I was at the gym this afternoon when I saw out of the corner of my eye Elon Musk giving an exuberant speech at one of the Trump inauguration’s events. I was listening to something else on my AirPods. Then, only a few moments later, in a moment of exuberant disinhibition he gave what was unmistakably a sieg heil! salute. Then he did it again. He actually appeared to do it three separate times. I took out my AirPods and tried to see if there was going to be any comment on CNN on what we’d just seen. I wondered whether this might somehow have been a weird angle or something. I commented on BlueSky asking, rhetorically, if we’d all just seen what we just saw. It wasn’t a weird angle.
This is one of those cases where it’s helpful to have been to this rodeo one time before.
The second Donald Trump presidency has officially begun.
In a speech running about 30 minutes long, he promised day one action on immigration, to seize the Panama Canal (while somehow being a peacemaker president) and to instruct his Cabinet to “defeat inflation.”
Gen. Mark A. Milley responds to Biden pardon: “My family and I are deeply grateful for the President’s action today. After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our Nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights.”
I’m not one to tell people how they should react to or experience things. But for me I’m taking all of this in with a serene impassivity. They won. They’re entitled to their day. The Trump people have been signaling for days that they’re going to hit the ground running with what they describe as an executive “shock and awe.” I don’t see any reason to be shocked or awed. I don’t say this in any grand metaphysical sense. I mean that I’ve seen headstrong winners of close elections high on their own supply before. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, all of this is meant to hit you with so much sensory stimulus that you become overwhelmed. But the images you see wrapped around you in an iMax theater aren’t real. It’s still a movie.
Note this “for the ages” picture, above, of Jeff Bezos with the CEOs of Meta, Google and Apple from left to right, at an inaugural service feting Donald Trump this morning at St. John’s church across the street from the White House. You may not have a billion dollars but your dignity is all yours. No one can take it from you. Compared to some you can already be ahead of the game.
One step at a time. They’re not as big as they look.
On his final day in office, President Joe Biden granted preemptive pardons to several high-profile political targets of incoming President Donald Trump.
Biden pardoned:
retired Army General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led the government’s response to the COVID pandemic;
the members and staff of the House Jan. 6 committee;
the police officers who testified before the Jan. 6 committee.
The attempt to protect current and former government officials, including sitting members of Congress, from abusive political retribution and a weaponized Trump II Justice Department was an extraordinary marker of the erosion of the rule of law and democratic norms in the United States.
“[T]hese are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said.
Biden’s pardons were issued just hours before his predecessor was set to be sworn as his successor. Biden had continued to try to observe some of the pomp and circumstance of a presidential transition, keeping traditions like hosting the incoming president at the White House and attending the inauguration, but the pardons and other preemptive efforts to blunt a rogue Trump II administration create a taut public scene on inauguration day.
In issuing the pardons, Biden explicitly noted that they should not signify that the recipients engaged in any wrongdoing. It is not clear whether all of this morning’s recipients will accept the presidential pardons.
LIVE: Trump’s Swearing-In Ceremony
The ironies today abound: Trump being sworn in on the national holiday that honors Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the Capitol Rotunda that a mob of MAGA followers desecrated on Jan. 6, 2021.
TPM will be providing live coverage beginning at 11 a.m. ET.
Transition Tidbits
President Biden spent his last full day in office in South Carolina, which was key to his securing the Democratic nomination in 2020. Speaking at a Black church, Biden urged Americans to “keep the faith.”
Trump’s second inaugural address reportedly will be less dark than his notorious 2017 “American Carnage” shitshow.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: MAGA, MAHA, And Lots Of Crypto: Which Trump Inaugural Ball Is Right For You?
Day One Of Trump II
I want to caution that many of the expected first day acts of President Trump are going to be more symbolic than substantive. The executive orders in particular are probably best viewed as a combination of real executive orders and press releases gussied up as executive orders. Still, performative hatred towards transgender Americans, people of color, and other vulnerable groups can both be of little legal weight and still carry enormous costs and consequences.
NYT: Trump Will Strip Protections from Career Civil Servants, Stephen Miller Says
WaPo: Elon Musk’s DOGE to be sued within minutes of Trump inauguration for allegedly failing to comply with a 1972 law governing executive branch advisory committees
Early Data Points
Forced resignations at State: “Scores of senior career diplomats are resigning from the State Department effective at noon on Monday after receiving instructions to do so from President-elect Donald Trump’s aides, three U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.”
