In a notable development this week in the impeachment proceedings against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, his lawyers filed a motion requesting the dismissal of all but a single charge.
Paxton's team urged the Senate on July 31 to apply the state’s "prior-term doctrine” before moving toward a trial. The doctrine protects elected officials from impeachment based on allegations that occurred prior to their most recent election.
According to the charges against Paxton, every alleged action underlying all but one of the 20 charges, or Articles, took place before his last election. Paxton’s team argues in the filing that because his opponents were “unable to defeat the Attorney General at the polls, the House quickly filed Articles of Impeachment relying on misconduct that occurred, if at all, years before the Attorney General’s most recent election."
According to the motion, Texas voters were aware of the allegations against Paxton because Paxton’s opponents spent "tens of millions of dollars" on broadcast advertisements, newspaper reports, and speeches to publicize the claims throughout the last election.
In November 2022, Texas voters re-elected Paxton for a third term by a 10-point margin over his Democratic opponent. The Paxton team’s motion argues that the decision of the voters "should be respected."
According to the motion, many of the allegations had been publicly known even prior to Paxton's first re-election in 2016.
The prior-term doctrine has historical precedents from previous impeachment trials in Texas, which the defense cited to support its argument. The defense contends that the doctrine does not contain any clauses that would limit its application to Paxton’s trial.
The Senate will determine whether to grant the request for dismissal. The prior-term doctrine would not apply to a charge in the impeachment proceedings relating to Paxton’s request that the legislature fund the settlement of a whistleblower lawsuit against the Office of Attorney General. That request was made after Paxton’s latest re-election in 2020.
