The $3 million donation to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, the presiding judge in the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is called “curious” in the tweet.
But that understatement is not specifically what makes Rachel Maddow laugh out loud in astonishment at the end of the clip below, as she delineates the legal troubles the suspended AG Paxton faces — and the huge and curious donation to Lt. Governor Patrick’s re-election campaign from a political action committee supporting Paxton.
(Patrick has already been deeply involved in the case, issuing a gag order for both sides, a gag that evidently does not include the old adage that “money talks.”)
What makes Maddow struggle to control her laughter is the audacity. “This is an amazing story,” she chuckles at the top, “I can’t believe it’s real. It’s real.”
Maddow continues, asking: “How bad do things have to be for the Republicans in the Texas legislature to impeach their own Republican attorney general? Well, where do we start?”
Maddow then ticks off a litany of items, including when eight officials from Paxton’s office reported the office’s activities to the FBI, which triggered a settlement, the costs of which Paxton allegedly tried to pass on to taxpayers.
"Here's the thing I can't believe is real, but it is." @maddow reports on a curious $3 million donation to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, the presiding judge in the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. pic.twitter.com/YJ63I1bQPs
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 25, 2023
The impeachment trial that Patrick will preside over — determining Paxton’s political fate — is scheduled for September. There Patrick will have what Maddow calls “immense power” and be the “ultimate arbiter of the rules and the admissibility of evidence and all that stuff.”
Maddow repeats again how she can’t believe the story is “real” before revealing that the $3 million donation from Paxton’s Super PAC is cited on Patrick’s new campaign finance report, even though — as if this matters — Patrick is not up for re-election until 2026.
“Wow,” Maddow says, fighting back her laughter, “everything really is bigger in Texas.”
In June, the Houston Chronicle reported on Dan Patrick’s $125,000 loan to Ken Paxton as a potential conflict of interest as the trial approaches — the new Texas-size $3 million revelation makes that earlier loan look more like a Rhode Island-size conflict.
