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State Bar lawsuit against Paxton survives motion to dismiss

Feb 2nd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
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Good news.

The only criminal involved

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton must face an ethics lawsuit by state attorney regulators over a case he brought challenging results of the 2020 election, according to a court ruling posted on Monday.

Judge Casey Blair on Friday denied Paxton’s bid to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds. Blair said he was not ruling on the merits of the case.

[…]

The ruling is a setback for Paxton, who had argued that his work as the top Texas state lawyer was beyond the reach of Texas attorney ethics regulators. Potential penalties if the case succeeds could include suspension or disbarment.

The Texas State Bar, an agency that oversees licensed attorneys in the state, filed the lawsuit against Paxton in state court in Dallas last May. The complaint said Paxton made “dishonest” statements in a lawsuit that sought to toss 2020 election votes in four states.

The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the election challenge in December 2020.

Paxton’s lawyers told the Texas court that the bar’s allegations were tied to his “performance of his official duties” and that seeking to discipline him “is tantamount to a judicial veto over the exercise of executive discretion.”

The state bar countered that Texas attorney conduct rules “apply to any attorney engaged in the practice of law regardless of their position.”

Technically, this lawsuit was filed in Collin County, per State Bar rules. Both sides filed their briefs in July, and the hearing was in August. Paxton’s argument was basically that the State Bar had no authority over him in this matter, which the judge (a Republican from Kaufman County) rejected.

Assuming this doesn’t get appealed or is upheld on appeal, there will be a hearing on the merits. If that goes well, we may finally get some form of accountability for our lawless Attorney General. Note that a similar lawsuit filed against Paxton’s First Assistant Brent Webster was dismissed in September when the judge in that case bought the same argument about separation of powers. That ruling is under appeal; if there’s been any further news about it, I’ve not seen it.

So there you have it. Stay patient, there’s still a long way to go. MSNBC has more.

State Bar complaint against Ted Cruz was dismissed

Oct 19th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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This story ran a few days ago.

Not Ted Cruz

A lawyer group that brought ethics complaints against Trump attorneys is trying to make it tougher for lawyers to use the legal system to overturn elections.

The group, called the 65 Project, aims to change bar rules of professional conduct in 50 states and the District of Columbia to eliminate “fraudulent and malicious lawsuits” against fair election results.

“Lawyers purport to be self-regulatory and special stewards of the rule of law,” Paul Rosenzweig, a group advisory board member, told reporters Wednesday. “They failed in that responsibility” with the 2020 election.

The effort is a new front in the group’s self-described battle to protect democracy from abuse of the legal system. 65 Project has already filed 55 state bar ethics complaints against lawyers for former President Donald Trump over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The group’s targets have included former Foley & Lardner partner Cleta Mitchell, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and lawyers Joseph diGenova and Boris Epshteyn.

Part of 65 Project’s new effort includes proposing rules to prevent attorneys in public office from violating attorney standards by amplifying false statements about elections.

The group is focusing initially on about a dozen states, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Texas, and Pennsylvania, and DC, said Michael Teter, a former Utah assistant attorney general who is Project 65’s managing director.

See here for the background. The Bloomberg Law story says that all of the 65 Project’s complaints are active, but that is not accurate. According to the DMN, which I was able to quickly peruse before the paywall came up, the complaint was dismissed by the State Bar of Texas on June 13, a few weeks after it was filed. The reason, as noted in the sub-head of the story, is that the State Bar said they lacked oversight since Cruz was acting as a Senator and not a lawyer; their dismissal letter didn’t address the merits of the complaint. A minor consolation, that. We are still waiting for a ruling in the complaint against Ken Paxton; a ruling by a different judge in the case against Paxton deputy Brent Webster does not bode well for the complainants, but I suppose it’s not over till it’s over. There’s still a possible appeal of that ruling, which as far as I know has not yet been filed. I fear all of them will get away with it, which is too depressing to contemplate. We’ll know soon enough.

District court judge dismisses State Bar complaint against Brent Webster

Sep 21st, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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This is a bad ruling, and it needs to be appealed.

A Texas district judge has dismissed a professional misconduct lawsuit against a top aide of Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to discipline them for their effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Milam County Judge John W. Youngblood ruled last week that his court lacked the jurisdiction to rule on the matter, agreeing with the attorney general’s argument that doing so would violate the separation of powers doctrine by interfering in an executive branch matter.

“To find in the commission’s favor would stand for a limitation of the Attorney General’s broad power to file lawsuits on the state’s behalf, a right clearly supported by the Texas Constitution and recognized repeatedly by Texas Supreme Court precedent,” Youngblood wrote.

A similar case filed by the State Bar against Paxton is still before a Collin County judge and has not yet been decided.

[…]

Jim Harrington, a member of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a coalition of lawyers including two former State Bar presidents, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the State Bar, called the ruling a “legal charade.” The group also filed complaints that prompted the bar to file suits against Paxton and Webster.

