(The Center Square) – Tony Buzbee, lead attorney for impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said during his closing argument Friday that House prosecutors should be ashamed for bring forward a case with “no evidence.”
The House voted to impeach Paxton on 20 articles. The articles allege 16 crimes, with four held in abeyance, claiming Paxton was engaged in bribery, abused the public trust, is unfit for office, among others.
“Here we are in the Senate chamber in the most historic trial that’s been had in this state in the last 100 years,” Buzbee said. “There is shame here and it sits right there,” pointing to the House managers, “that they would bring this case in this chamber with no evidence.”
“If this can happen to him [AG Ken Paxton], it can happen to anyone,” he said.
Buzbee’s closing followed Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, who brought the impeachment charges against Paxton as the chair of the House General Investigating Committee.
Buzbee brought up the House manager’s lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, saying in a news conference in June that the evidence his team would present was “ten times worse than the public knows.”
“What a farce that was,” Buzbee said. “What we have seen instead is a bunch of supposition, ‘mights, maybes, could have been,’ that’s what we’ve seen in this trial.”
“The very first witness they brought to you … crumbled under oath,” he said, referring to former OAG staffer Jeff Mateer. Mateer testified that he performed the work the House managers accused Paxton of performing in Article 1. He also testified he only had circumstantial evidence when he went to the FBI and alleged Paxton may have committed a crime.
“So what is this case about?” Buzbee asked. “It’s about nothing.
“Think about it, they failed to gather evidence. They failed to review their own evidence. They failed to talk to all the witnesses.”
Buzbee pointed to Brent Webster, Paxton’s new first deputy, “who reviewed and documented every single thing that occurred” in a report the OAG published on August 24, 2021, providing examples of how the fired staffers were insubordinate.
“Why didn’t they call him?” Buzbee asked. “Because he puts to bed all foolishness and silliness.”
He also went through each article explaining how they were inaccurately written and “on their face” couldn’t be sustained. He also showed how Paxton’s legal team had disproven each of the articles.
Buzbee said he proved how Paxton’s house repairs hadn’t been paid for by Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, as the House alleged, saying, “I had to come here to disprove their case.” With witnesses on the stand and showing them documents, he said, they proved what the House said “didn’t happen. We should not be in position to prove our innocence, but we did.”
He also explained how they disproved the claim about Paxton hiring outside counsel being illegal, among other charges.
Buzbee pointed out that it’s been three years since the former OAG staffers at the center of the trial went to the FBI.
“What have we heard from the FBI about AG Paxton?” he asked. “Nothing. You don’t think the Biden administration wouldn’t love to indict Ken Paxton? You’re not paying attention. They’ve done nothing because there is nothing to do.”
Paxton’s lead attorney pointed to the House managers’ team of 17 lawyers who are “making $500 an hour, each of them, hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted by taxpayers and they still don’t have anything,” he said.
Buzbee also reviewed the testimony of former OAG staffers, who admitted, “once we went to the FBI, we were signing our death warrant.”
“Rightly so,” Buzbee said. “You go to the authorities and accuse your boss of a crime and there is no evidence, rightly so.”
He also went through all the allegations about Nate Paul and Ken Paxton, saying the House presented no evidence to support their claims.
Buzbee poked holes in the claim the fired staffers were whistleblowers. “In order to be a whistleblower you have to have a good faith belief a crime occurred, in order to have good faith belief, you have to have evidence,” he said. One fired employee, Ryan Vassar, testified “we had no evidence that we could point to” when they went to the FBI.
Other witnesses testified Paxton had “no burner phones, no secret emails, nothing,” Buzbee said.
“You should be ashamed of what you’ve done here,” he said, again looking at the House managers.
Buzbee told the senators the House had to prove the allegations were true “beyond a reasonable doubt. That means you have no doubts that are reasonable. That is an incredibly high burden.”
He also said the charges presented in the trial would be thrown out of any criminal court.
“This is a political court, a witch hunt, a partisan fight within the Republican Party,” he said.
