The Texas Senate has voted overwhelmingly to acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton on all charges, reinstating him to office and offering a stunning rebuke to the House leadership.
Nevertheless, those behind the half-baked, secretive, and sham impeachment process are digging in and lashing out, blaming others for their own failure to present a cogent or persuasive case.
As rain fell Saturday morning on a dry Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced the votes on the 16 articles of impeachment that the senators had spent the last two weeks hearing testimony about. Sixteen times, Patrick announced that a majority of the senators voted to acquit Paxton — far more than the one-third margin necessary.
Once the result was final, Patrick took the opportunity to condemn the House for sending articles of impeachment to the Senate without following proper procedure as earlier impeachments had.
“The speaker and his team rammed through the first impeachment of a statewide-elected official in Texas in over 100 years while paying no attention to the precedent,” Patrick explained.
“Millions of taxpayers dollars have been wasted on this impeachment,” Patrick added, noting he would call for a full audit. “An impeachment should never happen again in the House like it happened this year.”
As reported in The Federalist, the path to victory for the conservative attorney general was clear from day one despite pearl-clutching by the media and dire prognostications by pundits. That fact became more evident as the case for the House Board of Managers quickly fell apart and only got worse. Even their own witnesses testified that the impeachment articles were bogus, false, or otherwise incoherent.
[READ: Impeachment Case Against Paxton Implodes As Witnesses Admit No Misdeeds]
Even the witnesses that harbored intense personal dislike toward Paxton admitted when placed under oath that they had no hard evidence of wrongdoing but only “good faith belief” or circumstantial evidence — in other words, nothing.
The complete failure by the House Board of Managers did not stop House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, from wailing and gnashing his teeth at the Senate and Patrick.
“I find it deeply concerning that after weeks of claiming he would preside over this trial in an impartial and honest manner, Lt. Governor Patrick would conclude by confessing his bias and placing his contempt for the people’s House on full display,” the failed speaker said.
“To be clear, Patrick attacked the House for standing up against corruption. His tirade disrespects the Constitutional impeachment process afforded to us by the founders of this great state,” he alleged. “The inescapable conclusion is that today’s outcome appears to have been orchestrated from the start.”
However, just like the case put on by the House manager, Phelan’s claims came without a shred of evidence.
As Tony Buzbee, one of the lead defense attorneys for Paxton, said in his opening argument, the shrieks from the Austin swamp are “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
