North Austin News

In a fiery rebuke, Attorney General Ken Paxton has denounced the indictment of former President Donald Trump in Georgia as a politically-driven "witch hunt," sparking renewed debate over the boundaries of election result scrutiny. Paxton's critique comes as he navigates his own legal battles and awaits a state Senate trial for potential removal from office, Newsmax reported.

"It just looks like exactly what President Trump said: 'It's a witch hunt,'" Paxton said. "This is obviously the fourth indictment. It's so obvious what's going on. It's completely political."

In his fourth indictment, Trump has been accused of multiple allegations, including racketeering, oath of office violations, forgery, false statements and impersonating a public officer. The indictment, filed on Aug. 14, also names 18 co-conspirators, including notable figures like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff.

In August 2022, Paxton's opinion advocating the release of 2020 election ballots spurred a surge in requests from Texas county elections officials. Despite federal and state laws mandating confidentiality for 22 months post-election, Cameron County's elections administrator Remi Garza observed a uniform pattern in these requests, suggesting potential coordination across the state following Paxton's opinion release, Newsmax reported.

In 2020, Paxton filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, alleging that these states took advantage of the pandemic to justify disregarding election laws. Paxton's legal action, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, contended that last-minute changes enacted by the states had a distorting effect on the election results, Newsmax reported. The lawsuit further argued that many of these 11th-hour decisions, made at the local level, were not properly sanctioned by state legislatures, thereby skirting constitutional processes. According to a statement on the Texas attorney general's website, Paxton asserted that these actions eroded trust in the election's integrity, compromising the security of the 2020 election.