Why Did Paxton’s Case End So Abruptly?

My VIP for this week is Ken Paxton, Republican Attorney General for the State of Texas. Paxton has been a strong conservative supporter of law and order, but he has also been a target for Democrats and left-leaning Republicans. Chris Enloe at The Blaze reported as follows: 

In 2015, a grand jury indicted Paxton on three felony criminal charges: two counts of securities fraud and one count of failing to register with state securities regulators.

Prosecutors claimed that Paxton solicited two acquaintances to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in a technology startup but failed to disclose that he would be compensated for the deal.

Years of procedural and pretrial maneuvering delayed the case, but a trial was finally scheduled to begin on April 15.

Then the case came to an abrupt end last Thursday when prosecutors agreed to drop the charges in a deferred prosecution agreement. Whereas Paxton had been facing potentially decades in prison if convicted – 99 years, in fact, according to the Austin American-Statesman – he will now serve 100 hours of community service, pay restitution, and take continuing legal education classes.

There is a stark difference between 99 years in prison and 100 hours of community service. Americans have a right to inquire, “What happened?” Enloe continued:

In 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Paxton related to the same case. But a federal judge twice dismissed the SEC’s complaint.

“Paxton had no plausible legal duty to disclose his compensation arrangement with investors,” ruled U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant in 2017.

That ruling was a harbinger of things to come, a sign that the criminal case against Paxton was weak – at best….

There is more explanation for why the case was pending for seven years and dropped just before the trial date. Prosecutors realized that they had a losing case, so they struck a deal. They claim that the deal proves that Paxton is guilty, which should satisfy the public political pressure. However, Mitch Little, one of Paxton’s defense attorneys, called that conclusion “abject nonsense.”

“[That comment] suggests how much public political pressure Kent and Brian are under for having agreed to the pretrial diversion, which, ultimately they needed to agree to because they didn’t have what they needed to try this case,” Little said.

“[Schaffer] is just trying to shape a public narrative that’s just simply not supported by the evidentiary record,” he explained.

Importantly, Little said prosecutors have always [known] there wasn’t sufficient evidence against Paxton to charge him, let alone to win at trial.

And despite prosecutors’ attempts to frame why the case ended the way it did – Wice, for example, called it the “perfect storm of everything that could have derailed and delayed the prosecution” – “none of this is a surprise,” Little explained.

If this has been true from the beginning, that raises the question: Why was the case drawn out?

The answer to that question, Little told Blaze News, is because “this prosecution had political value while it was pending” – for Paxton’s Democratic and Republican opponents.

“The value of the case is that it was pending,” he explained. “The pain has always been the point.”

Ultimately, Little told Blaze News this case is a prime example of lawfare in a new age of hyper-partisanship, saying it serves as a warning to others.

“This was a trial run. If we could get in a time machine and go back to 2015: Did we really understand what lawfare was in 2015? Little said. “There’s precedent for political prosecutions … but the depths to which people are [now] willing to go seems to be deeper and deeper.”

Paxton’s case was a trial run for lawfare. Liberals will go to any length to destroy their opponents. For another example, we need only to look at Donald Trump and the numerous cases against him. Liberals cannot win on their policies, so they attack their rivals personally and financially.

America’s only chance to destroy the power of the secret combinations currently controlling the government is to have a landslide victory for Trump, one that liberals cannot win by cheating. May God bless America by opening the eyes of Americans that they may see the terrible destruction that awaits America if Biden wins again.