Now, we know this is a very historic
trial in the state of Texas,
something we have not seen in the Lone
Star State in more than a century,
and it certainly is a complicated one.
So to help us break it
all down as Cal Gilson,
a political science professor from SMU,
to help us unpack it all.
First of all, thank you for
joining us this morning Cal.
So let let's break down what Paxton is
accused of because you had twenty articles,
16 that are you know up right now,
4000 pages worth of documents if
you want to sit through it all.
There
is a lot to soak in here.
Yeah, there is a lot to soak in.
There were 20 charges in the indictment
that came out of the house and they
had to do with abuse of office mostly,
particularly the first half dozen or so,
the way in which Ken Paxton used the Attorney
General's office to to help Nate Paul,
a developer and contributor to his campaigns.
There are some elements of bribery as well.
So they're serious charges and we are
going to see a full trial apparently.
And just to be clear for our viewers,
it's not a criminal trial.
Rather, the result of this could
be possible removal from office.
Can you break down for our viewers
just how this trial is set up,
how it's going to work?
Yeah. It's important to recognize that
this is not a judicial proceeding where
you have a judge and you have a jury
and there are various rules of evidence,
that sort of thing.
This is a legislative process.
The the impeachment articles were
passed by the Texas House 121 to 23.
Texas houses is majority Republican.
So lots of Republicans voted for
these impeachment charges and now
you've got a majority Republican,
Senate 19 to 12 Republican that will
hear evidence and vote serially on each
of these charges as to whether or not
to convict Attorney General Paxton.
And so for the next couple of weeks,
we're going to hear that evidence.
What we saw this morning was a dozen or
so votes by the Paxton side to dismiss
all or some of these impeachment articles.
All of them,
as your reporter said, failed.
Only one of them got 10 votes,
which would block a 2/3 vote to convict.
So right now we're going to just
about getting ready to hear from
Lieutenant Governor Patrick on some
motions that he'll decide upon.
And then there will be opening statements
by the prosecution and by the Paxton side.
And we know that those opening statements,
both sides will get 60 minutes
to make those statements.
But looking back at the voting process,
we know it would take a two third
majority to get Paxton out of office.
Now when you go back to the original
impeachment effort by the House back in May,
you saw a lot of Republicans
vote for impeachment here.
Is there anything in reading the
tea leaves there that that may
indicate just how this trial may go?
Yeah, that the House vote, you know,
month or so ago was 121 to 23,
which means that more than half of
Republicans in the Texas House voted
to impeach the Attorney general.
And now we've got a trial in the
in the Senate and on the first
vote to dismiss all the charges,
it it was something like 15 to 6 or 14 to 6.
So it was a lopsided margin
not to dismiss the charges.
Now we're going to hear evidence
and testimony and it will,
it will take all the Democrats,
12 Democrats and 9 Republicans
voting to sustain one of these
impeachment charges to remove the
Attorney General from office.
And what we've seen so far,
we haven't seen evidence yet.
So once the evidence is also
put out there publicly,
it's fairly difficult to see
how the Attorney General is not
convicted on one or more counts.
We
have talked about how historic this
is because you have only seen 2
Texas officials be impeached before.
It's been quite a while.
How much of this procedure had to be
figured out before things got started today?
Yeah, there was a, there was an
impeachment of a statewide official
back in the 1880s and then another
one in in 1917 and then a judge
was impeached 50 years or so ago.
So this is something that very
rarely happens and each time it does
happen a set of rules has passed to
to direct the impeachment process.
Lot of similarity with previous impeachments,
but but some of the rules
are slightly different.
We're seeing so far today a very
cautious and careful conduct of
this early impeachment process
by Lieutenant Governor Patrick.
But pretty soon we're going to
get into a more open presentation
of witnesses and evidence with
some pretty high-powered lawyers
shooting at each other.
So it's going to get a lot more exciting
than it's been so far this morning.
Well, that's how we do things here in Texas.
Big Cal Gilson, thank you for
your analysis this morning.
You know, trying to read the tea leaves.
It's hard to tell how this
thing's going to shake out,
but maybe we'll get a little bit
more insight as things proceed.
Of course, we are offering extensive
coverage of this trial that you
will not get anywhere else.
Right now, investigative reporter
Tanya Iser for WFAA is live streaming
on our streaming app WFAA Plus,
and you can catch her on our
digital channels as well,
like on Facebook and YouTube is
She's joined by political experts
throughout this trial with insight
and analysis of that testimony,
which is upcoming.