How Angela Paxton Could Help Decide the Fate of Her Embattled Husband, Ken
Last September, a process server arrived at the home of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, as part of a lawsuit filed by groups trying to help women get abortions out of state. Mr. Paxton’s wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, greeted him at the door and told him her husband was on the phone. Later, Ms. Paxton was seen out in the driveway, firing up a pickup truck and swinging open a rear passenger door.
At that point, the process server later recounted, Mr. Paxton ran from the garage, climbed into the truck, and the couple disappeared down the street, leaving him to deposit the subpoena on the ground.
Now, Ms. Paxton is in a position to help her husband with a much more existential legal entanglement: She is one of 31 state senators who are designated to act as jurors in Mr. Paxton’s impeachment trial this summer, deciding whether to convict him on charges that he abused his office to benefit himself and a donor and permanently remove him from office.
The question of how Ms. Paxton, a second-term Republican senator from north of Dallas, would handle that responsibility — whether she would choose or be required to recuse herself from the decision — has been hanging over the State Capitol since last week, when Mr. Paxton was impeached by a wide margin of Republicans and Democrats in the Texas House.
Source: The New York Times
