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Ken Paxton is dirty? NO FUCKING WAY!


Gil Bang

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1 hour ago, conVINCEd said:

If I voted last time, do I have to register again?  I’ve never had a problem, but I also won’t underestimate the fuckery these people are capable of.

No, you don’t have to register but it’s easy to check

If you checked off for them to send you a ballot for future elections you don’t need to worry.

 

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On 5/27/2023 at 8:18 PM, bolverk said:

Not much on Webster but I did come across this:

After the dramatic exit of Paxton's top staff in 2020, those brought into senior roles included a California attorney who donated $10,000 to help Paxton fight his 2015 securities fraud indictment and Tom Kelly Gleason, a former ice cream company owner whose father gave $50,000 to the attorney general's legal defense fund.

Gleason was fired less than two months into his new job as a law enforcement adviser. Paxton's office has not disclosed why, but three people with knowledge of the matter said Gleason included child pornography in a work presentation at the agency's Austin headquarters.

The people said Gleason displayed the video -- which one of them described as showing a man raping a small child -- in a misguided effort to underscore agency investigators' difficult work. It was met with outrage and caused the meeting to quickly dissolve.

Afterward, Paxton's top deputy, Brent Webster, told staff not to talk about what happened, according to one of the people.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/dysfunction-in-texas-ags-office-as-ken-paxton-seeks-third-term/3085983/

I worked with Brent's wife for 9 years. Delivered a meal to their house when they had their first kid, who's the same age as my youngest. I think he was a public defender in Wilco back then. I didn't know him well at all but his wife is one of the kindest people I know. When I had a miscarriage she wrote me a lovely card that I still have. And fun fact - his wife's sister is the founder of Camp Gladiator. 

Anyway, he definitely seems like an asshole now. Maybe he was then, too. I'm going to reach out to his wife and see how she's doing.

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https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/30/ken-paxton-impeachment-trial-defense/

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Six top officials and employees at the Texas attorney general’s office have taken a leave of absence to help defend suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial this summer.

Those employees are solicitor general Judd Stone, the agency’s top appellate lawyer; assistant solicitors general Joseph N. Mazzara and Kateland Jackson; Chris Hilton, chief of the general litigation division; senior attorney Allison Collins; and executive assistant Jordan Eskew.

Fuck that, none of them should come back, especially when he loses.  They are choosing sides.

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https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2023/05/31/paxton-whistleblowers-triggered-his-removal-from-ags-office-but-will-they-get-paid/70269957007/
 

WHISTLEBLOWER SUIT
Ex-aides have not seen any of $3.3M
Future of payments to 4 in Paxton case is murky
Ryan Autullo and Tony Plohetski
Austin American-Statesman USA TODAY NETWORK
Former aides who lost their jobs for exposing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s alleged misdeeds have yet to receive a penny of a $3.3 million settlement in a whistleblower suit, and the future of that payment remains as uncertain as Paxton’s political future.
Earlier this year, four whistleblowers reached the conditional settlement with the attorney general’s office to resolve a wrongful termination lawsuit. Their legal filing, citing multiple instances in which Paxton allegedly misused his office to assist a campaign donor, was the foundation for an investigation in the Texas House that led to a 121-23 vote in favor of Paxton’s impeachment over the weekend.
But the whistleblowers’ deal unraveled and was left for dead after state lawmakers refused to fund the settlement in the budget, reasoning that it