“The logic of the judge’s decision is that, if a lawyer works for the Attorney General, there is no way to hold the lawyer accountable for ethical violations and professional misconduct,” Harrington said in a statement. “In other words, the attorney general’s office is above the law. That is contrary to the principle of the Constitution, and we hope the State Bar will appeal the ruling.”

Ratner, a co-founder of the group and a Maryland attorney, said he, too, was disappointed in the ruling and added that it misconstrued the premise of the suit.

“While separation of powers authorizes the Attorney General to decide what lawsuits to file on the State’s behalf, we believe it does not authorize him to make misrepresentations and dishonest statements to a court in violation of his duties as a Texas-licensed lawyer,” Ratner said. “That’s what’s involved here.”

See here for the background, and here for a copy of the letter the judge sent. Not a formal opinion, though I suppose he could still write one, just a one page letter. Obviously, if this judge fully bought into Ken Paxton’s sleazy and self-serving line of defense, it doesn’t bode well for the complaint against him. I think Jim Harrington has this exactly right, and I hope the State Bar has the wisdom and the guts to appeal this. Anything less would be a dereliction of their duty. The Trib has more.

Paxton’s State Bar disciplinary hearing

Aug 26th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

We are slowly moving towards finally having some kind of result in this saga.

Best mugshot ever

Lawyers for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued Wednesday that a Kaufman County judge should toss a lawsuit alleging he acted unethically in a legal challenge that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The first public hearing in the case inside a near-empty Kaufman County courtroom was not to determine the merit of the lawsuit lodged by a disciplinary commission of the state bar, but whether the group can seek sanctions against Texas’ top lawyer.

Paxton’s lawyers said the case, which could threaten his law license, is an unconstitutional attempt to control his office’s work and could have a chilling effect on future attorneys general. But an attorney for the commission countered that all lawyers should be subject to the same rules of professional conduct, no matter their position.

Judge Casey Blair, a Republican, did not issue a decision from the bench Wednesday. The outcome could establish the limits of the commission’s power to sanction lawyers who serve in high-ranking elected positions.

Any ruling will likely be appealed, meaning it could be months before the bar’s complaint over Paxton’s 2020 election lawsuit is heard in court, if ever.

[…]

In the hearing Wednesday, Christopher Hilton, a state attorney representing Paxton, argued that if the court allows the lawsuit to go forward, then “every future attorney general will have to fear for their law license rather than represent the state of Texas to the best of their ability and the way their voters expect that they would do.

“They would be hamstrung on unelected bureaucrats,” he said.

Royce LeMoine, a lawyer for the commission, said Paxton is being sued for his actions as a lawyer, not as the state’s attorney general, and that this is not a “select prosecution.”

“The commission’s disciplinary rules do not violate the respondent’s ability to advocate for his clients and the state of Texas,” LeMoine told the judge.

See here, here, and here for the previous updates. The Chron had a preview story on Tuesday.

“I hope it proceeds,” said Jim Harrington, one of the Texas lawyers who filed the State Bar complaint. “I hope [the judge] bites the bullet and denies the plea because it’s the right thing to do.”

[…]

In seeking to dismiss the disciplinary case, Paxton’s lawyers argue that it would violate the separation of powers doctrine for the Texas courts to “police” what they say was an executive branch decision. They also claim Paxton is protected by sovereign immunity, the legal principle that generally shields public officials from lawsuits.

In a separate motion, the attorney general’s office is asking the judge to allow the agency to intervene in the case on Paxton’s behalf.

The 2020 suit was not “dishonest, fraudulent, or deceitful,” they write in filings, and the State Bar’s issues with it essentially amount to a “political disagreement.”

“If Texans disapprove of the how the Attorney General exercises his authority, the remedy is to vote him out of office,” Paxton’s attorneys write. “The bar has no veto over how the Attorney General exercises his constitutional authority.”

Paxton was not the first attorney general to be asked to spearhead the case, and lawyers in his own office, including then-Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, had argued against it, according to the New York Times. Hawkins, who would normally represent the state in such litigation, had no involvement in the case when it was filed and resigned within a month.

Top lawyers at the Florida attorney general’s office ridiculed the suit as “bats—t insane,” emails revealed.

Recent polls have shown the attorney general’s race is highly competitive between Paxton and his Democratic opponent Rochelle Garza, a former ACLU attorney. Garza, who has portrayed herself as the candidate who will bring integrity to the attorney general’s office, isn’t buying Paxton’s legal argument in this case.

“Political disagreements have to do with policies, not facts,” Garza said in a statement. “Even first-year law students know that legal accusations of wrongdoing require evidence, yet two years later, Paxton continues peddling his baseless lies about the 2020 election. Texans deserve an attorney general who believes in the rule of law and ethically uses the power of the office to serve Texans, not for their own political ends.”

Any decision in the case could foreshadow the result of a suit filed against Paxton’s First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster by the Texas Bar for his involvement in the 2020 Supreme Court petition. Webster is also seeking to dismiss his case, and a hearing will be held Sept. 6 in Williamson County.

