A district court judge in Texas said the state’s Attorney General must face an ethics lawsuit over a case he brought challenging the results of the 2020 election in other states, according to a court ruling posted Monday.
Judge Casey Blair on Friday denied Ken Paxton’s bid to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds. Blair added that he was not ruling on the merits of the case itself.
The Texas State Bar had filed suit against Paxton in state court in Dallas last May, asserting that Paxton had made “dishonest” statements in his own lawsuit seeking to toss the 2020 election results in four states—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Supreme Court tossed Paxton’s suit against those four states in December 2020, saying it did not have standing.
The lawsuit against Paxton asks that “appropriate sanction” be imposed against him. Potenially that could include suspension or disbarment.
“Respondent’s representations were dishonest,” the state bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline said in the complaint, referring to Paxton’s petition at the Supreme Court.
This latest court action comes as two bills were filed in the Texas House of Representatives this month seeking to expand the Texas Attorney General’s power to prosecute election crimes.
One would allow the office—currently held by Paxton—to appoint special prosecutors to such cases, while the other would empower the office to penalize local prosecutors who “limit election law enforcement.”
