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They could have, but didn't try. Everyone in Texas politics knows Ken Paxton is more corrupt than average for a Texas politician, and the prosecution was probably banking on that carrying the day, but just in general they did not do a very good job.
That's the trouble with those pesky court cases, you can't just say "Everybody knows Luigi the Leg-breaker is a crook", you have to show that in this particular instance Luigi really did hold up the liquor store.
If the prosecution really were hoping that their case would work based on "but everybody knows he's a crook", the level of incompetence must be stunning. Are they really that incompetent, or is there the possibility of 3D chess going on, where somebody decided to take a hopeless case that Paxton would win in order to - I dunno - bolster his support or more importantly make the people trying to get him for corruption look bad?
Well, this was an impeachment, not a criminal trial. So you totally can just impeach on vibes if you have the numbers. And likewise you can totally acquit an obviously guilty man if you have the numbers.
On most of the counts it was 12 Democrats +2 Republicans voting to convict and 16 Republicans voting to acquit. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the quality of the evidence wasn't the most important factor here.
the rules of the impeachment trial largely mimicked those of a criminal trial, most importantly the beyond reasonable doubt standard
the fact that anyone, here included, watched that trial and voted to remove Ken Paxton based on a beyond reasonable doubt standard does certainly say a lot about what was or wasn't the most important factor here
However, unlike criminal trials where jurors are selected on the basis of impartiality, the jurors in this trial were people whose entire job is to be partial. It's a political process, and is designed to be one. It doesn't tell us much about what Paxton did or not do - but it tells us plenty about who has the power in Texas politics.
the political process adopted rules which largely mimic rules of a criminal trial, including not being "biased"
so the people whose job it is to be partial put on a charade adopting rules about being impartial and using the reasonable doubt standard, among other things mimicking a criminal trial, and the whole thing was a laughable sham
I reread your comment I originally replied to and I thought you were writing something which is clear you were not and I apologize for that. In this example, it's the Texas Bush machine flexing on the guy who isn't playing the game the way they want it to be played.
Indeed. Politics is full of things like this - inquiries that are only held when you know what the answer will be, speeches given to empty chambers, declaring someone has your full support right before you betray them. It's laughable shams the whole way down.
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