Paxton and Webster are being represented by lawyers from the attorney general’s office, as well as outside counsel. The office has not responded to questions about why they need both. The cost to taxpayers so far is over $46,000, and that’s before today’s initial proceedings.

The attorney general’s office has said the four in-house attorneys working on the case are not keeping track of their billable hours. The office did not explain why no timekeeping was done, despite its policy of doing so for other types of cases.

“To me, it’s really outrageous they’re using taxpayer money,” Harrington said. “This has nothing to do with his role as attorney general, absolutely nothing. It’s only his role as an attorney. Even if the State Bar disbars him, it has no effect on him being attorney general.”

You will not be surprised to know that I am on the State Bar’s side in this dispute. Paxton’s argument has merit to the point that elected officials should not be held accountable for political decisions by non-political offices like the State Bar. Where that falls apart is that he was also acting as a lawyer, and in doing so was violating the ethical and professional rules that lawyers are supposed to abide by. The evidence for that is overwhelming, from the sheer brazen falsity of the the claims he was making to the way similar lawsuits had been routinely batted aside by a myriad of courts to the fact that his own Solicitor General, whose job it is to make these arguments in court, refused to participate. If he can’t be held accountable for that then he has a blank check to do anything. That cannot be the right answer.

Anyway. If Paxton is found guilty, he will be subject to discipline from the State Bar, which could be anything from a scolding to being disbarred. While the latter seems unlikely to me – from what I have observed, it’s usually lawyers that do things like misappropriate clients’ money that get the boot – I don’t think it would be inappropriate given the seriousness of the issue. If that did happen, Paxton would still be able to hold the office of Attorney General. We’re not getting rid of him that easily. I don’t know what to expect and I don’t know how long it might take. With Paxton, we’re used to waiting on these things. Reform Austin has more.

The State Bar’s response to Paxton

Jul 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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As you know, the State Bar of Texas filed a lawsuit against Ken Paxton in a Collin County district court in order to proceed with the complaint filed against Paxton for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election by filing a massively dishonest and bad-faith lawsuit against four states won by President Biden. Paxton filed his response to that lawsuit a month ago, and now the State Bar has responded to his response.

Best mugshot ever

Weeks before the May 24 primary runoff election for attorney general, Paxton publicly tweeted the State Bar was following a “political narrative” by filing its action “just a few weeks before” his election. Paxton made the same argument in his court answer to the petition.

The commission filed its response last week, emphasizing the petition was filed the day after the election and the only significance to that filing date is that it occurred on the same day the presiding judge of the First Administrative Judicial Region signed the Order of Assignment; the commission couldn’t have filed sooner.

Moreover, the complaints were presented to an investigatory panel Jan. 5. After the panel found “credible evidence” to support a finding that Paxton violated the code of ethics, “the commission attempted to negotiate a resolution with (Paxton),” the response states.

It was Paxton that elected to have the disciplinary action heard in Collin County, and it was Paxton that “conjured up the specter of a political narrative,” the commission stated, to politicize an otherwise straightforward disciplinary proceeding.

In Paxton’s answer, he cited several defenses, including a lack of jurisdiction, a violation of separation of powers, and sovereign immunity.

Paxton asserts in his plea that he is unique, and unlike every other licensed attorney holding the position of state attorney general in the United States, is altogether exempt from having to comply with his state’s rules of professional conduct, even when acting directly as counsel of record before a court, the commission response states.

[…]

Paxton argued that as part of the executive branch the courts had no jurisdiction over him. The commission said this premise was tested and failed in two other states, Minnesota and Connecticut. Referring to In Re Lord, the Minnesota Supreme Court held, “the governor has no power to clothe the attorney general with immunity for disciplinary powers of the court when the attorney general appears in court as an attorney,” and that such a finding would “reduce the court to a tool of the executive.”

The commission said that, despite Paxton’s contentions that the disciplinary action was brought for political or retaliatory purposes, that action is not about his decision as the attorney general to file the case.

“Rather, the commission contends that the pleadings respondent prepared and filed contained numerous statements that were false, dishonest, and deceitful,” in violation of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct, the response states.

Referring to Paxton’s separation of powers argument, the commission told the court the State Bar Act gives the Texas Supreme Court administrative control over regulations governing the practice of law, and the high court has inherent regulatory powers as well within the state Constitution.

On sovereign immunity, the commission said Paxton isn’t being sued in his official capacity, but personally in his capacity as a licensed attorney.

See here and here for the previous updates. A major component of the State Bar’s response has been to take on Paxton’s claims that the whole process is political, because that’s the main tool he has in his bag whenever someone tries to hold him accountable for anything. Indeed, the headline of this story notes how the State Bar turned Paxton’s complaints about the process against him, because Paxton can’t help but be a lying liar who lies a lot. I can’t say how effective any of this will be, but you do love to see it. I don’t know when the next update is, but as always I’ll be watching. The Statesman has more.

