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January 6 committee seeks answers from Paxton

Aug 28th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Good. Play hardball and do not let him get away with anything.

Best mugshot ever

The U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has requested communications between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Trump White House officials in the months leading up to the insurrection.

The request was issued this week as a part of a series of letters seeking materials from the National Archives and Records Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and other executive agencies.

Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, demanded that the National Archives hand over “all documents and communications referring or relating to the 2020 election results between White House officials and officials of State Governments.” The document then listed Paxton specifically, along with seven officials from other states.

In the letter, Thompson emphasized the urgency of the request and gave a deadline of no later than Sept. 9 to comply.

“This is our first request for materials, and we anticipate additional requests as our investigation continues,” Thompson wrote.

This demand comes after Paxton spoke at the pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., before the insurrection began, touting his unsuccessful legal effort to overturn the 2020 election.

“We will not quit fighting. We’re Texans, we’re Americans, and the fight will go on,” Paxton told the crowd.

As others have documented, the January 6 committee is asking for a lot, and they’re not fooling around. Paxton was there in DC inciting the crowd, he filed the kind of seditious lawsuit to overturn the election that recently got the Kraken lawyers sanctioned and for which there have been two complaints filed against him, and he’s generally been a remora on Trump’s shark from the beginning. If he doesn’t have something to hide, that will be an upset. All I want from the committee is to not take any bullshit from him. Hit him hard, hit him with subpoenas, and do not let up until you’ve gotten everything there is to be gotten from him.

Why North Texas?

Apr 5th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
15 comments

The Trib reprints a WaPo story about a cluster of Capitol insurrectionists in the Dallas suburbs, and it’s something.

Hope for Trump’s return is fervent in Frisco and across the northern Dallas suburbs, an area of rapid growth and rapidly increasing diversity. Nineteen local residents have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to federal authorities, one of the largest numbers in any place in the country.

Many of the rioters came from the “mainstream of society,” according to the FBI’s Dallas field office, including three real estate agents, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, an oilman and an actor who once appeared on the popular television show “Friday Night Lights.” They were driven by a “salad bowl of grievances,” the FBI said, including anger over the presidential election, white-supremacist ideology and the discredited extremist ideology QAnon, which holds that Trump will save the world from a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

Their groundless claims are being fed by conservative politicians and from the pulpits of large, powerful evangelical churches with teachings that verge on white nationalism, both motivated by fear that they are losing a largely white, conservative enclave that views these changes with suspicion.

More arrests are coming, and North Texas remains a focus for investigators who expect to charge as many as 400 people from across the country in the attack on the Capitol.

[…]

Over the past two decades, Collin County, north of Dallas, more than doubled its population to 1 million, according to census data, with newcomers drawn by the mild weather, good schools, low taxes and the arrival of several big employers and new corporate headquarters, including Toyota, Liberty Mutual and the Dallas Cowboys. The rapid expansion created an air of Disney World built on the clay soil of the Texas plains, one Frisco consultant noted, where everything is new and planned. The median household income is $97,000, well above the U.S. median of $69,000.

But this utopia on the Dallas North Tollway has its fissures, which have deepened in the last year, with debate over pandemic restrictions, the country’s racial reckoning and the divisive 2020 presidential election that pitted neighbor against neighbor and continues to divide. Unlike many other suburban counties in the country that helped sway the election for Biden, Collin County stayed red, with 51% voting for Trump and 46% for Biden.

The county’s rapid growth has increased its diversity — with the Latino and Asian American populations growing, and the white population in decline — causing tensions, some residents say. In 2017, Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere was challenged by an opponent who promised to “keep Plano suburban,” which LaRosiliere, who is Black, said was a “dog whistle” for residents wanting to keep the town white and affluent. LaRosiliere won the four-way nonpartisan race with 52% of the votes, but his “keep Plano suburban” opponent won 42%. This year, Plano City Coucil member Shelby Williams came under fire when he said in a post-riot blog post that “things could be much worse . . . People in many parts of the Muslim world are still slaughtering one another today.”

Frisco Realtor Hava Johnston said some residents feel the area has become “too diverse.”

“They created this perfect little bubble of the way they wanted things … now we’ve got true diversity, and those Christian nationalists are afraid of losing their power,” said Johnston, a Democratic activist and one of the internet sleuths who helped unmask local residents who participated in the Capitol riots. “These are the very people who would do things like have Trump parades every weekend and take a private jet to a riot.”

There’s a lot here, and I’ll get to one specific criticism in a moment, but I personally object to the “Collin County stayed red” line, not because it’s untrue but because it really misstate what has happened in Collin County this past decade. I mean:

2012 – Romney 65.0%, Obama 33.5%
2016 – Trump 55.6%, Clinton 38.9%
2020 – Trump 51.4%, Biden 47.0%

You can say “Collin County stayed red”, as if it were some act of defiance against the prevailing political winds, but come on. Collin County shifted a net 27 points in the Democrats’ direction, at least at the Presidential level, since 2012. That’s a seismic change, and very much in line with what was happening nationally. Collin County didn’t quite make it to blue county status in 2020, but boy howdy has it come a long way.

D Magazine had other complaints, starting with the charge that non-Texan authors who parachute in for this kind of analysis often fail to understand what’s actually happening and miss details that make locals scratch their heads. I have some sympathy with this, though I do think there’s some value in getting an outside perspective sometimes. Honestly, my main beef with this article was more along the lines of “oh God, are we still doing entire stories on the feelings of Trump voters? Make it stop already.” I guess the question of why there were so many insurrectionists from this part of the world is an interesting one, but please give me many more articles about the newly activated and energized Democrats of Collin County to balance it out, thanks. In the meantime, please feel free to blow a raspberry at that blonde realtor from Frisco who may well be the poster child for this whole story.

