Looking back at some of the political events of late last year is still a bit jarring. It’s hard to believe, for example, that a state attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate election results he didn’t like.
But that’s actually what happened. Six months ago, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued four states that dared to support President Biden — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — arguing that he disapproved of their pandemic-era election procedures. Paxton asked the high court to block those states from voting in the Electoral College.
Reuters’ Brad Heath explained at the time, Paxton was “literally asking the Supreme Court to throw out the results of other states’ presidential elections, set aside the millions of votes cast in states that are not Texas, and have other state legislatures make Trump president.”
It was an utterly bonkers gambit that failed. But the story isn’t quite over: As the Associated Press reported yesterday, Paxton’s ridiculous antics are now the subject of a new investigation.
The Texas bar association is investigating whether state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on bogus claims of fraud amounted to professional misconduct. The State Bar of Texas initially declined to take up a Democratic Party activist’s complaint that Paxton’s petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court to block Joe Biden’s victory was frivolous and unethical. But a tribunal that oversees grievances against lawyers overturned that decision late last month and ordered the bar to look into the accusations against the Republican official. It’s the larger context that makes matters considerably worse: Paxton was already under indictment on felony securities fraud charges when members of his own team made multiple criminal allegations against him. In December, FBI agents arrived at Paxton’s door. The Texas Republican, who served as the chair of Lawyers for Trump in 2020, is nevertheless running for re-election. He’s facing a primary challenge from state Land Commissioner George P. Bush.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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