Ken Paxton is about to go on criminal trial after all

When Texas Republicans impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton late last year, it wasn’t because they had suddenly “grown a conscience” or “grown a spine” (these concepts do not exist in Republican politics one way or the other). It was because they saw that Paxton was likely headed for a federal criminal trial, and they wanted to distance themselves from it politically before it happened.

Of course Texas Republicans then turned right around and acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial, in a reminder that Republican politics these days is equal parts corrupt, idiotic, and wishy washy. But impeachment is mere theater compared to actual criminal trials. And on Sunday the courts rejected Paxton’s last ditch appeal.

So now Ken Paxton’s criminal trial is going to begin on April 15th, the date that has already set. It’s a good reminder that once a trial date is set, the inevitable last ditch delay tactics don’t tend to actually delay anything. It’s how the process is designed to work. We saw that with Donald Trump’s civil trials, and we’ll see it with his criminal trials too.

As far as Ken Paxton’s upcoming criminal trial, this is a federal trial, so Texas Republicans can’t do anything to stop it (nor can the state government pardon him). And while there are no guarantees, the Feds tend to win nearly every criminal case that goes to trial, because of how thoroughly they build their cases before bringing indictments.

The fraud charges against Paxton are serious enough that on paper he faces up to 99 years in prison if convicted. Realistically he won’t get anything close to that. But he’d certainly get several years in prison. Texas Republicans would then have to decide if they want the embarrassment and dysfunction of having a state Attorney General who’s sitting in federal prison for the entire rest of his term, or if they finally want to remove him from office. Either way, Paxton is toast.