Recap: Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial, Day Six
Brandon Cammack, bless his heart, today gave us the best proof yet of Paxton's treachery: hired in secret, using the power of the state to go after Nate Paul's enemies, and then kicked to the curb.
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Tuesday, September 12, 2023, 10:00 p.m.
BREAKING: In a dramatic show of support for their embattled paramour, Angela Paxton and Laura Olson sat side-by-side on the Senate floor today, holding hands and comforting each other as House prosecutors discussed the details of Ken Paxton’s multi-year affair with Olson. Olson has received special permission from Lieutenant Governor and presiding judge Dan Patrick for the unusual arrangement.
Enduring 8-10 hours of testimony every day, the mind starts to unhinge, and fantastical storylines like the one above force themselves to the surface. And that’s not even the weirdest scenario that occurred to me today. Nevertheless, Your Humble Correspondent endeavored to stay awake and focused so that he could report to you the salient highlights of the day.
Day Six is done. The key witness this morning was Brandon Cammack, the House attorney hired directly by Ken Paxton to investigate Nate Paul’s claims. We also heard from Joe Brown, a former Grayson County district attorney and Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, who lost out to Cammack for the plum assignment. Brown was followed by Kendall Garrison, the President and CEO of Amplify Credit Union, who testified about the impact of the “midnight letter.” And finally, the senators heard from Darren McCarty, the deputy AG for Civil Litigation, who testified mostly about the Mitte Foundation lawsuit.
Let’s see what they had to say, shall we?
I. Brandon Cammack Testimony and Cross-Examination
You know how, in every show, there’s a character who’s there just so s/he can get killed? In old Star Trek episodes, it was the Guy With No Last Name. (Sam Rockwell brilliantly mocked the trope in Galaxy Quest.)
In this drama, Brandon Cammack is the Guy With No Last Name. A criminal defense lawyer in solo practice but with no prosecutorial experience, he was plucked from obscurity (and a Rotary Club meeting) by Nate Paul lawyer Michael Wynne. Wynne set up a meeting with Ken Paxton, who soon (unbeknownst to his senior staff) offered him a job as a special prosecutor.[i]
Cammack’s mission was to investigate the facts of a complaint Paul had made to the TCDAO in June, said complaint having been referred (some would say “dumped upstairs”) to the OAG. Paxton told him that his deputies were not taking action on the complaint, which is why he wanted outside eyes looking at it. Cammack’s contract said his mission “excludes indictment and prosecution,” so he thought he would investigate and file a report with Paxton.
In mid-September, though, Cammack received a second referral, this time directly from the TCDAO. When he checked with Paxton, the A.G. confirmed that the scope of his investigation had broadened. Wynne helpfully provided him with a new list of persons and businesses to subpoena, and Cammack went to work.
Throughout his work, his only contacts were with Paxton and Wynne, who was in effect his supervising attorney. He asked Paxton for credentials – an email address, business cards, maybe even a badge – and was told “we’re working on it.” His communications with Paxton were by cell phone and a Proton email and eventually Paxton asked him to use the Signal app for their communications.
Cammack testified that none of this made him suspicious of Paxton, whom he admired as the “highest law enforcement official in the state,” or Wynne, his Rotary Club compadre who has suggested him for the assignment.
By now, everyone in the theater is sliding down in their seats and covering their eyes. They’ve figured out that Cammack is blissfully out on a very long limb and the wind is picking up.
The next thing he knew, he received a cease-and-desist letter from Mark Penley at the OAG. It was, among other things, the first time he’d seen a communication with Paxton’s official email address on it. The next day he got another one, this time from Jeff Mateer, restating the OAG’s position that he had no authority to do what he was doing. To make matters worse, two U.S. marshals showed up in his office, wanting to know what was his interest in a federal bankruptcy judge.
Turns out that Cammack’s targets, so helpfully suggested by Wynne, included a federal magistrate, the bankruptcy judge, mortgage lenders who held notes on Paul properties and executives at financial institutions where Paul owed money.