What is Ken Paxton hiding?

Mar 26th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I was almost tempted to start this post with the rhetorical “Just when you think Ken Paxton couldn’t sink any lower” gambit, but then I realized I have never thought Ken Paxton couldn’t sink any lower. Even with that, this is amazing.

Best mugshot ever

The Texas attorney general’s office is attempting to withhold all messages Ken Paxton sent or received while in Washington for the pro-Donald Trump rally that devolved into a riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Several news organizations in Texas have requested copies of the attorney general’s work-related communications. The Texas Public Information Act guarantees the public’s right to government records — even if those records are stored on personal devices or online accounts of public officials.

After Paxton’s office refused to release copies of his emails and text messages, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, The Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News are working together in an effort to obtain the documents and review Paxton’s open-records practices.

The news outlets discovered that Paxton’s office, which is supposed to enforce the state’s open records laws, has no policy governing the release of work-related messages stored on Paxton’s personal devices. It is unclear whether the office reviews Paxton’s email accounts and phones to look for requested records, or whether the attorney general himself determines what to turn over without any outside checks.

[…]

Amid a massive FBI investigation into the Capitol riot, the public has been eager to understand why and how their elected officials attended the rally. Paxton has refused to release his communications about the event, which could illuminate his real-time reaction to the riot, who booked him as a speaker for the rally and who covered his travel expenses.

As Texas attorney general, Paxton oversees an office of lawyers who determine which records are public or confidential under the law. Any government body in Texas, from police departments to the governor’s office, must seek the agency’s approval to withhold records from the public.

The Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News have requested all of Paxton’s messages from Jan. 5 to Jan. 11. Lauren Downey, the public information coordinator at the Office of the Attorney General, said she didn’t need to release the records because they are confidential attorney-client communications.

Downey sought confirmation from the agency’s open records division, arguing the messages included communications between the attorney general’s executive leadership and its criminal prosecution division to discuss litigation, as well as texts between Paxton and a lawyer in the attorney general’s office regarding “legal services to the state.”

The open records division has 45 business days to issue a ruling on whether the communications should be open to the public. That decision is pending.

James Hemphill, a lawyer and open records expert who serves as a board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said the records described by Downey appear to fall under confidential communications. But it’s odd, he added, that Paxton would have no other routine emails or texts during that six-day time frame that could be released.

“It would seem unusual for every single communication made by any kind of lawyer to be subject to attorney-client privilege,” Hemphill said, cautioning he hasn’t seen the records himself.

Downey also told the Chronicle that the attorney general’s office does not have any written policy or procedures for releasing public documents stored on Paxton’s personal devices or accounts.

It’s a long story involving multiple news outlets, as well as Paxton’s Utah trip during the freeze, which he appears to have been lying about. Part of the problem here is Ken Paxton’s utter contempt for the rule of law, and part of it is that there’s no obvious mechanism for holding him accountable. Filing a lawsuit may eventually result in some of this information turning up – assuming Paxton doesn’t just delete it all, while citing a data retention policy to back his actions up – but who knows how long that could take. For sure, the Republican legislature isn’t going to do anything. The voters get the ultimate say, but that’s a long way off as well, and as long as this communication is being withheld, they don’t have the full story. I know that you already know this, but Ken Paxton is the worst. See Lauren McGaughy’s Twitter thread for more.

Might Republican AGs suffer in court for their seditions?

Feb 8th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

This AP article considers the effect of the ridiculous Ken Paxton lawsuit and the role that the Republican Attorneys General Association played in the insurrection at the Capitol and asks the question from the title.

Best mugshot ever

Some legal experts think the overt political involvement by the Republican attorneys general could have a lasting effect on how judges view legal actions their offices bring.

“States occupy a unique position and an important position” in the courts, said Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political scientist who studies attorneys general. “If it turns out that AGs are no different from another politician or another interest group just looking for an angle trying to get into the courts, the courts could revisit special solicitude.”

The term refers to a state’s ability to unilaterally weigh in on any federal lawsuit, giving attorneys general and their states a say in a wide variety of issues.

Attorneys general are elected to office in most states and frequently use the job as a platform to run for governor or the U.S. Senate. Their offices serve as the legal arm of state governments, and they often band together — almost always with AGs of their own party — to challenge federal policy.

They also file claims on behalf of their state’s residents over consumer affairs and antitrust matters. Every state’s AG’s office, for example, has sued companies over the toll of the opioids crisis.

Most attorneys general also are the top law enforcement officers in their state, prosecuting criminal cases and upholding justice.

Greg Zoeller, a Republican and former Indiana attorney general, said attorneys general could lose the right to file “friend-of-the-court” briefs in any federal case without permission because of the activities of the Republican AGs in support of Trump’s election claims.

But he said the work of prosecuting crimes and protecting consumers is handled mostly by career government lawyers who are not focused on political cases.

“You can still have a very strong law office that represents the best interest of the state, the people, when it comes to consumer protection issues,” he said.

[…]

The push to overturn election results based on unfounded fraud claims did get some GOP pushback. Eight Republican attorneys general opted against joining Paxton’s effort.

One of them, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case — but rule against Texas.

“Federal courts, just like state courts, lack authority to order legislatures to appoint electors without regard to the results of an already-completed election,” he said in a statement last month.

Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections for the liberal advocacy group Common Cause said the filings were so troublesome that she believes there are grounds to disbar the attorneys general who made them.

“When you submit something in court, you’re saying: ‘To the best of my knowledge, the information I’ve given you is true and valid,’” she said.

It’s always nice to think that there will be consequences for illegal or immoral actions, but I’m going to need to see it happen before I put too much faith in the possibility. Ken Paxton is as far out there as any Republican AG, and he’s continuing to file petty lawsuits of questionable merit, and so far he hasn’t been dealt a significant setback. Either the FBI with the Nate Paul case or the voters next year – hopefully both – will be left to do that task. If the courts want to push back even a little before then, that would be fine by me. Let’s just say I’m not expecting much.

How Greg Abbott wants to restrict voting

Feb 6th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

More from that Trib story following the State of the State address.

As part of his State of the State speech, Abbott designated five emergency items, or items that lawmakers can vote on within the first 60 days of session. One of them is “election integrity,” though Abbott did not provide any details in his address. He elaborated in the interview, saying a “starting point” would be wide-ranging legislation from last session that would have made over two dozen changes to election practices, including making it a felony for Texans to vote when they’re ineligible or provide false information on a voter application, even if they do those things unknowingly.

Senate Bill 9, which passed the Senate but never made it to Abbott’s desk in 2019, faced stiff opposition from voting rights groups and some county elections officials, who called it voter suppression masked as a security measure and worried that it would carry stiff criminal penalties for common, innocent mistakes.

When it came to elections, Abbott also said there is a “keen focus on mail-in ballots” and how elections were conducted last year in Harris County. Ahead of the November election, Abbott and other state GOP leaders clashed with the county’s clerk at the time, Chris Hollins, over his plan to send a mail-in ballot application to every registered voters in the county, among other proposals.

In recent months, many Republicans have called for “election integrity” measures after former President Donald Trump and many of his allies falsely alleged that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that widespread fraud occurred, culminating with Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the certification of the election’s results. There is no credible evidence of fraud on a level that would have affected the presidential election results.

Election security is the No. 1 legislative priority of the Republican Party of Texas, whose chairman, Allen West, plans to be an aggressive voice at the Capitol this session when it comes to the party’s eight priorities. He has also been a critic of some of Abbott’s pandemic decisions, fueling speculation that he could challenge the governor in the 2022 primary.

See here for the discussion of emergency powers. I just want to remind everybody that back in 2011 when the Republicans passed the existing voter ID bill, which remains one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, they specifically exempted absentee ballots from voter ID requirements. Why did they do that? The simple answer to that question is that voting by mail used to be an area of Republican dominance, and the Republican legislators did not want to make it any harder for their preferred voters to cast a ballot. But now that Democrats have started voting by mail in larger numbers, all bets are off. That is the reason they’re doing this, all claims of “election integrity” aside, and it annoys me that I never see any mention of that in news stories about this. Voting by mail used to advantage Republicans. Now it doesn’t, and so Republicans want to make it harder. It’s as simple as that, and the same crap is happening all across the country. All of us, the media very much included, need to be clear-eyed about that.

In case that doesn’t set your teeth on edge enough, there’s this.

With Texas’ Republican leadership cataloguing “election integrity” as a top priority this legislative session, House Speaker Dade Phelan on Thursday named state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, as the chair of the House Elections Committee. The panel, which has a Republican majority, typically considers legislation related to voting rules and election law.

Cain, who previously served on the committee, traveled to Pennsylvania in the days after Election Day to work with the Trump campaign. The campaign eventually filed a lawsuit alleging widespread issues with mail-in ballots in the state; a federal judge threw out the lawsuit, finding the president’s team provided “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were not supported by evidence.

Republican claims of election fraud in swing states have been discredited by the federal courts, and election officials and former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr have said there was no evidence of widespread fraud that could have swayed the results of the presidential election.

[…]

“I’m looking forward to getting input from Texans, members, and policy experts in order to better gauge what needs to be done,” Cain said on Thursday when asked about his priorities for the committee. “I believe SB 9 is great starting point though and I’m glad the Governor made election integrity an emergency item.”

Voting rights advocates on Thursday decried Cain’s appointment given his involvement with the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election and the role it played in fueling the Jan. 6 deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“Cain was so invested in undermining our free and fair elections that he took his conspiracy theories on the road to fight against the will of Pennsylvania voters,” said H. Drew Galloway, the executive director of the MOVE Texas Action Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for young voters. “This appointment is a slap in the face to every Texas voter who braved a pandemic to make their voices heard last November and the generations of Black and Brown activists who have fought for the right to vote.”

Democrats are not going to be able to stop any of this on their own, and the courts are hardly allies in this fight. Either Congress acts to pass that massive voting rights bill and we get some relief, or we better get used to ever-ratcheting restrictions on who can vote and how. There’s no time to waste. The DMN has more.

That poll about Ted Cruz resigning

Feb 4th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

It’s not really that great, to be honest.

Not Ted Cruz

Former President Trump’s popularity in deep-red Texas is underwater following the mob attack by his supporters of the Capitol, according to a poll from the progressive group Data For Progress commissioned for MoveOn.org.

The poll found that at least 51 percent of likely voters in Texas said they had at least a “somewhat” unfavorable view of the former president following the events of Jan. 6, with 42 percent saying their view of Trump was “very unfavorable.”

Forty-nine percent of likely voters had unfavorable views of President Biden, while 42 percent of likely voters had unfavorable views of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The poll also found that 36 percent of GOP voters in the state would support barring Trump from running for office again, possibly the most significant break from the former president among his base registered by polling so far.