Paxton responds to State Bar lawsuit against him

Jul 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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Blah blah blah, you can’t sue me, blah blah blah.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking to dismiss a professional misconduct lawsuit filed by the state bar against him related to his legal challenge of the 2020 presidential election, court documents show.

In a court filing June 27, Paxton asked a district court in Collin County to dismiss the Texas State Bar’s lawsuit. The state’s top lawyer, a Republican who is seeking a third term in office, said state bar investigators are biased and politically motivated against him.

[…]

In the court filing, Paxton said the state bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline, which filed the suit, had no authority to “police the decisions of a duly elected, statewide constitutional officer of the executive branch.” Paxton also stood by his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

See here for the previous update. This is more or less the standard way to respond, and indeed Paxton is making the same arguments he’s made in the past, because there’s nothing new here. It’s just a matter of eventually getting a judge to rule on it. I don’t know what the potential for delay is here, but we know from past and recent experience, if there’s one thing Ken Paxton is good at, it’s throwing up every possible obstacle in the path of holding him accountable. I don’t expect this to be any different, but maybe I’ll be surprised.

State Bar finally files that professional misconduct lawsuit against Paxton

May 26th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

We’ve been eagerly awaiting this.

Best mugshot ever

A disciplinary committee for the State Bar of Texas on Wednesday filed a professional misconduct lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections in four battleground states won by President Joe Biden.

The filing in Collin County by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline, a standing committee of the state bar, is an extraordinary move by the body that regulates law licenses in the state against the sitting attorney general. It stems from complaints against Paxton for a lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court threw out, saying Texas lacked standing to sue and that Paxton’s political opponents called “frivolous.”

It seeks a sanction against Paxton, which will be determined by a judge, that could range from a private reprimand to disbarment.

In its filing, the commission said Paxton had misrepresented that he had uncovered substantial evidence that “raises serious doubts as to the integrity of the election process in the defendant states.”

“As a result of Respondent’s actions, Defendant States were required to expend time, money, and resources to respond to the misrepresentations and false statements contained in these pleadings and injunction requests even though they had previously certified their presidential electors based on the election results prior to the filing of Respondent’s pleadings,” the lawsuit read.

The lawsuit also says Paxton made “dishonest” representations that an “outcome determinative” number of votes were tied to unregistered voters, votes were switched by a glitch with voting machines, state actors had unconstitutionally revised their election statutes and “illegal votes” had been cast to affect the outcome of the election.

The lawsuit says Paxton’s allegations “were not supported by any charge, indictment, judicial finding, and/or credible or admissible evidence, and failed to disclose to the Court that some of his representations and allegations had already been adjudicated and/or dismissed in a court of law.”

The complaint asks for a finding of professional misconduct against Paxton, as well as attorney’s fees and “an appropriate sanction.”

[…]

The lawsuit against Paxton stems from multiple complaints filed by Kevin Moran, president of the Galveston Island Democrats; David Wellington Chew, former chief justice of the Eighth District Court of Appeals; attorney Neil Kay Cohen; attorney Brynne VanHettinga; and Gershon “Gary” Ratner, the co-founder of Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

See here, here, and here for some background; this post contains some technical details from the original complaint. As far as I can tell, this encompasses all of the 2020 election-related complaints against Paxton; there’s a separate complaint having to do with his threats against the Court of Criminal Appeals for not letting him prosecute “voter fraud” cases at his discretion, whose disposition is not known to me at this time. There’s also the complaint against Brent Webster, which will be litigated in Williamson County, and more recently a complaint against Ted Cruz that will presumably take some time to work its way through the system. That first 2020 election complaint against Paxton was filed last June, so it took nearly a year to get to this point. I have no idea if that’s a “normal” time span for this – I suspect nothing about this is “normal” anyway.

One more thing: I presume this was filed in Collin County because that’s where Paxton passed the bar, or some other technical reason like that. The Chron adds a bit of detail about that.

Under the state bar’s rules, disciplinary suits are filed in the county in which the attorney primarily practices. If there’s more than one, the bar files in the county where the attorney lives — Paxton indicated Collin County. Similarly, the suit against Webster was filed in his hometown of Williamson County. That determination is up to the subject of the suit, according to the rules.

Also per the bar’s rules, these suits are heard by an appointed judge from another district.

In Paxton’s case, it will be Judge Casey Blair of Kaufman County, a Republican elected in 2014. Webster’s case will be heard by Judge John Youngblood of Milam County, also a Republican who was first appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011 and first elected in 2012.

Good to know. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

More State Bar disciplinary stuff

May 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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A new twist, as a new player enters the picture.

Best mugshot ever

The Texas State Bar has filed a suit in Williamson County district court against First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster for his involvement in the state’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, alleging Webster committed professional misconduct by making false and misleading statements in the petition.

A similar disciplinary suit is expected against Paxton, who reiterated Friday his contention that the group is targeting him because it disagrees with his politics. As of Friday afternoon, no suit had been filed.