would take Paxton off the hook without a full explanation from him on what happened. The 140-day legislative session ended Monday, and a special session, which began immediately, does not include reconsideration of the settlement payment.
Paxton, who is suspended from office, awaits a trial in the Senate where he faces permanent removal.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower lawsuit returns to litigation after the blown agreement and awaits a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court on a long-shot Paxton maneuver to stop the case. The attorney general’s office contends that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect people who report crimes to law enforcement if an elected official, like Paxton, is accused of participating in the crime. A lower court rejected that argument. If the Supreme Court affirms that finding, the whistleblowers will proceed in collecting evidence and potentially force Paxton to sit for a deposition.
A trial has not been scheduled and it’s unclear if it would happen in the 19 months before the Legislature is set to reconvene for the 89th regular session.
There is a growing sense in legislative and legal circles that lawmakers should fund the settlement or else risk discouraging other government employees from sounding the alarm on misconduct by state officers. There’s a further sense that the longer the case plays out, the more it could cost taxpayers. One of the 20 articles for which Paxton was impeached specifically dealt with retaliation, likely giving the whistleblowers an upper hand with the ongoing trial or any future settlement talks.
Article 7 states Paxton misused public resources by directing employees to conduct a “sham investigation” into the whistleblowers’ complaints and to create a “a lengthy written report containing false or misleading statements in Paxton’s defense.”
“I think it will get worse for the state if the case continues,” said employment lawyer Austin Kaplan. “The state could be facing a bigger bill down the road.”
Kaplan, who represents clients on whistleblower matters, is not connected to the Paxton case. He added, “I think the Legislature has a duty to pay the state’s bills even if they don’t like it.”
Paxton, meanwhile, faces the separate but related matter in the Senate impeachment trial. On Monday, the fivemember House General Investigating Committee announced seven additional members who will help present the case in the Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced that seven senators will draft rules for the proceedings. A trial date has not been set but must start before the end of August.
A two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to permanently remove Paxton from office. The whistleblowers — Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar — could be called to testify.
The Legislature is not scheduled to convene again for a regular session until January 2025, when the whistleblower case might have been tried or resolved. But even then, if the whistleblowers were to prevail, any judgment above $250,000 is subject to legislative approval. Likewise, a pretrial settlement of that same dollar amount is subject to legislative approval.
House Speaker Dade Phelan’s office did not respond for an American-Statesman request for comment. The whistleblowers’ lawyers declined to comment.
Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to call multiple special sessions this summer in which the whistleblower settlement could come up for discussion. His office, which rarely takes questions from the media, did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat who voted in favor of Paxton’s impeachment, told the Statesman that the former attorney general office workers should get paid.
“The whistleblowers who came forward and did the right thing should be paid the money owed to them,” Bucy said. “Whether those funds come from the state or from Attorney General Paxton remains to be seen. If the state fails to pay the whistleblowers, we risk discouraging future people from boldly calling out wrong when they see it.”
The defendant in the lawsuit is the attorney general’s office, not Paxton as an individual, so it’s exceedingly unlikely he would fund the settlement on his own or through his campaign, which as of January had $2.3 million on hand.
Chris Hilton, a top Paxton assistant in the attorney general’s office, told a House subcommittee in February that the office had spent nearly $600,000 from its budget defending the whistleblower case, and that it made fiscal sense to settle the lawsuit. He argued that the office would spend the equivalent of the $3.3 million settlement just to take the case to trial.
“That’s if we win at trial. If we lose at trial, the damages exposure would obviously be higher than that,” he said.
The settlement, had it been finalized, was to include a statement from Paxton saying he “accepts that plaintiffs acted in a manner that they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as ‘rogue employees.’ ” Chuck Herring, an Austin lawyer who has handled whistleblower complaints, said it would make sense for lawmakers to take a second look at the settlement and consider approving the money now that Paxton has been punished through the House impeachment vote.
“Now that he’s gone, you could say, ‘Let’s clean up the aftermath of his wrongdoing and give justice to the people he victimized,’ ” he said.

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10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Fuck that, none of them should come back, especially when he loses.  They are choosing sides.

If he is convicted and removed from office....I suspect that none of them will be coming back, per decision of the AG that succeeds him.

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36 minutes ago, wreckatx said:

This is fucking outrageous.

It really is.  They are defending a man who is accused of a lot of shady shit - were he not the AG, they’d be screaming for him to be locked away for life.

If I were thinking like YGIFS, I’d say Paxton has blackmail material and is calling in favors.

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23 hours ago, YGIFS said:

The showdown is urban/college suburban versus rural/non-college suburban.  And it's playing out in ~35-40 states or so.  I'll save the TPP breakdown for another thread.  But Texas is a perfect microcosm.  

 

Some of my college-educated, white, 50+ year old friends in the suburbs are all about the culture war. Swearing off Bud Light, complaining about the woke culture. When I ask them how they are personally impacted, they're only complaint is that the woke mob is taking away their rights. They can't define what rights they're losing. You could jump to the conclusion that they're upset that they're not allowed to say the n-word, but I don't know them to say it in the first place. And I've known them for 25+ years.

