On this Salcedo Storm Podcast:
A visit with texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick after the Texas House leadership brought disgrace to Texas by impeaching AG Ken Paxton with no crime or evidence of a crime.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick fresh off his role as a judge in the well the Paxton impeachment trial that was foisted by a hoax, a hoax perpetrated by Dade Phelan several Republicans over in the Texas House and every socialist Marxist Democrat. We had some technical difficulties interfacing with the governor. But once we got that all licked this is how the conversation went.
Here’s here’s what I what I wanted to ask you about this whole experience. And I think I asked this of Mr. Mr. Busby yesterday part of the Paxton defense team. Yes. I said, Isn’t it as frightening and scary thought that that you could have charges, nobody under oath. And all these nasty things said about you that would lead to your impeachment as an elected official millions of people elected you. And then you can have a whole bunch of people effectively lie about you with no evidence, and then have that result in your impeachment. And I asked, shouldn’t Is there a legal recourse for those who misrepresented in the impeachment? And he was forced to tell me no, there was no legal penalty for those who misrepresented during the impeachment. Isn’t that a problem?
Yeah, well, and that’s why Chris on Saturday after the verdict was announced, and after all the votes were in, I said that I wanted to call. I wanted to call for a new constitution, in terms of this, not a new constitution, but changes to the Constitution on this issue, because every other state, pretty much requires an impeachment in a house before it goes to the Senate for that information, those hearings to be under oath and cross examined. And that is not the case. In Texas. So in Texas, the Constitution says you may put people under oath in the house and impeachment. And and my issue with the house is about the process over there. Because in 1917, the last statewide impeachment we had of Governor Ferguson and the 1890s, when they had another statewide impeach, we’ve only had two before this one, both, both times the house. So testimony under oath, they allowed cross examination, they allowed the defendant to present themselves. In this case, what the House did was they had an investigative committee. It was hearsay, on hearsay, on hearsay. There was nothing under oath, which means people could say anything they wanted. And we saw that and that’s why their case fell flat in the court because on cross examination, their witnesses collapsed. Chris, Chris Hinton, the attorney for Ken Paxton was denied the ability to come in the room and address the House committee that was going on. And then they threw it to the members with a couple of days notice. There was no record, there were no witnesses. There was nothing and the speaker push them on Memorial Day weekend when no one was paying attention with a couple of days left in session to impeach Ken Paxton, and what the speaker needs to say instead of blaming the Senate and the senators are me. We conducted a fair trial I remember spent Chris all summer studying for this as I did. The right 100 exhibits. One exhibit alone was 4000 pages. We spent nine days and trial 50 hours of testimony under oath and one of the members when I sent them to deliberate Christians on Saturday, they all went to their desk or they went back in various rooms in the Senate Senate that we sealed off. And they all studied the evidence for another 6, 7, 8, 9 hours, they looked at their notes, they were thorough. The House did nothing like this. And because of the flawed process in the house, their witnesses collapsed on the stand. Let me give you one, a couple of brief examples. Sure. Because, you know, we they took the oath on the Sam Houston Bible to follow the law and the evidence. So there was testimony given not under oath in the house, that one of the Texans assistants handed an envelope to Nate Paul in the middle of the night in a dark alley. Right. When that when that person was put on the stand under oath, and asked that he, what was how did he know that? He said, Well, you heard it? Well, you heard it. Could you hear it from? Well, I heard it from five or six people. Can you tell us the name of one person? No. So when you’re a Juror, and you hear them say, Well, I heard that from a bunch of people, but I don’t know who they were. Well, that witness has no credibility. Right. Then you had another witness who testified this was one of the whistleblowers that he had gotten rid of sorry for that ringing in the background, basically gotten rid of all of his, his text. But unfortunately, who we text to, they had kept him so they found those texts, and those texts said, we have to cook something up on Paxton beef. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And no, it was Cook, we have to cook something up. And then we have to indict him by the spring. So that witness had no credibility. And witness after witness who got up on the stand, just had no credibility. So this is, as John and by the way, all of our listeners, if you’ll go to YouTube, and just Google John Smith, it’s spelled s M I T. H. E. Great John Smith, the floor speech Paxton impeachment, John Smith, yet an accomplished attorney who has argued before the Texas Supreme Court, got got up on the House floor and said, Members, this is indefensible. What we’re doing, there is no record. There’s nothing. And then Travis Clardy, who another attorney in the house stood up and said, members, they will look back on what we did and and say, years from now, they’ll say that should have never happened, should have never, we’re not going to do that. We may well, we don’t know what we’re going to do in the next impeachment. But we’re not going to do this. So this the Dade Phelan these are just so you know what we were wrong. He didn’t follow precedent. He didn’t look, he didn’t look back at the 1917 case, like we did, and spent hours and hours of studying it, to see what they did and what we could do better. They didn’t look at any evidence. Dade Phelan, who had not talked to me for two years, he doesn’t communicate very often. He had not talked to me and back then back in the spring. I remember saying that to Ken Paxton, before this impeachment came up, and they can say, well, he hasn’t returned my phone calls in two years or met with me either. Well, you’re not a jealous kind of that’s why. Well, he’s kind of reclusive and–
Democrat. I know a lot of Democrats that can get through to Speaker date feeling because they were the ones who put him in that office. But, Governor, I got it. I’ve seen there’s so much about this, that if I were a Republican House member, who trusted Dade Phelan and what the Texas scorecard calls the Dirty Dozen, the leadership individuals who said trust us, there’s a lot of there there, and then I voted trusting them. I would feel betrayed today. That’s number one. But what I can’t sanction or understand is those in the biased press and those who pretend to be members of the press, who have who have praised this crooked press process in the house, didn’t put anybody under oath, did it all under the cover of darkness with Obama lawyers, and and DOJ Democrats did all of this under the cloak of darkness. And then you come along in the full light of day, and you have a transparent trial and in front of everybody for everybody to see. And then they save somehow. It is you who’s being dishonest. That is really a step too far for me.