The poll data is here. I couldn’t find a blog post or press release on the Data for Progress website about this, just their tweet that linked to the data file. The poll is of 751 “likely voters” (remember, DFP uses web panels for their polls), and this is what I mean by “not that great”:

Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Ted Cruz? Favorable 49%, unfavorable 42%
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Beto O’Rourke? Favorable 33%, unfavorable 46%
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Donald Trump? Favorable 48%, unfavorable 51%
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Joe Biden? Favorable 48%, unfavorable 49%

They had separate responses for “very” and “somewhat” favorable and unfavorable, and I combined the two for the numbers above. The Biden number isn’t bad, the Trump number is okay, the Beto and Cruz numbers are lousy. I would have liked to have seen a question about Greg Abbott, but given the above he probably would have done pretty well, and I would have been unhappy about that, so maybe it’s just as well. Beto’s “Favorable” number is likely dragged down a bit by having 21% of Democrats respond “Haven’t heard enough to say”, but even that is not great, since you’d like to think that likely-voting Dems would be sufficiently informed about him. (This may also have been the option chosen by Dems who were more or less neutral and didn’t want to round up or round down.) Only seven percent of Republicans gave a similar response about Cruz.

After that there was a question about supporting or opposing “former President Donald Trump from holding elected office in the future”, which referenced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his role in inciting the Capitol riot (49-44 support). They asked a couple of similarly-worded questions about Cruz, then concluded with a simple “Do you think that Senator Ted Cruz should resign?”, which went 51-49 for Yes. Neither of these things will happen so this is more slogan than data, but there you have it. It is what it is, but I don’t think it amounts to much. The Texas Signal has more.

The “Resign, Ted” caucus

Jan 26th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

They’re not going to get what they’re asking for, but they can still get something.

Not Ted Cruz

More than 70 Texas organizations are calling for the resignations of Sen. Ted Cruz, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the 16 Texas representatives who voted on Jan. 6 against certifying election results that formalized President Joe Biden’s win.

The grassroots coalition is led by civic engagement group Indivisible TX Lege and includes organizations determined to hold Texas’ elected officials accountable for their role in inspiring and encouraging the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump. More than 850 individuals have also signed a letter in support of the effort to expel the Texas officials.

“They have made a mockery of democracy by embracing the fascist rhetoric of a far-right figurehead with a far-right movement behind him,” the group’s statement reads. “They have suppressed votes while lying about the nature of our election system, sullying our elections while opposing their legally legitimate losses. They have proven themselves entirely unfit for office. They must resign.”

[…]

Many Houston-area groups are among the coalition, including Black Lives Matter Houston, CAIR Houston, Harris County Young Democrats, FIEL Houston, Say Her Name HTX and Sunrise Houston. Texas House Reps. Ron Reynolds and Vikki Goodwin also signed on as supporters of the call for resignations.

“They were perpetuating a fraud,” Reynolds said. “They knew the electoral process was sound, it had already been vetted, it had already been validated, and they were simply attempting to overthrow the will of the American people.”

Candice Matthews of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats said the situation goes “beyond politics.”

“This is about the foundation of our democracy,” she said. “If we sanction these traitors to go back to work and normalize this behavior, we will never get past what happened on Jan. 6.”

All this is correct, but let’s keep some perspective here. The large majority of these organizations are Democratic or Dem-aligned. The chances that Cruz or Paxton or any of those members of Congress will listen to a word they say are less than the chances that I will be named the next head coach of the Texans. I guarantee, there are already fundraising emails in the works about how the radical left is attacking them for their bold and principled stance in favor of election integrity. Don’t expect any sudden vacancies, is what I’m saying.

All these organizations are smart enough to know this, of course. The goal here isn’t resignations, because that’s not going to happen, but to rebrand these politicians and make their seditious actions stick with them. Can they make Cruz and Paxton et al toxic to mainstream corporate America and dry up their fundraising? Can they change how they are covered and portrayed by the media, so that their anti-democratic activity front and center in any story that includes them? Can they help drive this narrative so that less-engaged voters are aware of it, and are aware of the need for them to take action in the next elections? Even if it’s just helping them know that Ted Cruz spends more time Twitter fighting than doing anything to make their lives better? These things are more achievable. That’s the way to think about it, and to think about what you can do to help. There have to be consequences for what they did. This is a part of that, and we all have a role to play in it.

Ethics complaint filed against Cruz and Hawley

Jan 23rd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
19 comments

Likely to have little to no effect, but one has to express one’s disapproval in as many appropriate manners as one can.

Not Ted Cruz

Seven Democrats in the U.S. Senate have filed an ethics complaint against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for his role lending “legitimacy” to false claims of election fraud ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

In a letter addressed to the Senate Committee on Ethics, the Democratic Senators argue that Cruz and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, “made future violence more likely.” The Democrats called for the committee to conduct an investigation into the two Republican senators and possibly consider “disciplinary action,” which could include the rare move of expulsion from the Senate. The Constitution also grants Congress the ability to censure its members, which is essentially just a strong condemnation from the chamber.

Leading up to the destructive Capitol riot, Cruz, Hawley and other Congressional Republicans vowed to object to the 2020 election results based on former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him. There is no evidence of widespread fraud on a level that would have affected the result. Even after a mob of Trump supporters desecrated the U.S. Capitol, Cruz objected to certifying Arizona’s electoral results and he’s been in political hot water ever since.

