Lincoln vs. Paxton & Trump

UPDATE: Since the Aug. 5 Blog, bold updates and bullets added August 8.

While it may be difficult to see those three names together, stick with me. I know one thing—America runs on hope–positive deeds and actions are critical to our success. A negative message never moves a nation forward, only backward. Play the long game–Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural inspires.

Thursday, August 3, 2023, in Washington, DC. and Dallas, Texas, former president Donald Trump and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, were arraigned (brought into court to offer their pleas to felony indictments). Paxton had a “gag” order about discussing the case but sent out fund-raising letters expressing the “unfairness,” my word, he used stronger language, of his indictment. Trump immediately sent out an online fund-raising appeal on his “Truth” Social website, but also chastised the special prosecutor as “deranged” and worse. He’d been warned. But his campaign fund, which he uses for paying legal fees, for himself and the multitude of others called to defend him in DC, New York, and Florida, is down $60 million. Trump has not used his own money for his defense, so for now relies on money originally donated to his 2024 campaign.

In the case of Paxton, since he was impeached by an unexpected vote of 121-23 in the Texas House in May, 2023, he waits outside government without pay for a hearing in the Texas Senate Sept. 5. Paxton’s court appearance in another case before Harris Country District Judge Andrea Beall Aug. 3. This case comes after an eight-year delay–an indictment on a felony securities fraud case, that stalled in the background as he’s served as Texas’s Attorney General. Does that sound strange to you?  The highest legal authority in a state being under indictment on a felony charge for eight years?  Where else but Texas could that happen?  

Paxton’s original indictment on two counts of first degree security fraud and a lesser charge of failing to register with the state security regulators occurred July 31, 2015. Included in the indictment was an allegation that Paxton misled invertors regarding Servergy Inc, which was under investigation in a separate case.

On August 3, 2015, Paxton turned himself in and was arrested at the Collin County jail. He was booked and released. He said then that he would be abiding by the judge’s order not to talk about the case. On August 18, came a re-indictment on the securities fraud charges:

• “unlawfully and intentionally” offered to sell $100,000 or more shares to two investors directly or indirectly.
• “engaged in fraud by intentionally failing to disclose to the investors that he would be compensated 100,000 shares for sales and that he ‘had not and was not’ investing his own funds in Servergy.
• Two different accounts from the Servergy CEO about whether or not Paxton received payment for the sale:
• 1) In April 2015, Mapp testified before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Paxton was paid for consulting and recruiting investors.
• 2) On July 15, 2015, then-Servergy CEO Bill Mapp told the Texas Rangers that Paxton was offered a commission on the sales but turned it down. However,

In the meantime, since his impeachment, Paxton has supported a $3 million gift to the campaign coffers of GOP Senate Leader Dan Patrick, who will chair Paxton’s Senate hearing . His appearance in Dallas seemed less than courageous—he came in a nonpublic door and went up to a seat in the gallery, instead of sitting at the defense table. The Attorney General-in-waiting did not .want to be seen as a common defendant in a felony case that had been delayed these many years by procedures. (Questions at issue during the eight-year delay did not seem deal breakers: Who pays the lawyers? Where will the trial be held? He wanted Collin County, his home district where his wife now serves in the Texas Senate. But it is to be in Dallas, after the impeachment trial in the Texas Senate that will determine his political future.

While there are many strands to pull on Paxton, the one that angered the Texas House the most, which started the impeachment proceeding after an investigation, asked the House to approve a $3.3 million payment to the TX Dept. of Justice in damages to attorneys Paxton had fired in retaliation for whistleblowing about special treatment Paxton approved for Austin Developer Nate Paul. In return Paul allegedly employed Paxton’s mistress and renovated one of his houses.

(Several of the 39 law suits Paxton filed against President Obama at Texas taxpayer expense focused on health care, including leading 17 states in attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, while representing a state with millions of uninsured.

He spent $1.6 million to require a Voter ID law that judges have called discriminatory, and $1 million to force Obama’s Administration to accept Texas’ 2011 redistricting maps, but they were withdrawn in 2013 after federal government no longer required to sign off on changes to voting maps.

In a state still flush with oil and gas production approaching the hottest summers in Texas history, Paxton looked back, not forward, urging defeat of Clean Power Plans and in suit after suit pressed defeat of sections of the Environmental Protection Act.

Now with 24 cases before Biden’s government, Paxton has worked diligently to defeat government policies, but at the expense of Texas taxpayers, who might have other jobs they’d prefer to be done instead. Does anyone in the Texas Office of Budget have a tally on what all this litigation has cost the Lone Star State?

Negativity feeds on itself. Trump tried his best to protect his buddy Paxton from impeachment. He warned Texan GOP House members voting for this “very unfair process” against the Attorney General. And true to his vindictive past, Trump vowed to “fight” any lawmaker who voted to impeach Paxton. Well, maybe in Texas DT is slipping, the abuses are just too much to ignore (19 in all), or they realized the tsunami had already begun and there weren’t enough other GOP candidates in Texas to “primary” all those who would were voting against Paxton. Or maybe Texas legislators gained courage.

Trump appeared Thursday in DC Federal Court on Thursday on four charges for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He tried to convince VP Pence to refuse to certify the election on Jan. 6 and prior had his minions meet with the Proud Boys, those phantoms of brute ‘justice,’ to gather a posse to join Trump supporters in storming the US Capitol January 6. Trump can argue that it was peaceful, but seven people died as a result of the attack, including Capitol Hill police officers and a woman protestor who climbed in a window broken by others trying to gain access to the Capitol.

By the way, if the Electoral College count for the 2020 election has vanished from memory, the final tally was not close. Joe Biden in 2020 won in the Electoral College 306-232—results similar to Trump’s in 2016 (304 to Clinton’s 227), when Trump spoke of it as a “landslide.” Trump doesn’t normally discuss the 2016 popular vote. Clinton’s won that 2016 vote by 48% (65,853,625) to 43% (62,955,106); she didn’t call for a recount or summon her followers to the street. It is true that under our system, it is the Electoral vote, that declares the winner.

In the 2020 popular vote, Biden won by 51.3% (81,283,361) to 46% (74,222,960). Compare that with the popular vote in 2016, which Trump doesn’t discuss. He only talks about his “landslide” victory in the Electoral College. Trump joins four other Presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Presidency because they took the Electoral College.

[These were John Qunicy Adams (1824), (By the way, name calling is not just a 20^th century invention, though perhaps slightly tamer—Andrew Jackson, a favorite of Donald Trump, called Adams a “Judas” for naming Henry Clay, also an 1824 candidate for President, his Secretary of State. More later.). Rutherford Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and Trump (2016). While the Electoral College (actually electors are voted for, not actual candidates) was created to provide smaller states with more equity–when compared with a state like California, which has 52 Congressional Districts, each representing 760,350 people vs. Wyoming with 1 for 576,837 people. But now candidates spend more time in the largest states with the greatest number of electors. More about this and those five elections in a future blog.]

 Trump’s initial defense to August 3 charges that he instigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in an effort to prevent certification of Electoral College ballots to complete Biden’s election is that his “free speech” has been strangled. That’s not what’s this is about. Trump is in court because he knew he lost the election, yet he worked in key states to overturn the vote, lied to the American people, lined up false Electoral College electors, and led those strategizing for the Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection, planning to stop Congress from certifying the election. Right now, I’m not addressing Trump’s future trials in New York, Florida, and expected in Georgia. Trump continued to follow his vindictive nature this weekend, when he warned: “If you come after me, I come after you.” That John Wayne approach to justice may have been fine on 1950s movie screens, but American justice does not gather at the OK Corral. The judge in the case issued a protective order, which Special Prosecutor Jack Smith said could help prevent a “harmful chilling effect on witnesses.” Trump responded saying his words were just a “political speech.” An argument that doesn’t work for me.

Lincoln was no stranger to candidates who wanted to decertify his election. Vice President Brackenridge of Kentucky, an opposing candidate, was pressured against Lincoln’s certification as well, but of course Brackenridge thought better of it.

“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?” Lincoln said in his First Inaugural. “Is there any better, or equal hope in the world?”