Texas AG Ken Paxton Gets Absolutely Destroyed By Cop On Twitter
Think before you Tweet.
This is a mug shot. This fact will be relevant.
Ken Paxton always has a lot of time on his hands since he’s turned the Texas Attorney General position into little more than a conservative performance art installation. Under his leadership, the awesome power of the state’s legal watchdog is mostly deployed to ask the United States to overthrow election results from Biden states and convince random Trump-appointed judges to grind the ordinary operation of constitutional governance to a halt. And, of course, groom his fresh-out-of-law-school underlings for higher posts. So it’s not surprising that he’d hop on Twitter and get in a fight with Houston’s chief of police. Totally normal behavior for the state’s top law enforcement official!
It all started with Paxton filing a suit to remove San Antonio’s chief of police for not allowing his office to be deputized by the Trump administration. Back in 2017, the department had detained a number of folks and, having no reason to hold them, released them. Paxton’s office argues that San Antonio should have had reason to suspect that these people were undocumented and put aside enforcing its own laws in favor of helping ICE figure out what’s going on. Chief Acevedo stood up for his fellow officer.
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The clash could have ended here, but Ken Paxton thought he could clap back and win a fight with the police. This will end poorly for him.
Houston’s crime rates are “up” but viewed in context this decade high still puts the city roughly in line with where it’s been since the mid-90s.
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The absentee AG card stings, but this is a relatively mild rebuke. Paxton is getting out of this easy. Acevedo’s demolishing him on likes, but Paxton could walk away with some dignity intact. However, as Paxton lacks dignity, he’ll jump back into this.
He waited through the weekend and came back on Tuesday? That’s some serious “The Jerk Store Called” energy. Note how viciously ratioed Ken’s getting here. This post is premised on the cynical effort to misconstrue bail reform. Putting aside that they aren’t “felons” when they’re being held pre-trial, reforms that reduce or eliminate cash bail don’t let dangerous people back on the streets, they take people that the courts have already decided can be safely released and just doesn’t make that release contingent on a how rich the suspect is. A serial killer suspect isn’t getting bail — but if a suspected non-violent drug user is deemed no threat to society pending trial, that doesn’t change just because he can’t cough up $250K.
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Oh my. Ken just couldn’t walk away, could he? Facing multiple felony counts, it’s actually insulting to the profession that Paxton didn’t see this coming. It’s not exactly three-dimensional chess to think that bringing up felons would eventually zero in on the fact that he’s looking at jail time himself.
Let’s see if Paxton tries to come back for more. I assume we’ll need to wait until at least Monday.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