Well, Chris, here’s here’s the deal. They have to come up with a new conspiracy to cover their tracks. They can’t admit it. He just needs to be a man. He just needs to step up and say, Look, we were wrong. We rush this John Smith. He was right Travis car. He was right. This this case fell because of our process. And all those 67 Republicans who voted for this, who had their arms twisted to vote for it. They should say You know what? I made a mistake voters. I’m sorry. I listened to the speaker. This was a rush to rush to judgment. I was wrong. That’s the first thing you have to do instead. Well, Dan Patrick you know, the fix was in with the members he told him how to vote. First of all, it’s ludicrous Number one, my senators, the 18 senators who had a vote Republican senators, if I even attempted to suggest to one of them how they should vote, they throw me out the door. These are grown men and women, these are mature adults, it’s an insult to them. They spent all summer, the 60 hours, 50 hours of testimony. 789 hours, they were at the Capitol, looking at their notes in the evidence. This was their decision. And for me, I put a fire wall up a long time ago hardly ever talked to anyone this summer. I know. I know. I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to know, I had to stay. I said I just had to stay above all those conversations. Yeah. And more than when I set them out to deliberate on Saturday. And I don’t know if I mentioned this, I took my team, we went to see Oppenheimer three, hour movie, then we went to a Mexican restaurant. And by the time we were done, they had all left the Capitol. I didn’t see them until the next morning. So this is this is a conspiracy theory. Let me tell you why I say a conspiracy theory because Dade has to say something and blame it on something. Otherwise, they realize he was the one who drove it all. And he was the one who put them at risk. And so that’s what this is all about. I don’t pay any attention to it. It’s a bunch of it’s a bunch of losers who are crying out on their beer saying, Oh, well, it’s it has to be someone else. We did our job. They did nothing. Again, and that 1917 impeachment that Smithee and clarity talked about we study. They sent boxes of boxes and boxes of files to the Senate. We got nothing from them, basically. No, you know, nothing at all. There was no as smithy said, there is no record. There was no evidence that was taken under oath. Anybody can say anything. I can say anything about you tomorrow. Yeah. Well, where’s the facts? It’s scary. So it’s scary as all get scared.
And by the way, good governor, I’ve only got by the way, Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, our guest folks only got about a minute left. So I want you to tell the folks what’s what’s next for for the Texas government. What are we looking ahead to in the in the coming months as we’re trying to wrap up 2023?
Well, we have another special session coming up choice. We passed a universal school choice plan out Brandon Creighton, a great senator of the woodlands area in the session. House didn’t pass it. This is a third time as lieutenant governor, I passed out school choice it hasn’t moved anywhere in the house. So that will be coming up. And we’ll see if Dade can rally his troops. I would assume a lot of them are not very happy people these days. And again, the best thing when you’ve done something wrong, just say, hey, you know what, I was wrong. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t even these House members go back to the boat. I was wrong. And not blame it on 18 senators who did their duty. And by the way, Chris, no one ever mentions this. Well, those articles of impeachment. I mean, one of them went down 28 to two Even Democrats supported every Democrat, but one vote for one of the impeachments. And, and they never got close to 21 on any article the most they got because that’s what you needed to convict the most they got was the 14th. So this is this is just the house now trying to cover their tracks by attacking the senators attacking me the Senate, they didn’t do their job. They had no case. Their their witnesses were terrible and cross examination. And at the end, meeting, the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt was not met. And what I said by the way, real quick, I know you’re at a time. The reason I said it was people say well, why did you say that? Because I wanted it on the court record for history. No one’s going to go back and 50 or 100 years or the next impeachment listen to this interview, or read anything in the newspapers, though, read the record. And I want it in the record what happened and why it happened. And it happened because of the house process.
It was a great speech. We played it its entirety here on the voice of Texas and on the Salcedo storm podcast. And I’ll tell you, folks, I can test it all. All you folks, speaking of losers in the basket of bias press out there. Let me just tell you, I’ve been trying to reach out to the governor for lieutenant governor for three or four months now. And the man had the integrity to say, look, I we can’t compromise anything we’re doing. We’re going to keep this all aboveboard. And he and as the record will show you haven’t been on with us. And now that this is in the rearview mirror, now you can start talking about state policy again. But all those who are insinuating anything different than you did anything else but professionalism, which is a stark contrast to what Dade Phelan and served up over in the house. They need to go back to school and learn what’s what. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, sir, I appreciate the time as always.
Yeah, sorry for the technical difficulties. We’ll talk we’ll talk again. Thanks, everyone.
All right. That does it for this special edition of the Saucedo storm podcast, pay a visit Texas scorecard.com and Chris salcedo.com, for the very latest on what’s happening in Texas and around the country. And remember, a society’s worth isn’t measured by how much power is stolen by an out of control government. It is rather measured by how much power Are is reserved for you and me. We the People, stay safe out there my friends.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