Gov’t scientists hunker down: “Agencies and unions have put in place new guardrails designed to limit political interference in government research.”
Sign of the times: “The New York Times contacted more than two dozen of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken critics and perceived enemies to ask about their level of concern. Despite having spoken out in the past or having participated in proceedings against him, almost all declined to address their worries publicly, saying speaking out now could make them even more conspicuous targets.”
How To Pay Attention
Democracy advocate Ben Raderstorf offers four criteria for prioritizing where to allocate your limited attention for politics in the Trump II chaos:
Is the action tangible, actionable, and detailed? Or intangible, abstract, and vague?
Does this thing cause irreparable harm to real people?
Does this action target the opposition in a way that may cause anticipatory obedience?
Does this entrench the authoritarian faction in power and make it more difficult to dislodge?
Corruption Watch
WSJ: With a corporate merger review looming, executives of the owner of CBS are reportedly considering settling a bogus Trump lawsuit over a 60 Minutes‘ interview with Kamala Harris.
NYT: “President-elect Donald J. Trump and his family on Friday started selling a cryptocurrency token featuring an image of Mr. Trump drawn from the July assassination attempt, a potentially lucrative new business that ethics experts assailed as a blatant effort to cash in on the office he is about to occupy again.”
NYT: An Illustrated Guide to Trump’s Conflict of Interest Risks
The Perils Of Economic Concentration
This is a moment.
It's a powerful articulation of the problem with #cyberbarons consolidating government and economic power and the potential response — genesis of a populist antitrust, anti-monopoly movement.
Could appeal beyond partisan divides.
@raskin.house.gov with @chrislhayes.bsky.social
Former TPMer Tierney Sneed: “Judge Aileen Cannon suggested Friday she was not inclined to allow the Justice Department to share special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents case with Congress – at least for now.”
Surreal
Former TPMer Ryan Reilly recorded an unscripted moment Friday that serves as a fitting end to the Biden presidency:
This morning, I was chatting with Mike Fanone as he walked into his sixth Jan. 6 sentencing hearing, and Judge Tanya Chutkan emerged from the courthouse with the security detail she has with her all the time as the result of the threats she received because she oversaw Donald Trump's D.C. case.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is ripping up legal procedure, the better to keep a high-profile abortion case in his hands as the new administration takes over.
Last June, the Supreme Court found that the anti-abortion doctors aiming to make abortion drug mifepristone less accessible lacked standing, and unanimously shot down the case. Experts expected the challenge to live on in the hands of a few red states — Idaho, Kansas and Missouri — who’d try to take over as the primary plaintiffs. One expert even told TPM that she expected Kacsmaryk to go along with a right-wing strategy to drag the zombie case out, even if it was so thin as to later get shot down.
The first part of that prediction has come true. The DOJ and a manufacturer of mifepristone are trying to end the case — the Supreme Court found that the doctors couldn’t keep litigating it, and the red states “intervened” in a case that is no longer live. If we lived in a normal world, the red states would have to start afresh.
But they don’t want to. They’re not going to get a friendlier judge than Kacsmaryk. By staying, they also get the added perk of being in the 5th Circuit’s domain, the most reliably right-wing appellate court. And Kacsmaryk doesn’t want to lose the case either, particularly amid his Supreme Court audition, knowing that the Trump DOJ will flip its position in the case.
“Notwithstanding dismissal of the original action, the three Intervenor States of Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas (“the States”) wish to continue pressing their claims,” the DOJ wrote in a filing last month. “And they insist on doing so before this Court, even though the States’ claims have no plausible connection to the Northern District of Texas. Particularly now that the original Plaintiffs have dismissed their suit, the States’ Complaint must likewise be dismissed (or transferred)…”
Kacsmaryk isn’t letting it happen. He directed the states on Thursday to submit a new complaint, hand-waving that they’ll get to the venue controversy later.
It’s totally lawless. Kamsaryk wants to keep alive the possibility that he can deliver a death blow to medication abortions, and to get on Trump’s radar while he’s doing it.
