SAN ANTONIO — Ken Paxton will keep his job as the "top cop" of Texas and the vote wasn't close. Texas senators deliberated for more than six hours Friday and returned to the capital to deliver their verdict Saturday Morning.
Many experts thought the vote would be close. Before the trial started last week, Senators voted on a slew of pre-trial motions that attempted to dismiss some, or all, of the charges. Up to 8 republican Senators were willing to support some of those motions but the rest voted to continue with the trial.
Fast forward to saturday morning and the final votes revealed a different story. The articles needed to get at least 21 votes each to pass. Instead no article received more than 14 votes and 16 Republicans routinely voted against them. The 14 votes to impeach included all the Senate's Democrats and sometimes included Senate republicans Robert Nichols and Kelly Hancock.
Senate Republican Bob Hall slammed the impeachment afterwards as lacking in evidence.
"I think the Senators did an incredibly good job of assessing what was happening. What I can say from my standpoint, it was up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and they utterly failed in what they presented with no evidence to reach that level," Hall said.
Senator Bettencourt released a statement that said in part, "It is important that any such impeachment begins with the foundation of evidence that the jurors, the Texas Senate, can use to make a decision beyond a reasonable doubt to remove any elected official after a vote of the public in an election.”
UTSA Political Science Chair Jon Taylor said he believed some of the evidence could have proved the reasonable doubt standard, but Republicans were facing intense political pressure to acquit Paxton already.
"What you saw are members of the Senate that are facing re-election in 2024 and they were being threatened. Let's be honest here," Taylor said. "They were being threatened with being primary-ed by deep-pocketed conservatives groups who are more than willing to go after them and go after the 60 republicans in the state house who voted for the impeachment to begin with."
Taylor said Paxton still faces state charges for securities fraud and a potential federal indictment for his involvement with Nate Paul so he's not out of the woods yet. He said Republicans could also expect Paxton to be removed either way.
"I think there was a political calculation here. They are thinking about the facts on Paxton that, 'he's damaged goods, we circled the wagons to support him, but he may not be here in a year," Taylor said.
Despite the upcoming legal challenges, Paxton Attorney Dan Cogdell told reporters Saturday that they were prepared to win a second trial if necessary.
"He still has a state case. I expect in light of today's case... those people ought to think about going forward on that case because it's been a B-S case since day one," Cogdell said. "If they don't dismiss it, we'll try it and beat them there just like we beat them here."