Paxton played it hearty for a couple days, telling Cammack on Friday that Penley and Mateer had no authority to stop his work and to keep going. By the beginning of the next week, it was sadly over. Cammack met with Paxton and new First Assistant Brent Webster, who drove him over to a coffee shop a few blocks away. There Webster delivered the news: his contract was terminated and he was not going to get paid for his work to date. When Cammack protested that he’d billed $14,000, Webster consolingly told him that he’d lost much more than that on other deals. To add insult to injury, Paxton and Webster tried to leave him at the coffee shop and make him walk back to his car.
Dan Cogdell on cross examination tried to knock down the pillars of Impeachment Article V – that Cammack was a special prosecutor, not a prosecutor pro tem; that he believed he was not “investigating a baseless complaint;” and that he had not issued subpoenas “in an effort to benefit Nate Paul or Paul's business entities.” In doing so, he affirmed that Cammack was Paxton’s “useful idiot.”
We have heard the whistleblowers’ lament that Paxton “turned the keys of the OAG over to Nate Paul.” It’s easy to dismiss as hyperbole, but that is exactly what Cammack’s testimony demonstrates.
II. Joe Brown Testimony and Cross-Examination
Joe Brown is an SMU Law School grad (’95) who soon after got elected District Attorney of Grayson County (Austin College[ii]). Then he was named U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas by that staunch defender of the Department of Justice, Donald J. Trump.
Brown, too, tried out for the special prosecutor job, but lost out to Cammack. A deeply religious man, he has been thanking Jesus morning, noon, and night ever since the gig blew up in Cammack’s face.
Brown at least had suspicions in his initial interview with Paxton, who told him he just wanted him to “find the truth.” Paxton’s insistence on investigating the State Securities Board and the FBI – the lead agencies on his indictment for securities fraud – gave Brown pause: “a lot of red flags going off.” In the end, the agency went with Cammack, to Brown’s ultimate relief.
III.Kendall Garrison Testimony and Cross-Examination
Kendall Garrison is the President and CEO of Amplify Credit Union. Although it is based here in Austin, it has a portfolio of loans all over the state.
In the summer of 2020, Amplify was a senior lender of three properties owned by World Class/Nate Paul, with an outstanding debt of $11.5 million. The properties had been posted for foreclosure, to be done once a COVID-inspired moratorium on foreclosures expired on July 31.
On Monday, August 4, Nate Paul emailed them a copy of the “midnight letter” ruling that local governments had authority to prohibit foreclosure sales on courthouse steps. Garrison testified that he was surprised by the ruling, but Amplify agreed to postpone the foreclosure sales scheduled for the next day. Ultimately, Amplify sold the loans to a third party, recovering par value, interest, and attorneys’ fees in the transaction.
On cross examination, Paxton defender Little Mitchell got Garrison to admit he’d only posted one of Paul’s three properties for sale that morning (contradicting news reports suggesting that three sales had been postponed) and confirm that Amplify never lost any money on the Paul properties.
Neither Garrison nor Little discussed whether it was appropriate for the Attorney General of Texas to engineer an “informal guidance letter” out of thin air on the weekend before a foreclosure sale.
IV. Darren McCarty Testimony and Cross-Examination
Darren McCarty is the former Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation. He’d clerked for Republican judges and then worked in law firms until going to the OAG in 2017. He was friends with Jeff Mateer, who recruited him; the two shared an affinity for religious freedom cases and Dick Armey.
In his role, McCarty oversaw the Financial Litigation and Charitable Trust Division of the OAG, charged with protecting the state’s interest in charities. Sometimes this involved protecting charities from outside actors; at other, from themselves.
In January 2020, the agency decided not to intervene in litigation between the Mitte Foundation and World Class Properties, one of Nate Paul’s companies. Mitte had invested in some Nate Paul properties, and was looking for updated information on its investments. The OAG determined that Mitte’s lawyers were pursuing the litigation appropriately, and there was no need for the OAG to intervene.