Democrats are doing a poor job of counteracting the culture war rhetoric of the right. The right is very good at hammering home a few items to scare their constituency and attract a few others.

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52 minutes ago, kevwun said:

Leave of Absence means you keep your job, but don't get paid while you are away.  If they are still getting paid, they're on vacation.

Were I him, I wouldn’t vacation in Cancun.

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9 minutes ago, That Guy said:

 

Some background to share - Scott has a mixed record:

Quote

Scott said he would return to private practice “with a successful 2022 General Election in the rear view mirror, and the final findings of the 2020 Texas forensic audit soon to be released.”

Scott stepped into the role during tumultuous times for elections officials, with activists urged by Trump making unverified accusations of widespread voter fraud and harassing elections officials. Voting advocates immediately looked at Scott with a suspicious eye because he had briefly represented Trump in a challenge to the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Some activists who claimed widespread voter fraud in that election without any evidence went on to become Scott’s biggest critics.

 

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https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2023/05/31/paxton-whistleblowers-triggered-his-removal-from-ags-office-but-will-they-get-paid/70269957007/
 
WHISTLEBLOWER SUIT
Ex-aides have not seen any of $3.3M
Future of payments to 4 in Paxton case is murky
Ryan Autullo and Tony Plohetski
Austin American-Statesman USA TODAY NETWORK
Former aides who lost their jobs for exposing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s alleged misdeeds have yet to receive a penny of a $3.3 million settlement in a whistleblower suit, and the future of that payment remains as uncertain as Paxton’s political future.
Earlier this year, four whistleblowers reached the conditional settlement with the attorney general’s office to resolve a wrongful termination lawsuit. Their legal filing, citing multiple instances in which Paxton allegedly misused his office to assist a campaign donor, was the foundation for an investigation in the Texas House that led to a 121-23 vote in favor of Paxton’s impeachment over the weekend.
But the whistleblowers’ deal unraveled and was left for dead after state lawmakers refused to fund the settlement in the budget, reasoning that it
would take Paxton off the hook without a full explanation from him on what happened. The 140-day legislative session ended Monday, and a special session, which began immediately, does not include reconsideration of the settlement payment.
Paxton, who is suspended from office, awaits a trial in the Senate where he faces permanent removal.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower lawsuit returns to litigation after the blown agreement and awaits a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court on a long-shot Paxton maneuver to stop the case. The attorney general’s office contends that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect people who report crimes to law enforcement if an elected official, like Paxton, is accused of participating in the crime. A lower court rejected that argument. If the Supreme Court affirms that finding, the whistleblowers will proceed in collecting evidence and potentially force Paxton to sit for a deposition.
A trial has not been scheduled and it’s unclear if it would happen in the 19 months before the Legislature is set to reconvene for the 89th regular session.
There is a growing sense in legislative and legal circles that lawmakers should fund the settlement or else risk discouraging other government employees from sounding the alarm on misconduct by state officers. There’s a further sense that the longer the case plays out, the more it could cost taxpayers. One of the 20 articles for which Paxton was impeached specifically dealt with retaliation, likely giving the whistleblowers an upper hand with the ongoing trial or any future settlement talks.
Article 7 states Paxton misused public resources by directing employees to conduct a “sham investigation” into the whistleblowers’ complaints and to create a “a lengthy written report containing false or misleading statements in Paxton’s defense.”
“I think it will get worse for the state if the case continues,” said employment lawyer Austin Kaplan. “The state could be facing a bigger bill down the road.”
Kaplan, who represents clients on whistleblower matters, is not connected to the Paxton case. He added, “I think the Legislature has a duty to pay the state’s bills even if they don’t like it.”
Paxton, meanwhile, faces the separate but related matter in the Senate impeachment trial. On Monday, the fivemember House General Investigating Committee announced seven additional members who will help present the case in the Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced that seven senators will draft rules for the proceedings. A trial date has not been set but must start before the end of August.
A two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to permanently remove Paxton from office. The whistleblowers — Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar — could be called to testify.
The Legislature is not scheduled to convene again for a regular session until January 2025, when the whistleblower case might have been tried or resolved. But even then, if the whistleblowers were to prevail, any judgment above $250,000 is subject to legislative approval. Likewise, a pretrial settlement of that same dollar amount is subject to legislative approval.
House Speaker Dade Phelan’s office did not respond for an American-Statesman request for comment. The whistleblowers’ lawyers declined to comment.
Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to call multiple special sessions this summer in which the whistleblower settlement could come up for discussion. His office, which rarely takes questions from the media, did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat who voted in favor of Paxton’s impeachment, told the Statesman that the former attorney general office workers should get paid.
“The whistleblowers who came forward and did the right thing should be paid the money owed to them,” Bucy said. “Whether those funds come from the state or from Attorney General Paxton remains to be seen. If the state fails to pay the whistleblowers, we risk discouraging future people from boldly calling out wrong when they see it.”
The defendant in the lawsuit is the attorney general’s office, not Paxton as an individual, so it’s exceedingly unlikely he would fund the settlement on his own or through his campaign, which as of January had $2.3 million on hand.
Chris Hilton, a top Paxton assistant in the attorney general’s office, told a House subcommittee in February that the office had spent nearly $600,000 from its budget defending the whistleblower case, and that it made fiscal sense to settle the lawsuit. He argued that the office would spend the equivalent of the $3.3 million settlement just to take the case to trial.
“That’s if we win at trial. If we lose at trial, the damages exposure would obviously be higher than that,” he said.
The settlement, had it been finalized, was to include a statement from Paxton saying he “accepts that plaintiffs acted in a manner that they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as ‘rogue employees.’ ” Chuck Herring, an Austin lawyer who has handled whistleblower complaints, said it would make sense for lawmakers to take a second look at the settlement and consider approving the money now that Paxton has been punished through the House impeachment vote.
“Now that he’s gone, you could say, ‘Let’s clean up the aftermath of his wrongdoing and give justice to the people he victimized,’ ” he said.