[…]

The Senate’s ethics manual lays out various rules for U.S. Senators on campaign activity, conflicts of interest, gifts and what’s considered “improper conduct.” Once an ethics complaint is filed, the manual states that a preliminary inquiry is to be carried out “to conclude that a violation within the jurisdiction of the Committee has occurred.” The process includes allowing the accused to officially respond to the complaints.

At any point in the investigation, the Senate ethics committee can hold a public or executive hearing to cross-examine documents and hear testimonies.

Expelling a sitting Senator requires a two-thirds vote in the chamber while a censuring only requires a majority vote. But not many federal lawmakers have faced such discipline. According to senate.gov, only 15 senators have been expelled since the 18th century — all for their allegiance to the Confederacy — and only nine have been censured between 1811 and 1990 for a variety of “transgressions” like fighting in the chamber.

Expulsion has a snowball’s chance in hell, but a censure is possible, and may even attract a couple of Republican votes. It may not seem like much, but I think it’s correct and appropriate to put an official stamp of public disapproval on what Cruz and Hawley did. This wasn’t politics, it really was fanning the flames of insurrection, and the fact that these two seditious losers went ahead with their fantasy-based objections to the 2020 Electoral College results just shows the depth of their depravity. I’m going to get more and more angry if I keep going with this post, so let me end by saying that while this falls well short of what they deserve, it’s necessary. Even small consequences still count as consequences. NPR has more.

State Capitol closed again

Jan 17th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

At least through Inauguration Day, which is to say Wednesday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety abruptly announced the closure of the state Capitol Friday evening after uncovering new intelligence that intensified security concerns and prompted the agency to ramp up security further.

The closure affects the building and the Capitol grounds, which only reopened to the public this month after being closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and damage that officials said protestors did to state property during protests in May and June.

The closure begins Saturday and continues through Wednesday.

In a statement, DPS Director Col. Steve McCraw said that “the Texas Department of Public Safety is aware of armed protests planned at the Texas State Capitol and violent extremists who may seek to exploit constitutionally protected events. As a result, DPS has deployed additional personnel and resources to the Capitol and are working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Austin Police Department to monitor events and to enforce the rule of law.”

Authorities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia were bracing Friday for what law enforcement said could be violent protests this weekend through Wednesday’s inauguration of Joe Biden. The caution stems from intelligence gained after the deadly pro-Donald Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Earlier this week, McCraw told state senators that authorities are monitoring multiple sects that could threaten Capitol security in coming days but stressed that the agency stood ready to neutralize any possible attack.

He said the groups have different political ideologies with 200 to 600 members each, according to three senators who attended the briefings. The senators did not want to comment publicly because DPS deemed the information confidential and said that releasing it could jeopardize safety.

McCraw said officials have ample troopers and other officers to respond should one of the groups travel to Austin to protest or riot. Their bigger concern, however, is that if the groups consolidate and mobilize together, that would pose a greater risk and prompt officials to call in reinforcements, the senators said.

We all know what this is about. I just hope it turns out to be a lot more talk than action. But whatever happens or doesn’t happen between now and January 20, the long-term threat isn’t going away and needs to be taken very seriously. The Chron has more.

Why would he condemn something he supported?

Jan 14th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
36 comments

We know who and what Ken Paxton is.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is the only state attorney general to decline to join letters over the past week condemning the Capitol riot.

In a Jan. 12 letter, 50 state and territorial attorneys general who belong to the National Association of Attorneys General denounced the “lawless violence.” The three remaining state attorneys general not included in that letter wrote their own Wednesday, leaving Paxton as the only holdout.

Paxton is a staunch Trump supporter who co-chaired the re-election group Lawyers for Trump. He spoke at the “Save America” rally at the Capitol in the hours prior to the riot last week, telling the crowds “we will not quit fighting” to overturn the election results. Neither Paxton’s office nor his campaign spokesman responded to requests for comment.

“The events of January 6 represent a direct, physical challenge to the rule of law and our democratic republic itself,” the Jan. 12 letter read. “Together, we will continue to do our part to repair the damage done to institutions and build a more perfect union. As Americans, and those charged with enforcing the law, we must come together to condemn lawless violence, making clear that such actions will not be allowed to go unchecked.”

In a separate letter Wednesday, the attorneys general of Indiana, Montana and Louisiana wrote: “In all forms and all instances, violent acts carried out in the name of political ideology have no place in any of our United States.”

To be fair, you can’t expect a serial lawbreaker to venerate the rule of law. It just gets in his way. Also, that “rally” he was at was organized in part by people who also helped organize the storming of the Capitol. Like I said, why would he condemn something he supports?

UPDATE: Here’s the Trib story, which contains this bit of tangential business at the end:

On Wednesday, Paxton’s office was also hit with the loss of one of its top staffers.

Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins is leaving the agency, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The exit comes in the wake of a scandal at the agency, and also Paxton’s controversial lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the election results, which Hawkins — the agency’s appellate expert — did not sign onto. Hawkins has not answered questions about his decision to leave or why his name did not appear on the case.

Perhaps some day we’ll hear that story. In the meantime, chalk this up as another example of Ken Paxton being bad at his job.

You can’t escape your culpability, Ted

Jan 10th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
41 comments

The stench will be on you forever, Ted.

Not Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has sharpened his criticism of President Donald Trump, saying the president’s rhetoric “certainly contributed to the violence that occurred” as Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

But the Texas Republican — who led an effort in the Senate to delay certifying Trump’s loss — is showing no signs of contrition amid growing calls for his resignation as many blame him for stoking the post-election strife that culminated with the attack on the Capitol.