Over the course of the year, though, Paxton directed the agency to get more involved in the Mitte litigation. After a while, it became clear that Paxton’s goal was to force a resolution to the lawsuit, and not necessarily on terms that would protect Mitte. Additionally, Nate Paul took it upon himself to hector division chief Josh Godbey about the agency’s conduct of the lawsuit, communicating inappropriately for a party to the suit.
On September 29, McCarty was “stunned” when he heard that Brandon Cammack, on instructions from Paxton, was subpoenaing banks for information that would help Paul in his business dealings with Mitte and others. He ordered Godbey to withdraw the agency from the Mitte intervention and joined the whistleblowers in going to the FBI the next day.
McCarty believes he was retaliated against for his actions, and joined the whistleblower suit.
V. The Vibes
Patrick walked off the dais at the end of today’s testimony without saying the Court was adjourned. His missing nous sommes ajournés confused the Senate Media people enough that the camera stared at the empty chamber for another 20 minutes.
Over the last couple days, Patrick has had a number of colloquies with the lawyers at the dais, apparently telling them how he will proceed and specifically giving his rulings on evidence and testimony. This contrasts with previous impeachments, when the Senate was a tribunal and the presiding judge’s rulings were subject to their review. Now, the lawyers huddle under Patrick while the senators sit passively, perhaps dreaming of happier times when being a Texas state senator actually conferred some power. As a former Senate staffer, it pains me to see how Patrick has emasculated the institution. Texas voters have no one to blame but themselves for putting Patrick, and the feckless senators, in office. As Pogo says,
Paxton was absent from the trial again today.
Dick DeGuerin asked whistleblower Darren McCarty if he was a “RINO.” McCarty averred that he was not, then outlined a resume that, in these bizarre times, sounds exactly like a RINO: blockwalked for Ronald Reagan, press secretary for the UT College Republicans, worked for Dick Armey, etc. In today’s MAGA-fied Texas GOP, those are all kisses of death.
I will publish another special edition of Life Its Ownself after tomorrow’s session.
[i] At least Cammack believed that was what he was. He never received any credentials for the OAG, but called himself that in his communications with other lawyers and the TCDAO. There was testimony about the permissible uses of the phrase “special prosecutor,” as opposed to “prosecutor pro tem,” which is what he is called in Article I of the impeachment articles.
[ii] I am told there are things besides Austin College in Sherman, but I thought I would stick with what my audience would recognize.
I have seen a young lawyer thrown to the wolves once or twice during my career. This poor kid wasn’t even unsettled when he was told who the targets of his investigation would be. The more experienced former prosecutor immediately expressed some concern. Mr. Cammack was a wide eyed innocent wanting to help the sitting Texas A G. As Mr Bullock once told me , folks just don’t know what a nasty business we are in .
I'm not sure I've ever witnessed a more bizarre political charade, and I've seen many of the big ones firsthand. The concubine is allowed onto the floor of the Senate to hold hands with the woman whose husband with whom she had an affair? Patrick seems very concerned about decorum, eh? And Cammack's yarn is just about impossible believe because its believability proves Paxton was a lawless lawman. I still can't wait to see how Patrick figures out a way to get him acquitted. My latest theory is he introduces a motion for the full Senate's vote that is akin to a judge's ruling when he dislikes the verdict of a jury. I think that is called, "jury verdict notwithstanding," and allows the judge to tell jurors they got it wrong and their findings are reversed. I'm looking for an "impeachment evidence not withstanding" motion to be introduced. Patrick will quietly tell senators that if they vote to impeach, they are destined to be primaried by the rich West Texas frackers' money. Patrick will declare from the podium they have acted in the best interests of the state and abrogating the judgment of the voters would be wrong and this has hindered the administration of justice and legal functioning in the state because it has lingered too long in the public eye and it's time to move on. Let the voters deal with this matter on the next Election Day. Reminds me of one of John Connally's comments in his final interview before passing when a reporter asked him about all the conspiracy theories surrounding that day in Dallas. Big John said, "I'm afraid I know what happened. But I also knew the country needed to heal and move on." That's always the American excuse whether it's Iran Contra or Watergate or WMD. Bury you dead and move the wagons west.