Rep. Spiller to present Paxton impeachment charges to Senate
When he received his House committee assignments in January for the 88th Texas Legislature, little did Rep. David Spiller (R-Jacksboro) know he’d make history – twice – as a member of the obscure Committee on General Investigating.
Instead, Mr. Spiller participated in the historic ousters of his House colleague and fellow Republican, Bryan Slaton of Royse City, and of Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“It was not exactly what I thought I would be doing,” Mr. Spiller said in a May 31 interview. “I thought I wouldn’t be doing much.” Mr. Slaton, 45, was expelled from the House in May after a month-long investigation by the General Investigating Committee determined that he got a 19-yearold aide drunk and had sex with her, then tried to intimidate her into staying silent about the incident. Mr. Slaton, a former youth pastor and married father who portrayed himself as a “family values” conservative, is the first member of the Texas Legislature in almost a century to be expelled from office by his colleagues.
Less than a month later, the General Investigating Committee stunned the Capitol with the release of the results of its two-month confidential investigation into what the five members referred to up until then as “Matter A.” At a May 24 public hearing, the committee unveiled 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton.
‘You can’t unsee it’
The accusations that led to Mr. Paxton’s removal on May 27 stem from whistleblower lawsuits filed by four high-ranking members of the Office of the Attorney General, Paxton’s own political appointees who were fired after urging the F.B.I. and Texas Rangers to investigate their boss for allegedly using his official powers to help his political benefactor, Nate Paul, a wealthy real estate investor in Austin. In turn, Mr. Paul allegedly financed a complete home renovation for Mr. Paxton, and hired Mr. Paxton’s alleged mistress to bring her from San Antonio to Austin, the committee’s testimony shows.
The whistleblower lawsuits accused Mr. Paxton and his first deputy, Brent Webster, of retaliating against the four men David Maxwell, Ryan Vassar, Mark Penley, and Blake Brickman. In February, after the Texas Court of Appeals in Austin rejected Mr. Paxton’s attempts to have the cases thrown out, he agreed to settle them for $3.3 million. The settlement obligates not Mr. Paxton but Texas taxpayers for the funds, according to the committee’s testimony.
Mr. Spiller, a Jacksboro attorney, also serves on the powerful Appropriations Committee that authors the House version of the state budget. It was that assignment that wrote Mr. Spiller into Texas history books as the only member of both the committee that discovered Mr. Paxton’s misdeeds and the one that investigated him. “This was precipitated by Attorney General Paxton coming to the Legislature and asking us to fund a $3.3 million settlement with the whistleblowers. He did not show up to testify to the appropriations committee,” he said. “When you come to us and ask the taxpayers to pay for your illegal activities then that’s something we need to look into. We attempted to get this information and couldn’t get it [from Mr. Paxton] so we tried to get it other ways.”
The 121-23 House vote that followed the five-member General Investigating Committee’s recommendation was the first time the House has ever impeached and removed a Texas Attorney General.
“Once you see it and hear it and have reports of all this illegal activity, you can’t unsee it. You can’t make it go away,” Mr. Spiller said. “Had he not come to us [on the Appropriations Committee] and asked us to pay for it we never would have found out about it. The evidence was overwhelming. It was compelling so we [the General Investigating Committee] recommended impeachment.”
Senate as jury
The House sent the articles of impeachment on May 29 to the Texas Senate, which will hold a trial for Mr. Paxton no later than Aug. 28. Sen. Angela Paxton, the former attorney general’s wife, and her Senate colleagues will deliberate as a jury after hearing the case put on by 12 impeachment managers, including Mr. Spiller, on accusations of bribery, dereliction of duty, disregard of official duty and obstruction of justice.
“We will actually try this case and present this evidence and the Senators will act as impartial jurors,” he said.
Mr. Paxton is temporarily removed from office while the impeachment process is pending. Mr. Spiller has acted as a special prosecutor and as city attorney for Jacksboro, and is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, an invitation-only national association of about 7,300 experienced trial lawyers and judges.
Although the impeachment accusations are not criminal matters, Mr. Paxton faces a potential sentence of decades in state prison if he is convicted of the felony securities fraud charges pending against him in an unrelated 2015 case in Collin County.