The Texas State Bar will advance a complaint against Paxton after the Attorney General’s legal team missing a filing deadline.
The Texas State Bar will allow a complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton to proceed.
According to The Texas Tribune, the complaint was filed last year by 16 Texas attorneys, as well as the nonprofit Lawyers Defending American Democracy organization. Collectively, they claim that Paxton abused his position and committed professional misconduct by filing lawsuits intended to overturn other states’ election results.
Paxton, adds The Texas Tribune, sued to prevent the certification of ballot counts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
While Paxton alleged that voter fraud may have influenced the 2020 presidential election, officials have yet to uncover any evidence suggesting widespread misconduct.
Shortly after Paxton filed his complaint, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed it in full, finding that Texas did not have the legal standing to intervene.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the justices wrote.
Now, Paxton says that the State Bar complaint is politically motivated.
Speaking to the Tribune, the attorney general observed that the complaint was filed during the first week of his re-election campaign against current Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush.
Paxton and Bush have both been selected as Republican runoff candidates for the state attorney general.
Neither candidate, notes the Tribune, secured enough votes during the primary to secure an uncontested nomination.
Despite continued political pressure, Paxton said he has no concerns about the Bar complaint.
“I’m not worried,” he said. “I take their partisan attacks as a mark I’m doing the right thing.”
However, Jim Harrington—a civil rights lawyer backing the complaint about Paxton—told the Tribune that a successful Bar complaint could see the attorney general lose his law license.
“They could take away his license,” Harrington said. “They could suspend him, they could reprimand him, whatever. It’s up to them, what they want to do and how bad they think the conduct was.”
In an unrelated case, the Texas State Bar recently announced that it will sanction Sidney Powell, a former Trump attorney who similarly tried to interfere in the elections by claiming that the results were rigged in favor of Biden.
“Beginning in or about November of 2020[,] [Powell] filed multiple federal lawsuits in different jurisdictions (including the District Court of Arizona, the Northern District of Georgia, the Eastern District of Michigan, and the Eastern District of Wisconsin) alleging, inter alia, election fraud has occurred in the national presidential election in 2020,” the six-page complaint against Powell states. “Respondent had no reasonable basis to believe the lawsuits she filed were not frivolous.”
Powell has already been sanctioned in other states, including Michigan.
Sources
State bar complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton to proceed after key deadline passes
Texas Bar files disciplinary action against former Trump attorney
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