Cruz objected to Arizona’s electoral votes less than an hour before demonstrators breached the building, pointing to “unprecedented” — and unproven — allegations of voter fraud. Even some of Cruz’s Republican colleagues said he should have been working to dispel those allegations, rather than airing them in Congress.

Asked in an interview with Hearst Newspapers on Friday whether he believes there was widespread fraud in the election, Cruz responded: “I don’t know if there was sufficient fraud to alter the outcome, I have never said that there was. What I said was there were serious allegations of fraud, and those allegations need to be examined carefully.”

In objecting to Arizona’s results, Cruz was pushing for an “emergency audit,” which he argues could have provided the final say Trump supporters needed. His objection was initially supported by 10 other senators, though two changed their minds after the riot.

“It would have been a much better solution, it would have helped bring this country together, it would have helped heal the divisions we have in this country and help reestablish trust in our democratic system,” Cruz said. “What I was working to do is find a way to reestablish widespread trust in the system.”

Critics accuse Cruz of doing the opposite by ignoring the fact that Trump’s claims had been thrown out of dozens of courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. They call his objection a craven attempt to appeal to Trump supporters and raise money for his own presidential bid.

[…]

Texas political experts and operatives say the blowback Cruz is facing now is unlikely to last as long as some expect.

“I’m not sure the criticism of some of his fellow Republicans, elites, or certainly Democrats, really make that much difference in the medium and long term,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “The only thing that’s ever really diluted the support of Republican voters in Texas for Cruz was when he was crosswise with Trump, and he knows that — and we’re seeing evidence he knows that.”

Cruz’s approval rating among Republicans in Texas hit its lowest point — 55 percent — in June 2016, at the height of his primary battle with Trump, Henson said. By October 2018 it had risen back to 86 percent and Henson said it hasn’t wavered much since.

“I think that as far as the voters go, the people who decide primary elections in Texas and elect Republicans in Texas … many of them are sticking with President Trump still and sticking with Ted Cruz still,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist in Texas.

Steinhauser, who is an outspoken critic of Trump but a supporter of Cruz, said in his conversations with family, friends and other Republicans in Texas over the last 48 hours, “there are still just a huge number of people who are just backing up Donald Trump’s line on this.”

Still, Steinhauser said, it’s significant that criticism of Trump is growing among Republicans, including Cruz.

“Everybody in Texas, whether it’s going to get my car fixed today, they’re talking about it. Going to get a drink with a friend last night, they’re talking about it,” Steinhauser said. “It’s not arguing about the ExIm Bank. Real people in Houston, Texas, are talking about this today.

“He probably does feel like he needs to explain himself.”

I think the thing about Cruz, and the reason why he is so widely despised, is that for as smart as he supposedly is, he treats everyone else like we’re stupid. It’s not just that he lies, it’s that he clearly doesn’t think anyone can see through his transparent bullshit. Maybe his approval rating among Republicans hasn’t moved much from the 86% he had in October of 2018, but that was right before he came very close to losing. That doesn’t seem like a solid place to be, if you ask me.

In the meantime, we know he’s not going to resign or be expelled, but we can enjoy the clamor for those things to happen.

Well, someone needs to make a motion for that to happen, I assume, so…

There’s not one but two Chron editorials calling on Cruz to resign – the second one also calls out Ken Paxton and the sixteen Texas members of Congress who supported the challenge to the electoral votes. Neither that nor the expulsion are going to happen, of course, but we can dream for a minute. And we can work like hell to make this happen, too.

“I think they should be just flat beaten the next time they run,” Biden said, when asked if Cruz and another Republican senator, Josh Hawley of Missouri, ought to step down. “I think the American public has a real good clear look at who they are. They’re part of the big lie, the big lie.”

From your lips to God’s ears, Mr. President. Please note the best thing you can do to help is have a great term and clean up the ginormous mess that Trump left behind, with Ted Cruz’s help. The better off we all are in four years’ time, the better the odds that Ted Cruz will become a private citizen again.

On prosecuting the insurrectionists

Jan 9th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
30 comments

This is a good start.

While federal prosecutors in the nation’s capital will likely tackle the bulk of criminal charges for the perpetrators of Wednesday’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Ryan K. Patrick is among a growing number of U.S. attorneys around the country vowing to prosecute anyone from their regions who traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate.

More than a dozen U.S. attorneys from Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland have made statements that they’d go after people in their districts who made the trip to Washington.

Patrick, who represents the Southern District of Texas, commonly abbreviated SDTX, tweeted Wednesday, “What happened today in Washington was despicable and illegal. Storming a government building is not a protest, it’s anarchy. Arrest them, charge them, and incarcerate them.”

And he added, “And if these clowns today don’t think the capitol police, FBI, FPS and others won’t be poring over open source and other video to make cases, they’re wrong. If any of these leads points to SDTX, we’re on it.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray promised in a statement Thursday to investigate the crowds of participants: “Make no mistake: With our partners, we will hold accountable those who participated in yesterday’s siege of the Capitol.”

[…]

Reports of Capitol mob participants are already cropping up in Texas.

A Texas attorney who videos appear to show participated in the violent mob that took over the Capitol was identified by a journalist.

Paul MacNeal Davis, an attorney eligible to practice law in Texas and based in Frisco, was terminated from his position at Goosehead Insurance, a company with offices in Houston and across Texas.

The video was originally posted to Instagram by an account that appears to belong to Davis. The same account posted a message to followers Thursday morning stating, “I already lost my job because of the Twitter mob. I’m not upset. I’m thankful to be suffering for righteousness and freedom.”

