Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton goes off the rails
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, personifies the swamp. When the openly corrupt Paxton sought to rally other attorneys general (all white Republicans, of course), in soliciting the U.S. Supreme Court to subvert, without basis, President Biden’s decisive victory, it was thought by many analysts that his real goal was to obtain a pardon from the then-president. Paxton has numerous legal woes owing to his own corruption; he’s under investigation for bribery and abuse of office, amongst other misdeeds. In the end, Paxton never did get a pardon from the previous president, barring an unlikely “pocket pardon” that would not have been disclosed.
It’s notable that Paxton was the only state attorney general to decline to condemn the Capitol coup attempt. In fact, Paxton riled up the crowd at the hate rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. One would think that an imperiled figure without a pardon like Paxton would choose not to bring further attention to himself and his criminal culpability. But Paxton is already threatening to sue the Biden administration and DHS over the temporary pause in deportations announced last week. In his threat, Paxton referred to noncitizens with the blanket term “dangerous aliens,” a matter of course with Paxton, who has a penchant for dehumanizing those for whom he harbors ill will.
Paxton’s threat of a lawsuit is probably more bluster than substance, more posturing than legitimate standing. Paxton would have us believe that the deportation moratorium is somehow unlawful, but this argument does not hold up. A vocal enabler of the previous president, Paxton took no issue with wrongful and immoral actions of the last administration. But now that we have a non-Republican administration, the Attorney General of Texas is suddenly up in arms over non-issues and manufactured grievances.