“The attorney general’s office contends that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect people who report crimes to law enforcement if an elected official, like Paxton, is accused of participating in the crime. A lower court rejected that argument.”

Huh?
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7 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:


“The attorney general’s office contends that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect people who report crimes to law enforcement if an elected official, like Paxton, is accused of participating in the crime. A lower court rejected that argument.”

Huh?

It's technically correct in that the Whistleblower Act applies only to retaliatory actions by state employees.  Paxton argued that as an elected official, he is not a state employee.

Most courts that have addressed that issue in similar contexts agree that elected officials are state employees, but it's a novel issue here.  Chickenshit, but novel.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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4 hours ago, kevwun said:

Leave of Absence means you keep your job, but don't get paid while you are away.  If they are still getting paid, they're on vacation.

I’m not sure it does. I’ll bet you 90 to nothing they are on some kind of paid leave.

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4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Some of my college-educated, white, 50+ year old friends in the suburbs are all about the culture war. Swearing off Bud Light, complaining about the woke culture. When I ask them how they are personally impacted, they're only complaint is that the woke mob is taking away their rights. They can't define what rights they're losing. You could jump to the conclusion that they're upset that they're not allowed to say the n-word, but I don't know them to say it in the first place. And I've known them for 25+ years.

Democrats are doing a poor job of counteracting the culture war rhetoric of the right. The right is very good at hammering home a few items to scare their constituency and attract a few others.

I disagree here.  For the first time in 50 years, the Democrats have an advantage when it comes to the culture wars.  Abortion, Guns, Gays--the polling strongly favors the Democrats' position as to all three.  And as you look at actual electoral results--see, e.g., the supreme court election in Wisconsin--it's working.  

So don't get too concerned that you have troglodyte friends who won't drink Bud Light anymore.  Just take it as a nudge that you need a better class of friends who never drank Bud Light to begin with.

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5 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

The exact same shit he was accused of a month before you voted for him.

Yeah, the whole "Well, this is all news to me...I assure you." schtick is quite conveniently timed.  

