(The Center Square) – After the latest impeachment trial deadline of Aug. 15, the House Managers and their attorneys filed 20 motions with the Senate.
The same day, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lead attorney, Tony Buzbee, issued a statement based on a motion filed that again points out the House Manager has presented no evidence to support their claims.
All motions filed by both parties are published on the Texas Senate’s Court of Impeachment website. The Senate does not post notifications as to when information is updated.
The latest filing deadline was Aug. 15; the 20 motions were published on Aug. 16.
The House Managers filed the 20 motions in response to motions Paxton’s attorney filed over two weeks ago, including motions to exclude evidence, to quash, to request a bill of particulars, among others. They also posted responses to requests made by Paxton’s team for the Senate to throw out the articles of impeachment.
The motions filed also relate to setting additional pretrial deadlines before the impeachment trial begins on Sept. 5.
Central to the articles of impeachment are allegations of bribery in Articles IX and X.
One motion the House Managers filed on Aug. 15 refers to a claim made by a contract worker but does not cite any evidence to support the claim that Paxton paid a bribe related to renovate his kitchen. The motion claims a donor of Paxton’s, Nate Paul, “provided renovations to the Paxtons’ Austin home.”
However, prior to the gag order, Paxton’s attorneys shared with The Center Square copies of a receipt and insurance claim to show that Paxton paid to renovate his kitchen. Buzbee also held a press conference in Austin after the impeachment vote and showed copies of the receipts and pictures of the kitchen.
In response to the motions that were filed, Buzbee issued a statement from a reply that was filed in support of a motion to dismiss Articles IX and X. It states, “After an investigation spanning five months in both the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate, interviewing over a dozen witnesses and reviewing almost 300,000 pages of documents, the two special prosecutors who were handed a blank check at taxpayers’ expense to find Ken Paxton’s bribe can’t locate one—because it never happened.
“To be clear, the most effective and most conservative state attorney general in the country has been out of office for almost three months while the impeachment managers and their phalanx of taxpayer-paid, Biden and Democrat-connected help have searched for evidence of a bribe. But the House is now forced to admit that they cannot find it.
“This is not just discouraging news for their effort; it is dispositive news. It is dispositive news because the entire impeachment proceeds from it. It is imperative now for the Senate to understand: if there is no bribe, there was no whistle to blow.”
One of the main reasons for impeaching Paxton, the House Managers said, prior to filing the 20 articles of impeachment, relates to several OAG employees who were fired, sued and agreed to a settlement. The House Managers want to relitigate the lawsuit using the impeachment trial as a pretext, critics argue, after a settlement was already reached.
The House Managers claim the AG misused taxpayer money by requesting the state fund the $3 million settlement. However, as previously reported by The Center Square, state statute requires all agency heads to receive legislative approval for settlements totaling over $250,000.
The $3 million settlement was never paid because the OAG never received the legislature’s approval. Critics point out that Paxton could not misappropriate money he did not have and the impeachment vote was illegal and politically motivated.
“After all of this effort and wasted taxpayer money, we are left with is “a tale […] full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” Buzbee’s statement from the motion continues. “The Texas Senate should decline to indulge the prosecution in political theater for weeks on end, trying to find the very case they have already admitted does not exist. This whole thing has been nothing but a sham, and it should now end.
“Attorney General Ken Paxton has neither sought nor accepted a bribe, and the House Managers’ slanderous accusation to the contrary is meritless, no matter how many times they repeat it.”
