In his first interview since he was acquitted over the weekend in a historic impeachment trial, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) lashed out at the Biden administration and the Lone Star State’s House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) over his impeachment and trial.
“So you think that the effort to remove you from office really came from the Biden administration?” commentator Tucker Carlson asked Paxton in an interview posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“I really do,” Paxton said, adding that he thinks “that’s where it was instigated.”
The attorney general alleged that the impeachment was a way to get him “out of the way” after he filed lawsuits against the administration.
Paxton, who had been suspended from his post since the Texas House voted to impeach him earlier this year, was acquitted by a jury of state senators over the weekend on all 16 articles of impeachment he faced.
Paxton was accused of misusing the powers of his office to aid a friend and campaign donor, but after more than a week of witness testimony before the senators, none of the articles of impeachment received the two-thirds votes required to convict.
Paxton and his allies have decried the proceedings as politically motivated. In a statement after the verdict, he bashed the “sham impeachment” and “the weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences.”
The attorney general has also taken aim at Phelan, telling Carlson that the state Speaker is “controlled by the Democrats.”
“I don’t think he particularly has an ideology. He’s like, ‘I want to stay in power. I’ve cut this deal to be Speaker with Democrats,'” Paxton said.
Though other Paxton allies have also piled criticism onto the Texas House for the impeachment, Phelan has stood by the effort.
The Speaker said in a statement after the verdict that it’s “unfortunate” the impeachment process resulted in returning control of the state’s attorney’s general office “to an individual who, I believe, clearly abused his power, compromised his agency and its employees, and moved mountains to protect and benefit himself.”