AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The House board of impeachment managers and defense attorneys for suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton will give closing arguments in the historic trial Friday, making their final cases to the 30 eligible senators who will decide whether Paxton can keep his elected title.
Closing arguments are expected to start at 9 a.m. Friday. Watch in the video player at the top of this story, on air on KXAN, or on KXAN’s Facebook page.
The near-end of the trial comes after senators — functioning as a jury — heard from more than a dozen witnesses testifying about their firsthand experience with Paxton, who is accused of abuse of office, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
What happens next?
Prosecution and defense will have one hour each to make their final pitch to jurors. After that, eligible jurors — exluding Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney — will meet privately to deliberate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has presided over the trial as a judge, is also exluded from deliberation.
It is unclear how long it will take senators to come to a decision, there are no time limits on their deliberation. Once they are finished, the 30 senators will return to the Senate floor to make their positions known in an open session.
Jurors will vote separately on each article without debate or discussion. Senators will submit a written vote on the question: “Shall this article of impeachment be sustained?” For each article, the court clerk will read, in random order, how each senator voted. They will have three days to submit a written explanation of their votes for publication in the Senate Journal.
A vote of two-thirds of senators, 21 total, to sustain an article is a conviction. Merely one vote of conviction on any of the 16 impeachment articles that senators are convicting will result in Paxton’s removal from office as the attorney general of Texas.
Senators may also decide whether to bar the three-term Republican from holding future office. On Wednesday, House managers filed a motion to effectively combine the votes — meaning conviction would result in his automatic prohibition from running for future office. However, the jury declined to grant that motion on Thursday.
Paxton faces 16 articles of impeachment in the Senate that accuse him of abusing his powers as attorney general to help his friend and donor Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor who faced federal investigation and is central to many of the allegations against Paxton. The suspended attorney general pleaded not guilty to all impeachment articles on day one of the trial and has not been present in the Senate since then.
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
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