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is investigating whether a jail lieutenant broke policy or any laws by attending the pro-Trump rally that later turned into the mob.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said 46-year-old Roxanne Mathai, an eight-year veteran with the department, posted selfies and photos of the crowd in Washington to her Facebook page, identifying herself as a BCSO employee.

Justice Department officials in Washington will likely pursue cases that involve violence, theft, property damage, criminal mischief, trespassing or knowingly entering or remaining in restricted building or grounds without permission, Patrick said. The department handles theses cases because there is no district attorney in Washington. But there are charges local districts can file as well, on their own or in coordination with “main justice” in Washington.

If someone involved in the melee lived in the sprawling 43-county Southern District, Patrick said, he would investigate whether the person planned in advance to travel to Washington to incite a riot.

Here’s another seditious chucklehead to investigate, though I’d guess she’s in a different district. These guys weren’t hiding their motives or intentions, so by all means look into all possibilities, but do keep in mind that just what was done in the Capitol will keep prosecutors and law enforcement very busy. And by all means, think big.

Supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol, breaking windows and stealing things, could face charges including sedition, insurrection and rioting, Washington, D.C.’s top federal prosecutor said on Thursday.

“All of those charges are on the table,” Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin told reporters in a call, when asked about possible charges of sedition, rioting or insurrection.

“We’re not going to keep anything out of our arsenal.”

The Justice Department has filed 55 criminal cases about events this week, Sherwin said, some pre-dating Wednesday’s assault on the seat of government, including the arrest of far-right Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on Monday.

Sherwin repeatedly said no suspects in Wednesday’s riots would be ruled out – even when asked whether this could include Capitol Police who may have been complicit or Trump himself for urging protesters to march on the Capitol at a rally on Wednesday.

“We’re looking at all actors here and anyone that had a role, and the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”

Oh, and did we mention that a Capitol police officer died as a result of injuries sustained during this riot? I want to see a lot of people charged with being accessories to his death. The point here is to make the price of this exercise in fascism as steep as possible for as many people as possible. It’s by far the best way to make future such events less likely.

And if all that is not enough:

As horrible as this was, this could have been so much worse. Get every last one of them arrested and convicted. Daily Kos has more.

What to do about Ted and Kenny?

Jan 8th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
28 comments

You wouldn’t think it would be possible for Ted Cruz to become more loathesome, but if you think that you seriously underestimate him.

Not Ted Cruz

Two nights before the Electoral College certification in Congress, Ted Cruz was in vintage form.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas was calling in to a friendly conservative radio host — Mark Levin — and setting up Wednesday’s vote to be the kind of intraparty line in the sand that has powered his political rise.

By then, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had made clear that he opposed objections to certifying Joe Biden’s election as the next president. But Cruz and 10 other GOP senators announced they would still object unless Congress agreed to an “emergency audit” of the presidential election results.

Cruz told Levin that there were some conservatives “who in good conscience” disagree with his view of Congress’ role in certifying the presidential election results, and that he had talked to them and did not fault them. On the other hand, Cruz said, there were “some Republicans who are not conservatives but who are piously and self-righteously preening” when it comes to the issue.

In spearheading the group of objectors, Cruz arguably upstaged U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who announced his plan to object three days earlier — and, like Cruz, is considered a potential 2024 presidential contender.

But on Wednesday, what Cruz might have thought was a savvy political play took an alarming turn: Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were considering Cruz’s objection. Three people suffered medical emergencies during the siege and died; their deaths were in addition to another woman who was shot by a Capitol police officer.

Cruz denounced the violence but incurred a fierce backlash from critics in both parties, who said his drive to question the election results — and appease the president and his supporters ahead of a possible 2024 run — helped fan the flames of anger among Trump supporters. Prominent Texas Democrats called for him to resign. Many others suggested he’d played an inciting role in one of the darkest days in modern American history.

Politically, it was a high-stakes distillation of GOP tactics in the era of Trump.

“His challenge of the Electoral College votes helps him among core Trump supporters but risks further damaging his political standing among rank-and-file Republicans like moderates and suburban swing voters who have traditionally formed a stable winning coalition for Republicans in Texas and nationally,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, who added, “Siding with Trump is risky.”

Few people can pull of smarm and condescension at such a high level, but Cruz makes it look easy. The political environment was very favorable to Democrats in 2018 in large part because of anger against Donald Trump – and, it would seem, his absence on the ballot – and that went even further in the Senate race, where Cruz and his extreme unlikability took it the extra mile. Maybe a better politician, or at least someone who more closely resembles a normal human being, could get that to simmer down over time, but Cruz never misses a beat. He’s cast his lot with the Trumper deplorables, and maybe that’s his best bet to get an edge in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. All I know is, the more people who are sick of his shit, the better. Whether he runs for President or Senate or both in 2024 (remember that legally, he can do that in Texas), I expect we’ll be able to drum up some enthusiasm against him.

Having said all that, I’m unfortunately quite ambivalent about any effort to get him expelled from the Senate. I’ve no doubt that plenty of his Republican colleagues in the Senate also despise him, but voting to boot him out, which will take a non-trivial number of Republicans to happen, is a heavy lift. Just the act of putting a partisan target on his back like that will force some of them to defend him, and that’s the last thing we want to do. Chuck Schumer takes over as Senate Majority Leader on January 22, two days into the Biden administration. There’s a ton of vital stuff that needs to happen right away, from COVID relief to voting rights and much more, and the last thing we’re going to need is a sideshow. And look, as much as I’d love to see Cruz get the heave-ho, even if it did happen Greg Abbott would get to appoint his replacement, who almost by definition will be able to work better with his Republican mates. Where’s the upside in that? Let him stay where he’s mostly going to be ineffective and might help keep his caucus divided.

