Do these rules help or hurt Ken
Paxton's case, do you think if,
if you're Tony Busby,
if you're the defense
attorney for for Ken Paxton,
what do you think about the rul?
Yeah, I think
overall the Paxton defense team should be,
should be satisfied and and reasonably happy.
They're going to get witnesses.
They're going to have ability
to to question witnesses.
They're going to be able to
seek a summary judgment,
a motion to dismiss the beginni,
which is only a a simple majority threshold.
You know, they probably would
have liked the attorney generals
wife to be able to to vote.
Although in the end, I think th,
the Senate made the right decisn
to allow her to participate,
which is what the Constitution requires,
but it's not allowed to be part
of deliberations or to vote.
So yeah, overall, look,
I I don't think at the end of t,
if Paxton is removed from offic,
his defense team is going to be able to
claim that the Senate rules weren't fair.
They're much more fair to him
than what we saw in the House,
where where Paxton's team really had no
ability to provide any information or or
witnesses or testimony or anything at all.
So, you know,
they have an opportunity to have their
day in court and they're going to seek a,
you know, summary judgment.
The beginning,
we'll see whether the Senate has
sixteen votes to to dismiss alle
charges or some of them potenti.
And then depending on that
we'll have a trial.
How likely is that summary judgment where
a majority of the senators would just say,
hey, you know what, we looked a,
you're good to go with the cases dismissed.
Yeah. You know what's interestio
me about that is I think the, t,
the problem with this summary judgment
is that that that that would get
ruled out the very beginning, r.
So, so Paxton's defense team
wouldn't be able to present evidence,
call up witnesses, provide testimony,
make their case, right. So.
So they have to basically take e
view that a majority of the Sene
believes there there is not enoh
evidence for the trial to conti.
And I don't know that that seems
to be a high bar.
I don't think there I don't think a lot of
Republican senators want to be doing this.
And I don't think Paxton ultimay
is going to be removed from off.
I think that 2/3 threshold is h.
That would require 9 senators who are
Republicans to join with all 12 Democrats.
I think that's a high threshold.
But I also was struck by somethg
Lieutenant Governor said recenty
I might have been on on WFA or
somewhere else where he said, l,
we we, we want this to be fair.
We want,
we want this to go through the full process.
He seemed to sort of put put a
little bit of cold water on the
idea of a summary judgment,
you know, that might make it.
Possible for Democrats and others to say,
oh, the Senate Republicans are
coming for their own.
They're not taking it seriously.
From everything I can see,
the Senate's taking this seriou,
this rules package is pretty serious.
Senators themselves have not
issued statements saying how thy
feel about the the trial itself.
You know,
this thing is been, I think,
handled much more professionall,
much more seriously than it was in the House.
Yeah, I think you're right about that.
The Senate taking it seriously
because no one's really,
no one's talking on the record
and and some of them aren't
even talking off the record.
To me and other reporters down there,
we'll get into the specific
rules here in just a moment.
But one of the things that stood out,
stood out to me is that each sie
gets 24 hours to present eviden.
This is going to be a quick tri.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And of course, September, you k,
is interesting time because thes
been a lot of chatter in Austint
will have a school choice specil
session in the month of Septemb.
Right. So if if the trial were to last,
you know, weeks, which is something the
Paxton defense team has talked about,
if they're going to call something like
60 or 65 witnesses, that might be hard,
hard to get done in a 24 hour window.
But if it's going to take weeks,
I could chew up that entire
month of September.
And and that's, you know, so so you know,
these things that end up having to work
against other things that that e
legislature might want to be do.
Yeah, I think you might be looking at a week.
Again, it's going to depend on
some of these pretrial motions.
It's going to depend on how
many witnesses there are,
how much evidence and testimony there is.
But I don't think this is going to be weeks.
I think it's going to be,
you know, 7 to 10 days.
Matt Ken Paxton is required to e
there according to one of the r.
Do you think that he will speak?
And what do you expect
that scene will be like?
Because everyone in that
room knows Ken Paxton.
Yeah. I mean,
it's an unusual situation, righ?
It's historic situation.
He served in the Senate.
He served in the House.
He's been a statewide
official for quite a while.
His wife's in the Senate.
He's been politically aligned with Lieutenant
Governor Dan Patrick for some t,
not just on sort of Trump stuff,
but on other things.
Yeah, Must be interesting.
You know, imagine,
imagine being a criminal defendant, right.
It's kind of an out of body
experience for any of us to consider.
But then imagine it doing it in front
of a jury of people that you know well.
You know,
generally you wouldn't know anye
on a jury because anyone that ks
the defendant would be struck.
So.
So yeah,
it's an unusual situation and hs
going to have to sit there and e
it all in as a defendant would.
The question for me is whether
he's going to testify or not.
And that's high risk,
high reward, generally speaking,
criminal defense attorneys.
And I know this isn't
technically a criminal case.
I don't even know what what word
we use to describe it because is
not civil and it's not criminal.
It's it's it's in some third category
that we don't know what to call.
But but generally you don't putr
defendant on the stand unless yu
think that that the the jury iss
at risk of finding a guilty ver.
If you don't think the case has
been proven then you don't then
there's just just too much risk.
And certainly there are some bad
facts here for the the attorney
general certainly related to the
affair related to doing things r
this donor and I know that passn
himself and his defense team bee
he's not violated a new law and
that's why he has said he's he's
innocent from the very beginnin.
But he may have to answer some questions
in ways that that will be embarrassing,
that may do some political dama,
that might be hard for him to
answer truthfully or correctly r
fully without doing some damage.
So that to me is going to be a huge question.
Of course,
if if they get the the motion to dismiss,
then we don't have that at all.
I think there's a chance they my
dismiss some of the some of the articles,
but not all of them.
That may be something to watch.