I don't have the tech skills, but somebody needs to add to his 20 counts of impeachment, Ken's head on George Bluth's prison head, "I have also committed some light money laundering on behalf of an international crime organization.  I am the worst fucking lawyers."  

noCR, but this has all been out there for public consumption for some time.  Even my dumbass has been calling it for years.  Literally years now.  

If y'all truly cared about him and his policies and values as a man...you'd make sure he didn't have access to any firearms.  Because he'll soon realize, if he hasn't already, the fate that awaits him is pretty fucking grim.  

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5 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Some of my college-educated, white, 50+ year old friends in the suburbs are all about the culture war. Swearing off Bud Light, complaining about the woke culture. When I ask them how they are personally impacted, they're only complaint is that the woke mob is taking away their rights. They can't define what rights they're losing. You could jump to the conclusion that they're upset that they're not allowed to say the n-word, but I don't know them to say it in the first place. And I've known them for 25+ years.

Democrats are doing a poor job of counteracting the culture war rhetoric of the right. The right is very good at hammering home a few items to scare their constituency and attract a few others.

Always ask them to define "woke" and then provide examples of wokeness that they're against.

 

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6 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's technically correct in that the Whistleblower Act applies only to retaliatory actions by state employees.  Paxton argued that as an elected official, he is not a state employee.

Who pays him?

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Shakespeare was right. The evil done by men really does live after them:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton's office.

"If we'd lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them," Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter's War Room podcast on Friday.

"Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation—we would've been on Election Day, I was watching on election night and I knew, when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would've been Texas. We would've been in the same boat. We would've been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would've lost the election," the Republican official

25 years ago, before the GOP’s complete stranglehold on the political process, Texas ranked 14th in the country for ease of voting. Today, Texas ranks 50th, and there are clear reasons why this is the case. Texas grew by 10 million people in ten years between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, with whites comprising only 5% the growth. Rather than making any attempt to appeal to growth sectors within the state, Republicans opted for the predictable. They sought to oppress the votes of blacks, browns and Asians in the state. Their effort to neuter Democratic voter strength in Harris County Is on the beginning. Dallas County is on the clock, because Republicans can count even if they can’t govern worth a damn.

 

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7 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Some background to share - Scott has a mixed record:

Abbott was friendly with some of the whistleblowers and not happy with Paxton.

He can't have been happy that Paxton's former AG staff prepared 3-inch binders of Paxton's defense and put them out in the Texas Senate, or that half-a-dozen AG staffers are going to go defend Paxton.

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On 5/31/2023 at 9:19 AM, Handcruser said:

Can someone put on a bumper sticker what Paxton did or is alleged to have done and what the feds have on him? I haven’t been paying attention and am curious.

On 5/31/2023 at 9:25 AM, Pig Bellmont said:

Don’t forget after the vote against him his (former) staff had 3-inch binders made up of his defense and distributed them to the Senate, which with the Senate being the jury, that’s probably jury tampering.

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But totally reasonable people did not vote for him in the primary and then the run-off, despite a completely reasonable and non-indicted alternative.  And then those people totally smart and sane and able to read other people's mental health did not totally vote for him in the general election.  Because they are totally competent judges of character.  Because no politics because sane people vote for non-insane people all the time.  Despite those candidates covering for money laundering and ponzi scheme crimes protecting the very people they think are coming to Texas to shoot up our shit.  

JFC---it's literally impossible some of you are this fucking stupid.  The fucking guy has admitted to it.  And you're like, "Well, he seems reasonable on clay shooting..."

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8 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

4B1D3019-1AA2-49DA-AD86-0827DC22ACFD.webp.376afc60b122be706961e604642a0d42.webp

What I can believe, but only because I have to visually witness it at least once every other day, is fucking Lobo showing up in the fucking cloak room, where he's Right of probably everyone here, and getting indignant and going full Robert Downy Jr. You People on everyone here as if we're the fucking problem and responsible for Ken Paxton. 

If you want to lecture people, Lobo, head over to the Daily Texan, or better yet, your drinking buddies and cousins and in-laws and yell at them. 

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Wait.   What?  I am honestly confused?  I never voted for Ken Paxton even once, told y'all about his crimes and covering for money laundering schemes years ahead of time but I'm the asshole?  Yeah, that checks out.  Why don't you hand out some pamphlets and let the adults do the real work.

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