— Kate Riga
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
Josh Kovensky breaks down the carnival-esque array of balls for MAGA members hoping to cozy up to Trump and his closest allies this weekend.
Khaya Himmelman spoke to one of the 60,000 voters in North Carolina whose ballots Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin is trying to get tossed out in order to steal the election from incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, who won the race by just over 700 votes.
Emine Yücel checks in on Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) who this week threatened one of her Democratic colleagues during a congressional hearing, when she asked Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) if she would “wanna take it outside.”
The New Buckraking
It is really, really easy to cash in on the great bootlicking that’s come with Trump’s return to office. We mostly see it from the other side: tech CEOs cozying up to Trump, companies settling bogus lawsuits he brought, news outlets easing up coverage. What’s less visible are those who see it as a business opportunity.
That is where at least some of the pre-inaugural festivities fit in. It’s partly due to a simple bottlenecking effect. The official Trump inaugural festivities are extremely limited, and sold out in early January. That’s left a lot of unmet demand among people trying to cozy up to the once and future President.
It’s being met by a carnival-esque array of balls, featuring various tiers of Trumpworld officialdom. At the top, you have events that promise access to high-level appointees like FBI pick Kash Patel. Other events cater to specific, often picayune constituencies: take the “Coronation Ball,” which features the hosts of the Red Scare podcast and seems pitched at a mix of so-called nationalists and the most irony-poisoned among us. Then again, how else to deal with the next few years?
This weekend, there’s a ball for everyone. Read my piece on that here.
— Josh Kovensky
One Of 60K Voters Griffin Seeks To Disenfranchise Speaks Out: ‘I Want My Vote To Be Counted”
As North Carolina state appeals court judge and Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin filed a legal brief with the state Supreme Court laying out his argument for why he believes 60,000 November ballots should be tossed out, protesters gathered outside the state Supreme Court building to demonstrate against his election-stealing efforts. The protesters gathered at 6:00 am ET on Tuesday, reading all of the 60,000 names of voters whose ballots are being challenged by Griffin.
Although Louanne Caspar, a Wake County businesswoman with a 10-year voting history in North Carolina, did not attend the protest, she’s on the list and she’s not even sure why. In an interview with TPM she said she was “very surprised” to learn last week that her vote was in danger of being thrown out.
“I take every election cycle very seriously,” she said. “I read up, I’m not a one party person, I am registered as a Democrat, but I vote both ways.”
Caspar noted too that she actually works for the Board of Elections on Election Day because she’s a big “rule follower.”
“I would like to know why I could be disqualified, and then second, do I have an opportunity to cure that,” she added.
Griffin is currently challenging 60,000 ballots because they allegedly contain incomplete voter registration and are missing the last four digits of their social security numbers or drivers license on their voter files. Caspar said that she did give the Board of Elections her social security number when she registered to vote, which is why she remains confused as to why her vote is among those Griffin is using to try to overturn the election in his favor.
This week, Griffin, submitted a brief to the state Supreme Court, asking the court to first invalidate 5,509 overseas ballots, who, he claims, failed to show photo identification when they voted, before the court considers the rest of the 60,000 ballots that he is protesting. Griffin is in no way conceding that the 60,000 ballots should not be contested, but rather, as previously reported for TPM, he is merely attempting to protest ballots in a way that is more “palatable.” But the larger effort remains the same—he is attempting to overturn the results, and steal the lead away from Democrat incumbent Allison Riggs.
“I really want to get some resolution from this,” Caspar said. “I want my vote to be counted.”
— Khaya Himmelman
Words Of Wisdom
“I am no child. Do not call me a child. I am no child. Don’t even start … If you wanna take it outside we can do that.”
That’s Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), the most recent wannabe MTG, seemingly trying to start a fight during a congressional hearing this week with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).
If it’s bewildering to you to hear that a current United States representative is threatening another congresswoman with a “catch me outside how about that” moment over the word “child” … Well, you’re not alone.
Mace claimed on social media her intention was not to fight but to have a more “constructive conversation” off the floor — I’ll let you be the judge of that.
To make things even more ridiculous, following the comments, committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) ruled that Mace’s remarks were not a call to violence, saying she could have been asking Crockett to go outside to “have a cup of coffee or perhaps a beer.” Right.
