Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
(Motto: “I didn't do it. I'm innocent! I want a pardon.”)
The lawsuit in brief
Washington Post articles describe the latest lawsuit to overturn the election. It was filed by republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. It aims to nullify all votes in GA, MI, PN and WI and award the election to the president because he won. The president is demanding all republicans in congress to join the lawsuit as a show of loyalty. So far, 17 republican state attorneys general have file briefs in support of the case. The statistical argument
The lawsuit differs from past failed lawsuits that have claimed widespread voter fraud and/or other problems serious enough to cause the president to lose the electoral college. One new line of argument is that (1) the odds of Biden winning WI are 1 in 1 quadrillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000) and (2) the odds of Biden winning GA, MI, PN and WI are less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (<1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). The statistical argument is blithering nonsense based on smoke and mirrors. Someone just made stuff up and Paxton put it in his lawsuit.
The invisible fraud argument
The other new line of attack on the voting in GA, MI, PN and WI is that widespread fraud happened but it is not detectable because elections officials, not voters, did illegal things that hid or obscured evidence of the fraud. WaPo writes:
“Despite the chaos of election night and the days which followed, the media has consistently proclaimed that no widespread voter fraud has been proven,” the lawsuit says (and that proclamation is accurate). “But this observation misses the point. The constitutional issue is not whether voters committed fraud but whether state officials violated the law by systematically loosening the measures for ballot integrity so that fraud becomes undetectable.”
“The unlawful actions of election officials effectively destroy the evidence by which the fraud may be detected,” it says.
The lawsuit does not claim evidence of fraud in the vote-tabulation process but rather says, “The public record demonstrates a ballot-counting process replete with chaos, confusion, and partisan bias.”
In essence, this lawsuit abandons claims in prior lawsuits that fraud can be proven. Now, the backup legal position is that the fraud was real but was made undetectable by bad election officials. From what I recall, there was no significant chaos, confusion or partisan bias on election night or in the following days. That's what all the experts said and that is what videos that I saw showed.
Ken Paxton
Mr. Paxton is a colorful and playful character. He may be under investigation by the FBI for a slew of crimes. If so, this lawsuit is most likely a bid for a pardon from the president. Given the apparent levels of corruption among GOP politicians, maybe the other state attorneys general and republicans in congress who join this crackpot lawsuit are also looking for pardons.
Slate describes the overall high level of sleaziness of Paxton's lawsuit and his likely motive in filing it. What Slate describes as going on in Texas is just off-scale nuts:
Paxton’s suit is shot through with conspiracy theories and constitutional claims with no basis in law. Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, who typically authors the office’s lawsuits, did not sign on to this one, nor did his deputies; instead, Paxton brought in a “special counsel” from outside the agency. His suit is so ridiculous that it led some commentators to wonder whether the attorney general might have another motive for filing it. Paxton, after all, is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for alleged bribery and abuse of office. Trump, meanwhile, has been distributing pardons to his allies like candy. Paxton’s suit makes more sense as pardon-bait than it does as a legal document. And he may need presidential clemency to escape the federal criminal charges that could be imminent.
He also embarked upon a relentless crusade to suppress voting rights in the run-up to the 2020 election. Paxton fought to prevent young people from voting by mail, then threatened to prosecute Texans who voted absentee due to fear of COVID-19. He prevented counties from sending absentee ballot applications to all voters, prohibited any county from offering more than one ballot drop box, and unsuccessfully sought to ban drive-thru voting. No state official did more than Paxton in 2020 to restrict the franchise. It is not entirely surprising that he now asks, after the election, that SCOTUS toss out millions of ballots.
The attorney general also has a long history of legal trouble that predates his alliance with Trump. In 2015, a Texas grand jury indicted the attorney general on charges of felony securities fraud. Paxton allegedly urged his friends to buy shares in a company without disclosing his secret commissions or registering as a securities broker with the state. He has already paid a fine for this transgression, and remains under indictment to this day. But his case has never gone to trial, in large part because his friends in the county government defunded the prosecution. Paxton’s wife, a Republican state senator, also filed legislation that would allow her husband to issue exemptions from the securities regulations he allegedly violated.
This fall, Paxton’s own staff accused him of even more serious crimes. On Oct. 1, seven senior staff members asked federal law enforcement to investigate the attorney general for “violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses.” The group was led by Jeff Mateer, who served as Paxton’s top assistant before resigning. Mateer has sterling GOP bona fides: In 2017, Trump nominated him to the federal bench, but he withdrew after CNN reported that he had derided transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan,” condemned same-sex marriage as “debauchery,” and endorsed “conversion therapy.” Paxton dismissed Mateer and his colleagues as “rogue employees” and fired aides who refused to resign after reporting their boss. These aides then launched a whistleblower lawsuit against the attorney general.
Mateer’s letter did not explain the allegations against Paxton. But in a leaked text message, he told Paxton that the complaints involved his “relationship and activities with Nate Paul.” A real estate developer in Austin, Paul donated $25,000 to Paxton’s 2018 campaign. The two are, at a minimum, acquaintances: While Paxton was having an affair with an aide to a GOP state senator, he encouraged Paul to hire his mistress. (Paxton has acknowledged the affair but denied pulling strings for his mistress; Paul has denied that he hired the individual at Paxton’s request.) (emphasis added)
Gadzooks!! Something smells very fishy in GOP Texasland politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment