On the way to Texas Atty. General Ken Paxton became an emerging figure in the GOP and his wife, Angela, entertained crowds with a guitar and a song.

I’m a mommy who packs guns, and my husband is suing Obama, she sang at campaign events and Republican clubs in Texas.

When it came time for the high school teacher and guidance counselor to launch her own political career, a $2 million loan from her husband Angela Paxton propelled her to a narrow victory for a state senate seat in the booming suburbs. from Dallas. Once elected, she introduced bills to expand his office’s powers, and approved budgets for his state agency and salary.

Now Senator Paxton is a key figure in the next phase of Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment: as a juror in a Senate trial that could reinstate her husband or ban him permanently.

It’s a role that raises an ethical cloud over the Senate proceedings. State law forces all senators to attend, but is silent on whether she must participate.

If it were a lawsuit in the court system, she would totally have to [step aside]said Kenneth Williams, a professor of criminal procedure at South Texas College of Law in Houston. It’s a clear conflict of interest.

The trial begins no later than August 28, and it promises to be very personal for Angela Paxton.

The 20 articles of impeachment filed against Ken Paxton include sweeping allegations of abuse of office and unethical conduct. They include a bribery charge related to an extramarital affair with a senator’s aide. Another suggested that Angela Paxton was involved in the installation of $20,000 countertops in their home, paid for by a political donor.

Angela Paxton has not said whether she will withdraw from the process. She declined comment when approached by the Associated Press outside the Senate chamber on Monday.

State Representative Andrew Murr, who led the impeachment inquiry at the state House, declined to say whether he thinks Angela Paxton should step aside. The Senate gets to set the rules, he said.

Gov. Lieutenant Dan Patrick tightly controls the Senate and its 19-12 Republican majority. He suggested a television in Dallas

stations state

ahead of last week’s House impeachment vote that Angela Paxton will participate in the trial.

I will preside over that case and the senators will vote all 31 senators, Patrick told WFAA-TV. Establish the rules for that process as we go along and we’ll see how that develops.

Asked Tuesday if Senator Paxton would participate in the trial, Patrick declined comment, saying he could not answer questions about the impeachment process.

The state constitution requires a two-thirds majority of the chamber to convict. But there’s little historical precedent in setting rules for impeachment proceedings, and nothing to compare with marital conflict, Williams said.

In nearly 200 years of Texas history, Ken Paxton is just the third official to be impeached and the first state official to be impeached since Gov. James Pa Ferguson in 1917.

There is no legal mechanism to remove Angela Paxton from the trial

like it

there would be

in

a criminal trial, Williams said.

It’s really up to her ethical standards and compass, Williams said.

The trial is coming

not only

after Paxton was overwhelmingly re-elected in November,

but so

was his wife, who was running for a second term, buoyed by widespread support among conservative activists. Among them was Texas Values ​​president and attorney Jonathan Saenz, who has worked closely with the senator on legislation, including a bill she introduced this year that would ban sexual content in public school libraries.

He said Senator Paxton has earned the right to decide what she thinks is best in this situation.

Senator Paxton is certainly in the highest category of elected officials in terms of the way she treats people and her position. I have a lot of faith in her moral compass to side with what she thinks is best, Saenz said.

The Paxtons come to each other’s aid in political and legal battles.

Angela Paxton urged her husband to pursue his political ambitions during his first run for a House seat in 2002. In 2018, she praised his political expertise and advice in her first Senate campaign. That included the $2 million loan from his reelection campaign in a bruise for the Republican primary.

One of Angela Paxton’s first moves as a state legislator was to introduce a bill to give the Attorney General’s Office new powers over license waivers for investment advisers. Ken Paxton was named in 2015 for failing to register as an investment advisor while raising money for a technology startup in which he was invested and paid. He has yet to appear in court for a felony.

Angela Paxton insisted her bill had nothing to do with his criminal charges, but legal experts said it got to the heart of his charges. The account failed.

In 2022, Angela was the getaway driver from their home when Ken jumped into the family truck to evade a bailiff with a subpoena in a federal abortion case.

Angela Paxton isn’t the only lawmaker with a potential conflict of interest in the process.

The House impeachment articles accuse Paxton of using state senator Bryan Hughes as a poacher for a legal opinion that protected a political donor from property foreclosure.

Hughes has not said whether he expects to be called as a witness or whether he will withdraw. He did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Ken Paxton and his allies, from former President Trump to grassroots organizations in Texas, have called the House impeachment process a politically motivated sham, which they rushed through in the last week of the legislative session.

The suspended attorney general is now hoping for a fighting chance in a senate controlled by Patrick.

When Patrick first endorsed Angela Paxton in that tough 2018 primary, he called her a dynamic conservative leader and a person of integrity deeply rooted in her Christian faith.

Patrick this year appointed her vice chair of the Senate Committee on State Affairs and seats on the powerful finance and education committees.

Mark Phariss, the Democrat who lost to Angela Paxton by 2 percentage points in 2018, noted her keen political instincts. He predicted that she will not delay a lawsuit.

I assume she won’t back down, Phariss said. “Because she doesn’t seem to be moving away from her husband, either when she ran for office in 2018 or at any time since.”