Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week claimed the Texas House ethics committee is planning to impeach him again.
Meanwhile, the chair of that committee is saying otherwise.
House General Investigating Committee Chair Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, called Paxton’s assertions a “farfetched fantasy” and denied that a committee meeting was related to the attorney general.
It’s unclear why Paxton made the claim.
“It kind of took us by surprise in the newsroom,” said James Barragán, politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. “So we checked into it because it would really be something extraordinary if the House General Investigating Committee was looking into this again, particularly after the way the vote went. Of course, the House impeached Attorney General Paxton last year, but then the Senate acquitted him on nearly all the charges and threw the others out.”
Last year, the committee investigated Paxton and recommended impeachment for corruption. The House indicted him on 20 articles, with the Senate ultimately acquitting Paxton of 16 articles and dismissing the other four.
“There’s just a lot of confusion about why Attorney General Paxton would be making that statement,” Barragán said. “Of course, some of the speculation is that there has been some movement in the federal investigation that’s looking into these same corruption charges at the federal level. But that is sort of separate from what we’re talking about here.”
Hear more stories from the week in the audio player above.