Texas’ 2020 suit before the U.S. Supreme Court was almost immediately tossed, and Trump’s own Justice Department found no evidence of fraud that could have changed the election’s outcome. The bar is treating the case as a frivolous lawsuit as it seeks sanctions including possible disbarment for the two public officials.

“I stand by this lawsuit completely,” Paxton said on Twitter. “I am certain that the bar will not only lose, but be fully exposed for what they are: a liberal activist group masquerading as a neutral professional association.”

Then-Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, the state’s chief litigator who resigned about a month after the election challenge was tossed, was notably absent from the filing, though Hawkins never explained why, raising questions about whether he supported the legal challenge. Solicitor generals are typically involved in all major appellate litigation.

[…]

The bar complaints against Paxton and Webster alleged that their petition to overturn the 2020 election was frivolous and unethical, and that it includes statements that they knew to be false. In Webster’s case, it is clear that the bar agrees.

“Respondent’s representations were dishonest,” the suit states. “His allegations were not supported by any charge, indictment, judicial finding, and/or credible or admissible evidence, and failed to disclose to the court that some of his representations and allegations had already been adjudicated and/or dismissed in a court of law.”

The suit also alleges that Webster “misrepresented” that Texas had “uncovered substantial evidence,” raising doubts about the integrity of the election and had standing to sue before the U.S. Supreme Court. The four battleground states that Texas sued — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — were then forced to have to spend time, money and other resources responding to these claims, it said.

The suit does not specify what type of punishment the bar recommends for Webster.

The suit against Webster was sparked by a March 2021 complaint by Brynne VanHettinga, an former member of the bar who described herself as a “citizen concerned about fascism and illegal overthrow of democracy.” VanHettinga could not be immediately reached Friday.

See here and here for some background. Looking at that Trib story that I based yesterday’s post on, I see it also includes a couple of paragraphs about the action against Brent Webster, who replaced Jeff Mateer after he was purged as a whistleblower against Paxton, and who co-authored the self-exoneration report from that saga. I was not aware of any State Bar complaints against Webster in this matter – the two against Paxton were filed after the VanHettinga complaint against Webster. A Google News search on VanHettinga’s name only yielded the Chron and Trib stories. You can see what a challenge it is to keep up with all this.

As for the Paxton piece of it, this is more of the story I blogged about yesterday. The main thing to learn, which the Trib story also noted, is that there hasn’t yet been a lawsuit filed against Paxton. It sounded like that would be filed in Travis County when it happens, but maybe this means it will happen in Williamson instead. Since it seems that the judge will be selected from the broader judicial administrative region, it’s not clear that where the trial itself is matters.

Paxton whines about the disciplinary process he selected

May 7th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

My head hurts.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s top lawyer, said Friday the state bar was suing him for professional misconduct related to his lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election.

“I have recently learned that the Texas State Bar — which has been waging a months-long witch-hunt against me — now plans to sue me and my top deputy for filing Texas v. Penn: the historic challenge to the unconstitutional 2020 presidential election joined by nearly half of all the states and over a hundred members of Congress,” Paxton said in a statement released on social media. “I stand by this lawsuit completely.”

A few hours after saying he was being sued by the bar, Paxton’s office announced an investigation into the Texas Bar Foundation for “facilitating mass influx of illegal aliens” by donating money to groups that “encourage, participate in, and fund illegal immigration at the Texas-Mexico border.” The foundation is made up of attorneys and raises money to provide legal education and services. It is separate from the State Bar of Texas, which is an administrative arm of the Texas Supreme Court.

Representatives for the Texas Bar Foundation could not immediately be reached for comment. Trey Apffel, executive director of the State Bar of Texas, said the bar and the foundation are privately funded and don’t receive taxpayer funds.

“The foundation is separately funded through charitable donations and governed by its own board of trustees,” Apffel said. “While we are unsure what donations are at issue here, we are confident that the foundation’s activities are in line with its mission of enhancing the rule of law and the system of justice in Texas.”

Paxton, an embattled Republican seeking a third term, said state bar investigators who now appear to be moving on a lawsuit against him are biased and said the decision to sue him, which comes a week before early voting in his GOP runoff for attorney general, was politically motivated. He is facing Land Commissioner George P. Bush in the May 24 election.

“Texas Bar: I’ll see you and the leftists that control you in court,” he said. “I’ll never let you bully me, my staff or the Texans I represent into backing down or going soft on defending the Rule of Law — something for which you have little knowledge.”

In fact, the investigation into Paxton has been pending for months. Last July, a group of 16 lawyers that included four former state bar presidents filed an ethics complaint against Paxton arguing that he demonstrated a pattern of professional misconduct, including his decision to file a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential elections in battleground states where former President Donald Trump, a Paxton ally, had lost. The attorneys said the lawsuit was “frivolous” and had been filed without evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed it, saying Texas had no standing to sue.