Now, Ken Paxton, on the other hand…

Best mugshot ever

On Wednesday morning, Ken Paxton stood in front of a roaring crowd, reminding a sea of President Donald Trump’s supporters that the president “is a fighter” and his backers must be, too.

“We’re here. We will not quit fighting,” he said, slamming Republican officials in Georgia who have stood by President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there. “We are Texans, we are Americans, and we’re not quitting.”

But by the evening — after members of the crowd he had invited to Washington, D.C., stirred up with false claims about election fraud, resorted to violence, smashing windows and scaling walls to breach the nation’s Capitol in a mob that forced members of Congress to flee and left at least one woman dead — he had claimed they were not his ilk at all.

“These are not Trump supporters,” he falsely claimed on Twitter and Facebook, citing incorrect reports that the pro-Trump mob that invaded the Capitol had been infiltrated by liberal antifa activists.

[…]

On Thursday, Grand Prairie state Rep. Chris Turner, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, called for an investigation into Paxton’s role in Wednesday’s riot, leaving the door open to curbing the power of his office, restricting its budget, even censure and impeachment.

“From filing a fraudulent lawsuit that fueled unhinged conspiracy theories about a free and fair election, to egging on the crowd of insurrectionists in Washington, D.C., Paxton has played a major role in creating the national crisis that culminated with the first breach of our nation’s capital since the War of 1812,” Turner said. “Even today, Paxton has used social media to spread lies about yesterday’s acts of violence and insurrection.”

In December, Paxton’s support for Trump took the form of a widely panned, and ultimately rejected, lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to toss the election results in four battleground states that had handed the White House to Joe Biden. The lawsuit leaned on discredited claims of election fraud in the battleground states.

Paxton finds himself in a precarious political position, even before Wednesday’s disastrous events. Since October, he has been embroiled in a scandal after eight of his top aides in the attorney general’s office told authorities they believed he was breaking the law by doing a series of favors for a political donor.

Texas Republicans — many of whom stayed quiet for the past five years as Paxton battled felony securities fraud charges — came forward to express their disapproval. Some fellow conservatives, including his former top aide U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, have called for his resignation. An FBI investigation into Paxton’s conduct is reportedly moving ahead full-throttle, and in the meantime, the fresh criminal allegations are poised to impose tens of millions of dollars in costs to his constituents: Texas taxpayers.

Paxton has been in hot water before, and often escaped it only to climb higher politically, galvanizing support from the Republican party’s right flank. He alienated some with a long shot run for Texas House speaker, then got elected to the state Senate. He has characterized long-running felony securities fraud charges as a political witch hunt, much as Trump did in Washington.

Still, Paxton may have fewer defenders now than ever before.

At a low point in his rollercoaster political career, Paxton is betting on the Trump base to bring him back up the hill, lending the legitimacy of office to debunked claims that have motivated violence.

Here, I think the calculus is a little different. Opposing Paxton’s need for need for millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees should be easy enough, and will provide a test as to whether his wings can get clipped a bit. I don’t expect much more than that, for the same reason I don’t expect even the biggest Cruz-hating Republicans in the Senate to support a motion to expel him, but we can certainly make him more toxic, and harder for his buddies to defend. Paxton had the second-worst showing in 2018, right behind Ted Cruz, and I think it’s fair to say that patience is a little thin for him. Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and the rest have to consider the possibility that Paxton and his FBI investigation – even if Trump swoops in with a pardon – will be a burden on them in 2022. I’m sure they believe they’ll be re-elected anyway, but who needs the headache?

What they do about it is less clear. They could support a primary challenger – more likely, they’d just not get in a challenger’s way – or they could just avoid talking about Paxton as much as possible. Or they can just grit their teeth and stand by their man. I’m not listing the “quietly push him to not run for re-election” option, because I think it’s pretty clear that’s not going to work. So what we need to do is help keep the spotlight on our felonious and insurrectionist AG. There’s a petition to sign that calls for his resignation or impeachment, if you’re the petition-signing type. But mostly, just make sure everyone that you know also knows what a terrible person he is. We’re going to have to throw him out the old-fashioned way, so we’d better get to work on it.

Impeach him again

Jan 7th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
50 comments

This is Donald Trump’s fault. All of it, though he did have plenty of assistance. Impeach him again, convict him this time, and then arrest him on the way out the door. There had been a call for censure before yesterday’s appalling disgrace, and I applaud Rep. Colin Allred for supporting that call, but we’re way past that point now.

And never forget that Ken Paxton had traveled to DC to be there for this. Never forget Ted Cruz sent a fundraising email in the immediate aftermath. Every day, they should both should be reminded of this.

All of Trump’s lickspittle seditious enablers, from Paxton to Ted Cruz to Louie Gohmert to Dan Crenshaw and more, should resign in shame, delete all their social media accounts, and never speak in public again, but only after they finally, finally, disavow Trump. Assuming they’re even capable of that. I don’t have words strong enough to adequately condemn all this.

One last thing: Given the failure of the DC police to stop or apprehend these thugs, it’s now on President Biden’s Justice Department to do a thorough review of all the video, news stories, social media posts, and anything else, and then arrest every single person they can identify that was inside the Capitol. None of them should be allowed to get away with this. Those who were just there for the lulz and didn’t invade the building should be named and shamed.