Fascinating news this afternoon that CBS and its parent company Paramount are considering settling a lawsuit Trump filed against them late last year alleging “election interference” and demanding $10 billion in damages. We know there’s been a lot of this of late. ABC settled an incredibly weak case Trump brought over George Stephanopoulos’ correct use of the word “rape” to describe what a jury in New York concluded Trump had done to E. Jean Carroll. But there’s weak and there’s weak. The suit against CBS isn’t weak. It’s absurd. There’s no tort of editing. But Paramount is considering settling and generally going full Oprah cash & prizes for Donald Trump. This WSJ article, which broke the news, tells us what the issue is: CBS has a merger it’s trying to get approved. And the Trump team, including incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr (who has promised to abuse his power starting on day one), have made it clear that companies have to give Trump cash and prizes if they don’t want trouble.
I’m starting to get a strong Iraq War vibe about Greenland.
By this, I want to be clear, I don’t mean that I expect a catastrophic and ruinous U.S. invasion to take place. I’m referring to something different … but let’s just say: still not great. One of my strongest memories of those dark times 20-plus years ago was a peculiar dynamic that took hold in Washington after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The desire to invade Iraq was already a big thing in elite conservative circles in the late Clinton years. That was the origin of the “Iraq Liberation Act” of 1998. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration quickly made clear it wanted to overthrow the Iraqi regime either as retaliation for the attacks or as some sort of preemptive action to forestall future attacks. The ambiguity was of course an important tell about what and why any of this was happening.
Whether you’re a wealthy Trump fan seeking to celebrate your big guy’s return to power next week, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, a vaccine skeptic, a hyper-online nihilist or a simple country lobbyist, you have a lot of options in D.C. this weekend.
You can attend the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Ball. There’s the Crypto Ball. There’s a Coronation Ball for the alt-right and, if you want all of it together, there’s even a separate MAGA MAHA Crypto Inaugural Ball.
This article was first published by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
When President Donald Trump appeared in a New York courtroom last spring to face a slew of criminal charges, he was joined by a rotating cadre of lawyers, campaign aides, his family — and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton had traveled to be with Trump for what he described on social media as a “sham of a trial” and a “travesty of justice.” Trump was facing 34 counts of falsifying records in the case, which focused on hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from disclosing their sexual relationship.
“It’s just sad that we’re at this place in our country where the left uses the court system not to promote justice, not to enforce the rule of law, but to try to take out political opponents, and that’s exactly what they’re doing to him,” Paxton said on a conservative podcast at the time.
“They’ve done it to me.”
A year earlier, the Republican-led Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton over allegations, made by senior officials in his office, that he had misused his position to help a political donor. Trump was not physically by Paxton’s side but weighed in repeatedly on social media, calling the process unfair and warning lawmakers that they would have to contend with him if they persisted.
When the Texas Senate in September 2023 acquitted Paxton of the impeachment charges against him, Trump claimed credit. “Yes, it is true that my intervention through TRUTH SOCIAL saved Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from going down at the hands of Democrats and some Republicans …” Trump posted on the social media platform he founded.
The acquittal, however, did not wholly absolve Paxton of the allegations brought by his former employees. The FBI has been investigating the same accusations since at least November 2020. And come Monday, when Trump is inaugurated for his second term, that investigation will be in the hands of his Department of Justice.
Paxton and Trump have forged a friendship over the years, one that has been cemented in their shared political and legal struggles and their willingness to come to each other’s aid at times of upheaval. Both have been the subjects of federal investigations, have been impeached by lawmakers and have faced lawsuits related to questions about their conduct.
“If there’s one thing both guys share in common, people have been after them for a while in a big way. They’ve been under the gun. They’ve shared duress in a political setting,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist and Paxton friend. “They’ve both been through the wringer, if you will. And I think there’s a kinship there.”
Neither Trump nor Paxton responded to requests for comment or to written questions. Both men have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, claiming that they have been the targets of witch hunts by their political enemies, including fellow Republicans.
Their relationship is so cozy that Trump said he’d consider naming Paxton as his U.S. attorney general pick. He ultimately chose another political ally, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Although Trump did not select Paxton, the two men will get yet another opportunity to have each other’s backs now that he has returned to office, both when it comes to the federal investigation into Paxton and pushing forward the president’s agenda.