In March, the investigation moved ahead and Paxton was given 20 days to decide whether he wanted a trial by jury or an administrative hearing to resolve the complaint.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the state bar said the group had not been notified of a decision. Jim Harrington, a civil rights attorney and one of the lawyers who filed the ethics complaint, said he also had not been notified of a trial but that Paxton would have received notification.

“I was as surprised as you were to see that tweet this morning,” Harrington said.

See here for some background. You may note that happened in early March, almost two months ago, which is considerably more than 20 days. I don’t know if time moves more slowly in this context or if there just wasn’t any mechanism to enforce the decision Paxton had to make. Whatever the case, he made it and now he’s fundraising off of it. At least that much is par for the course, at least for him. While this case will be heard in Travis County, the judge who oversees it will be selected from the Texas Judicial Branch’s administrative region, which is a fairly large area. I don’t know how any of that works, either – this whole thing is kind of a black box. But it’s moving along, which is more than we can say for some other messes involving Ken Paxton.

UPDATE: Via email, a statement from the Texas Bar Foundation:

“The Foundation is extremely disappointed to learn that AG Paxton has decided to use taxpayer dollars on a fruitless exercise. Had AG Paxton taken the time to come and speak with us rather than issue a press release, I am confident that he would have found no wrongdoing on the part of the Foundation. Nevertheless, the Foundation is happy to cooperate and provide the AG’s office with documents and information relevant to the investigation.

Thousands of Texans have had their lives changed because of grants received from the Texas Bar Foundation. General Paxton is misinformed. The Foundation does not receive funding from taxpayer dollars. To the contrary, our grants are made possible by the generosity of Texas lawyers. We receive voluntary contributions from the Fellows of the Foundation, and those contributions enable the Foundation to award millions of dollars in grants. We will proudly continue to award grants to much-needed charities throughout Texas going forward.”

There’s a story in today’s Chron that has more information than this Trib story. I’ll do a separate post on that.

Guess who’s paying for Ken Paxton’s defense against those state bar complaints?

Mar 31st, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You are, of course. What did you expect?

Best mugshot ever

Texas taxpayers are on the hook for $45,000 so far in legal defense for Attorney General Ken Paxton as he attempts to ward off multiple complaints to the State Bar over his failed lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paxton faces at least three professional misconduct complaints that have been filed against him since the December suit, which the high court swiftly dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The election case involved disputed presidential election ballots in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Two complaints — one filed in June by a Democratic Party activist, consolidated with a few others, and another in July filed by the nonprofit Lawyers Defending American Democracy and 16 Texas lawyers, including four former presidents of the state Bar — alleged the Supreme Court suit was frivolous and that it included pleadings that Paxton knew to be false.

The Lawyers Defending American Democracy complaint is moving forward and will be heard by either a district court judge or an administrative panel, the complainants say.

“This is about his individual license, which is irrelevant to his position in office, so why shouldn’t he pay for it?” said Jim Harrington, one of the lawyers who filed a complaint against Paxton and a retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. “He gets to do this game on Jan. 6, this unconstitutional Supreme Court action, and then turn around and have us pay twice for it? It’s outrageous.”

[…]

Attorneys with the Austin-based Gober Group and College Station-based West, Webb, Allbritton & Gentry billed more than 94 hours at various rates for work related to the bar complaints. Chris Gober, a GOP election lawyer known for his work defending the state’s political maps, had the highest rate at $525 an hour.

Some of the work described in the invoices included reviewing documents related to the complaints, discussing strategy and considering options, preparing for meetings with the Texas State Bar and reviewing and revising correspondence with the agency.

However, a response to the June batch of bar complaints against Paxton, which the office posted on its website, was signed by Deputy First Assistant Attorney General Grant Dorfman; none of the outside attorneys’ names appear on the filing. It’s unclear why both in-house and outside counsel appear to have been engaged in Paxton’s defense.

Because there’s free money to give to Paxton’s pals. This has been another edition of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions”.

See here for the most recent update. There is of course a hypocrisy angle in all of this, because of course there is.

Steve Fischer, elected State Bar director for the Western District of Texas and one of the attorneys who filed the 2015 complaint, said taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear the cost of Paxton’s defense.

“People elect an attorney general to do child support, whatever — not for that,” Fischer said. “To turn his office into his defense team, it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

According to a response to some of the latest complaints by the attorney general’s office in July, the State Bar Disciplinary Counsel received 81 grievances against Paxton and three against First Assistant Brent Webster related to the 2020 Supreme Court suit. All were dismissed upon initial review. Some were reinstated after appeals.

[…]

While the attorney general’s office’s role in fighting bar complaints may be a legal gray area, the agency is statutorily required to defend state officials and state agencies in court. Yet Paxton’s office has declined to represent those state agencies on several recent occasions, typically when it conflicts with his political inclinations.

In 2018, for example, his office refused to defend the Texas Ethics Commission as one of his largest political donors sues to dismantle the agency. Then again, in January 2020, the office abandoned the State Commission on Judicial Conduct when it was sued by a Waco judge whom the agency disciplined for refusing to perform same-sex marriages.

