Shaheen responded, “I’ll ask Keith [Self] if they lowered the fees and discuss options to stop payment.”
“Perfect,” Leach texted back. “Let him know we are here to help — not hurt. If Keith got sent to jail for this — I’d be the first to bail him out.”
This is Exhibit A for why having a central Public Integrity Unit is a good idea. Now, in this case, the PIU in the Travis County DA’s office did investigate, and declined to pursue charges because they determined that the alleged crime did not occur in Travis County and thus was not in their jurisdiction. I don’t know if this situation was affected by the recent legislation that took a lot of these investigations away from the PIU in Travis County, but I do know that if the Travis County DA were doing this prosecution, we wouldn’t have Ken Paxton’s buddies trying to short-circuit it. If we’re going to have these prosecutions handled by home counties, we need better laws to prevent this kind of meddling. If a special prosecutor is needed, that special prosecutor should have fairly wide latitude to request funding to complete its job.