The High Plains Grifter

If you’ve ever spent much time in court, then you know that “courtroom drama” is a genre in the entertainment world but something like an oxymoron in the real one—and the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was no different. Despite all the bad-juju Texas weirdness and inherent drama involved—Paxton’s prim-faced and humiliated wife is one of the senators hearing, but in her case prohibited from voting on, the impeachment articles spurred by Paxton’s cringe-inducing extramarital shenanigans—the proceedings got off to a predictable and dead-boring start, with Paxton’s team introducing a raft of hopeless pretrial motions in an effort to have articles dismissed or evidence suppressed. A majority of the lawmakers in Texas’ Republican-dominated state Senate voted against Paxton’s weasel-out motions, but the typical handful of diehards, crazies, and goons who take their marching orders from talk radio indulged the disgraced, impeached, indicted (on federal securities-fraud charges) miscreant who, incredibly enough, happens to be the top law-enforcement officer in second-most-populous state in the country.

The plea responses from Paxton’s lawyer were histrionic:

“Attorney General Ken Paxton is innocent and therefore pleads not guilty!”

“Those allegations are all untrue, therefore Ken Paxton pleads not guilty!”