Before and during Trump’s first term, Paxton filed multiple lawsuits challenging policies passed under former President Barack Obama. He then aggressively pursued cases against President Joe Biden’s administration after Trump lost reelection. Such lawsuits included efforts to stop vaccine mandates, to expedite the deportation of migrants and to block federal protections for transgender workers.
Trump has supported Paxton over and over, not only as the Texas politician sought reelection but also as he faced various political and legal scandals. The president-elect’s promises to exert more control over the Justice Department, which has traditionally operated with greater independence from the White House, could mark an end to the long-running investigation into Paxton, several attorneys said.
Justice Department and FBI officials declined to comment on the story and the status of the investigation, but as recently as August, a former attorney general staffer testified before a grand jury about the case, Bloomberg Law reported. Paxton also referenced the FBI’s four-year investigation of him during a speech in late December without mentioning any resolution on the case. The fact that Paxton hasn’t been indicted could signal that investigators don’t have a smoking gun, one political science professor told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, but a former federal prosecutor said cases can take years and still result in charges being filed.
“As far as I’m aware, this is pretty unprecedented, this level of alliance and association between those two figures,” said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“Don’t Count Me Out”
In 2020, when then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr found no evidence to support Trump’s claims that voter fraud turned the election results in his opponent’s favor, Paxton emerged to take up the argument.
He became the first state attorney general to challenge Biden’s win in court, claiming in a December 2020 lawsuit that the increased use of mail ballots in four battleground states had resulted in voter fraud and cost Trump the election.
Trump eagerly supported the move on social media, writing, “We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, ruling that Texas had no legal interest in how other states conduct their elections. Trump, however, didn’t forget Paxton’s loyalty.
He offered Paxton his full-throated endorsement during the 2022 primary race for attorney general against then-Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. His decision to back Paxton, who was under federal criminal investigation at the time and had been indicted on state securities fraud charges, was a major blow to Bush, the grandson and nephew of two former Republican presidents. Bush had endorsed Trump for president even though Trump defeated his father, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in the Republican primary and repeatedly disparaged his family.
Trump properties in Florida and New Jersey served as locations for at least two Paxton campaign fundraisers over the course of that campaign. And at a rally in Robstown in South Texas, Trump repeated debunked claims that the election was stolen and said he wished Paxton had been with him at the White House at the time. “He would’ve figured out that voter fraud in two minutes,” Trump said.
While Paxton pursued reelection, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as part of an investigation into how his administration handled thousands of government documents, many of them classified. Paxton led 10 other Republican state attorneys general in intervening in court on Trump’s behalf, arguing in a legal filing that the Biden administration could not be trusted to act properly in the case.
Paxton won another term in office in November 2022, but the celebration was short-lived. Six months later, the Texas House of Representatives considered impeaching him over misconduct allegations including bribery, abuse of office and obstruction related to his dealings with Nate Paul, a real estate developer and political donor. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing.
Hours before the House voted on whether to impeach Paxton, Trump weighed in on social media.
“I love Texas, won it twice in landslides, and watched as many other friends, including Ken Paxton, came along with me,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed — I will fight you if it does. It is the Radical Left Democrats, RINOS, and Criminals that never stop. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Free Ken Paxton, let them wait for the next election!”
Despite Trump’s threat, the House voted 121-23 in May 2023 to impeach Paxton. The Senate then held a trial that September to determine Paxton’s fate. “Who would replace Paxton, one of the TOUGHEST & BEST Attorney Generals in the Country?” Trump posted before the Senate acquitted Paxton.
Trump is among the few people who understand what it’s like to be under the kind of scrutiny Paxton has faced and how to survive it, Miller said.
“There is that quality [they share] of, ‘Don’t count me out,’” he said. “‘If you’re counting me out, you’re making a mistake.’”
On Monday, Trump will become the first president also to be a convicted felon. A jury found Trump guilty on all counts of falsifying records in the hush money case. A judge, however, ruled that he will not serve jail time in light of his election to the nation’s highest office.