Paxton’s main complaint about the State Bar allowing this matter to proceed is that both the filing and the State Bar itself are motivated by partisan politics. Not him, though, of course. Never him.

You may think well, maybe we don’t want the government to pay for this government official’s defense because he’s so odious, but what happens when we elect a Democratic AG? Should Rochelle Garza or Joe Jaworski have to pay for their own defense against the avalanche of frivolous partisan complaints that will surely be filed against them? That would be bad, except that as the story notes the vast majority of the ones against Paxton got dismissed for lack of merit. I doubt it would be any different with a different AG. At least, it better not be. As long as it isn’t, and as long as the next AG has better ethical standards than Ken Paxton – an exceptionally low hurdle to clear – it shouldn’t be an issue.

State Bar complaint against Paxton to proceed

Mar 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Nice, but I’m still not expecting there to be consequences for him. I will be delighted to be wrong about that.

Best mugshot ever

A Texas State Bar complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton is moving forward and will be heard by either a district court judge or an administrative panel, the complainants said Tuesday.

The complaint was filed in July 2021 by the nonprofit Lawyers Defending American Democracy and 16 Texas lawyers, including four former presidents of the state Bar. It alleges that Paxton committed professional misconduct when he filed the December 2020 suit before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four battleground states. The complainants say the suit was frivolous, knowingly false and deceitful.

The deadline for a decision on whether there is just cause to move forward, prescribed by the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, was Sunday, and the complainants have not been notified of a dismissal.

“This is a big step because this rarely happens,” said Jim Harrington, one of the Texas lawyers who joined the complaint and a retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. “I just know from being a lawyer for 50 years, this is very rare.”

[…]

Under the disciplinary rules, Paxton has 20 days to decide whether to request the case be heard by a district court, where proceedings are public, or by an evidentiary panel. If he chooses the evidentiary panel, the proceedings will be kept private unless public sanctions are imposed. Dismissals or private sanctions are not made public.

Harrington rejected the claim by Paxton that the complaint was guided by political bias.

“That’s the way he always is. Anyone who disagrees with him is on some sort of political witchhunt,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me what a person’s politics are … We lawyers, it’s very clear we have an ethical responsibility. It’s very clear we have to follow the rules.”

See here for some background on the July complaint against Paxton. There was a similar complaint filed in June, to which Paxton responded in July. I do not know what the status of that complaint is – you’d think it would be ahead of this one in the queue, but as noted I don’t know how this process works. Last month, there was another complaint filed over Paxton’s thuggish attempt to intimidate the Court of Criminal Appeals for its rejection of his attempt to become the supreme prosecutor of all voter fraud allegations.

Anyway. Harrington states in the article that he believes it would be appropriate for Paxton to lose his law license over this, which is the maximum penalty the Bar can levy. I agree with that, but please note that would not disqualify him from being the Attorney General. It would just be humiliating, if it’s possible for Ken Paxton to be humiliated. My guess is that he’ll choose the evidentiary panel to proceed, but we’ll know soon enough. The Trib has more.

Abbott and Patrick whine about State Bar complaint against Paxton

Sep 27th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Poor, poor babies.

Best mugshot ever

The state’s top officials came to the defense of embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying a state bar investigation into his professional conduct is “politically motivated” and raises questions about the state’s separation of powers.

On Friday, Paxton said he had filed an objection to a state bar investigation prompted by his decision to file a lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 presidential elections in four battleground states. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit saying Texas did not have standing to file it.

Paxton called the state bar investigation “partisan” and said it was “weaponizing” its regulatory power against the attorney general’s office.

[…]

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, also blasted the investigation into the fellow Republican. Abbott, a former attorney general, said said the issue presented a “threatened intrusion upon executive branch authority.”

“These allegations raise separation-of-powers questions under our Constitution,” Abbott said in a statement. “I am confident that the Supreme Court of Texas, to which the State Bar of Texas is ultimately accountable, will ensure that the judicial branch upholds the law.”

Patrick said the investigation “appears politically motivated.”

“It is clear the Investigatory Panel, stacked with Biden and Democrat donors and activists, has weaponized its state-granted power, intended to protect a fair and just practice of law, to instead launch an attack over political differences,” he said in a statement. “These actions undermine the integrity of the Investigatory Panel and the State Bar of Texas as a whole.”

See here, here, and here for the background. Note that there are two complaints against Paxton, so it’s not clear to me which one is being whined about or responded to. I’m picturing Paxton standing behind Abbott and Patrick, like a little brother who’s gotten in over his head with the neighborhood kids. He’s picked a fight he doesn’t think he can win, so he tries to scare off his antagonists. It’s like an episode of The Little Rascals, if Spanky or Alfalfa had been caught trying to overthrow the government. We live in such dumb times.

Another State Bar complaint against Paxton

Jul 23rd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

He certainly deserves all the trouble this has brought him. Whether any of it leads to actual consequences, we’ll have to see.

