Best mugshot ever
An anonymous campaign-like piece of mail has begun appearing in Texas attacking the judge overseeing Attorney General Ken Paxton’s criminal securities fraud trial, discrediting the Tarrant County jurist who has said he plans to stay with the case as it moves to Houston this fall.
The sepia tone flier that alleges state District Judge George Gallagher’s court is “rigged against Texas” comes as Paxton fights to remove the judge from the bench overseeing his case.
“It’s definitely done with the goal of affecting the Paxton case,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, citing Gallagher’s next election is three years away. “It’s probably an attempt to either get Gallagher to resign from the case or to begin to affect the jury pool.”
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First reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the mailer has been sighted in Tarrant County and elsewhere in the state.
Absent from the flier is a reference to who sent it, which is information required on political mailers that advocate people “vote for,” “elect,” “support,” “defeat” or “reject” a candidate or proposition. The flier uses none of those words, nor does it encourage people take a specific action.
“The general guideline is that political advertising that includes an express advocacy has to include a disclosure statement,” said Ian Steusloff, general counsel for the Texas Ethics Commission, which examines complaints about political mailers. He declined to comment on whether the anonymous mailer is legal and said he cannot comment on whether the agency has received a complaint on the flier.
The mailer alleges Gallagher is “trying to Fix” the attorney general’s trial and cites a series of rulings by the 2nd and 7th Courts of Appeals dating to 2003 saying he “abused” his discretion.
Empower Texans, a conservative Republican group, embraced the message of the flier, but denied it had any involvement with it.
“The Paxton prosecution is a travesty and an embarrassment to the Texas criminal justice system. Whatever the source, Gallagher deserves the criticism he is receiving for his role in it,” read an essay from Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the conservative group and defender of Paxton.
Yes, I’m sure those upstanding citizens at Empower Texans have nothing at all to do with this, and you can’t prove that they did. There’s a reason why they fight like crazed wolverines against any attempt to increase disclosure requirements. Bud Kennedy has a partial image of one of the flyers, which is right out of the ominous-voiceover-TV-attack-ad school. I doubt even these jokers would try to blanket the county with their lame hit pieces, but keep an eye on your mailboxes anyway. Why they think the judge is the root of Ken Paxton’s problems is beyond me, but they do have an investment to protect so here we are. The Press, which has further images of the mailer and some context to the BS charges it raises, has more.
Republicans today are a bunch of corrupt anti-Democracy con artist a la Trump. They enrich themselves by promoting racism, and bigotry.
@NHNT… Spare me the overgeneralizations. Might as well make the claim all Democrats subsist on kale and gluten-free bread, and want to hire nothing but undocumented workers.