Trump has repeatedly decried the case, as well as the Justice Department’s investigations that resulted in him being charged in June 2023 with withholding classified documents and later with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election by knowingly pushing lies that the race was stolen. Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the DOJ investigations, dropped both cases after Trump’s reelection. A Justice Department policy forbids prosecutions against sitting presidents, but in a DOJ report about the 2020 election released days before the inauguration, Smith asserted that his investigators had enough evidence to convict Trump had the case gone to trial.
Not only have Paxton and Trump supported each other through turmoil that could have affected their political ambitions, they have taken similar tacks against those who have crossed them.
After surviving his impeachment trial in 2023, Paxton promised revenge against Republicans who did not stand by him. He had help from Trump, who last year endorsed a challenger to Republican Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, calling Paxton’s impeachment “fraudulent” and an “absolute embarrassment.” Phelan, who has defended the House’s decision to impeach Paxton, won reelection but resigned from his speaker post.
For his part, Trump has tried a legal strategy that Paxton has employed many times, using consumer protection laws to go after perceived political adversaries. In October, Trump sued CBS News over a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying the news organization’s edits “misled” the public. Instead of accusing CBS of defamation, which is harder to prove, his lawsuit argues that the media company violated Texas’ consumer protection act, which is supposed to protect people from fraud. The case is ongoing. In moving to dismiss the case, CBS’ attorneys have said the Texas law was designed to safeguard people from deceptive business practices, “not to police editorial decisions made by news organizations with which one disagrees.” (Marc Fuller, one of the CBS attorneys, is representing ProPublica and the Tribune in an unrelated business disparagement case.)
The move indicates a broader, more aggressive approach that the Justice Department may pursue under the Trump administration, said Paul Nolette, director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University, who researches attorneys general.
“It’s a signal to me that, yes, the federal DOJ is going to follow the path of Paxton, and perhaps some other like-minded Republican AGs who have been using their office to also go after perceived enemies,” Nolette said.
Cleaning House
On Dec. 21, six weeks after Trump won reelection, Paxton stepped onstage in a Phoenix convention center at the AmericaFest conference, hosted by the conservative organization Turning Point USA.
The event followed Trump’s comeback win. It also represented a triumphant moment for Paxton: He’d not only survived impeachment, but prosecutors agreed earlier in the year to drop long-standing state securities fraud charges against him if he paid about $270,000 in restitution and performed community service.
But Paxton spent much of his 15-minute speech ticking off the grievances about what he claimed had been attacks on him throughout his career, including impeachment by “supposed Republicans” and the FBI case.
He praised Trump’s selection of Bondi to run the DOJ. It was time to clean house in a federal agency that had become focused on “political witch hunts and taking out people that they disagree with,” Paxton said.
Before taking office, Trump threatened to fire and punish those within the Justice Department who were involved in investigations that targeted him. FBI director Christopher Wray, a Republican whom Trump appointed during his first term in office, announced in December that he would resign after the president-elect signaled that he planned to fire him. After facing similar threats, Smith, the special prosecutor who led the DOJ investigations, stepped down this month.
In his speech, Paxton made no mention of the agency’s investigations into Trump, nor did he connect the DOJ to his own case. But a Justice Department that Trump oversees with a heavy-handed approach could benefit the embattled attorney general, several attorneys told ProPublica and the Tribune.
Trump could choose to pardon Paxton before the case is officially concluded. He used pardons during his first presidency, including issuing one to his longtime strategist Steve Bannon and to Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father. He’s been vocal about his plans to pardon many of the Jan. 6 rioters on his first day in office.
More concerning, however, is if Trump takes the unusual approach of personally intervening in the federal investigation, something presidents have historically avoided because it is not a political branch of government, said Mike Golden, who directs the Advocacy Program at the University of Texas School of Law.
Any Trump involvement would be more problematic because it would happen behind closed doors, while a pardon is public, Golden said.
“If the president pressures the Department of Justice to drop an investigation, a meritorious investigation against a political ally, that weakens the overall strength of the system of justice in the way a one-off pardon really doesn’t,” Golden said.
Michael McCrum, a former federal prosecutor in Texas who did not work on the Paxton case, said “we’d be fools to think that Mr. Paxton’s relationship with the Trump folks and Mr. Trump personally wouldn’t play some factor in it.”
“I think that the case is going to die on the vine,” McCrum said.