Best mugshot ever

Four former presidents of the State Bar of Texas joined a group of high-profile lawyers on Wednesday to file an ethics complaint against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, over his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory against former President Donald Trump.

Paxton filed a widely criticized lawsuit with the Supreme Court in December, in which he sued the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over what he claimed were “unconstitutional irregularities” in their election processes. The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, which came as Trump and his allies repeatedly promoted baseless allegations that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen.”

The organization Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which asserts it is not partisan, filed the lawsuit in connection with 16 prominent Texas attorneys.

“The injunction Mr. Paxton sought with the Supreme Court would have usurped the presidency for the next four years and cast doubt on whether truly democratic presidential elections would ever have been restored in America,” Jim Harrington, one of the complaints signers and a retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement published on LDAD’s website.

Harrington said Paxton’s actions “demonstrated his disregard for the ethical rules which govern lawyers and for our country’s democratic principles.”

As you may recall, there’s already such a complaint against Paxton. I don’t know how the State Bar works, but I would assume these two would be combined. Reading that earlier post reminded me that Paxton was supposed to have responded to that complaint within 30 days, and indeed he has responded, asking for the complaint to be dropped – he’s basically saying that the original complainant doesn’t have standing to file against him. As a non-lawyer, I shrug my shoulders as I have no way to evaluate this claim on my own. Those of you who are lawyers, feel free to enlighten us.

Above the Law adds some details.

The bar complaint alleges that Paxton violated the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct by filing a frivolous suit, making false statements of fact and law to a tribunal, engaging in deceitful conduct, and failing to uphold the Constitution.

The complainants point to Paxton’s representation that Biden’s odds of winning the election were less than one in a quadrillion, a gross distortion of a economist Charles Cicchetti’s assertion that this was the probability of Biden winning if the votes before and after 3am were randomly drawn from the population as a whole. Cicchetti’s analysis was ridiculous on its face even before Paxton mangled it — the differential between in-person votes favoring Trump and absentee ballots favoring Biden had been widely predicted. And furthermore, smaller rural areas, which tend to lean Republican, were always going to complete their counting before cities like Philadelphia and Atlanta.

As for misstatements of law, the complainants point to Paxton’s bizarre theory of standing which “flew in the face of the Electors Clause and the bedrock constitutional principle of each State’s sovereignty within our federal system.”

“The standing to sue Mr. Paxton sought from the Supreme Court had no basis in law and would have been a prescription for an autocratic President to perpetuate his power indefinitely against the will of the voters,” said Gershon (Gary) Ratner, co-founder of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and principal author of the complaint.

Here’s the LDAD statement on their complaint, and here’s the complaint itself for your perusal. Note that they had called for Paxton to be sanctioned within a week of his filing that ridiculous lawsuit. I don’t know if it took them this long to prepare their complaint or if there was something else going on, but here we are. I don’t know enough to add anything else at this point, so stay tuned.

From the “Things that are not considered legislative emergencies” department

Mar 30th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

That list would include removing Texas’ unconstitutional anti-sodomy law from the books.

Although Texas’ so-called sodomy law cannot be enforced legally, civil rights advocates say it should be removed from the books because it creates a climate favorable to bullying, gay-bashing and hate crimes.

“By leaving it on the books, you create the potential for abuse,” said Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project , which is representing two gay men who were kicked out of an El Paso restaurant in 2009 for kissing in public.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas could not stop people of the same sex from engaging in sexual activity. Today, the Texas Penal Code still states that it is a Class C misdemeanor to engage in “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex” — just after a line explaining that the law is unconstitutional.

El Paso police cited the “homosexual conduct” wording when the two men were kicked out of a Chico’s Tacos restaurant. The men refused to leave and called the police, assuming the restaurant staff was out of line with a city ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Instead, an officer told the men it was illegal for two men to kiss in public and said they could be cited for “homosexual conduct.”

At the time, El Paso Police Department spokesman Javier Sambrano described the officers involved as “relatively inexperienced.”

Harrington said even though the men were not cited, the Chico’s Tacos incident is about harassment.

That’s why Texas needs to strip the language from the books, said State Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, who has sponsored legislation to do so.

“There is archaic language in our code that is used against our citizens today,” said Farrar, whose colleague, Rep. Garnet Coleman, also a Houston Democrat, has filed an identical bill.

Farrar’s bill is HB604; Coleman’s is HB2156. Neither is likely to get a hearing in committee, much less voted out of committee; if by some miracle that were to happen, it would never be approved by the full House or signed by Governor Perry. The attitude of Rep. Wayne Christian, president of the Texas Conservative Coalition, tells you all you need to know:

Christian said he had not looked at the bills in detail, but that the time it would take them to go through committee probably would not be worth the outcome — especially in a session where lawmakers are wrestling with major issues like redistricting and filling a multi-billion-dollar budget hole.

“In this particular session, I’d be hesitant to do any changing,” Christian said, adding that the law probably “better reflects the views of a lot of citizens” as it is.

Priorities, you know? The Dallas Voice has more.