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Ken Paxton acquitted: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-acquitted-impeachment-texas-attorney-general/
For those who don't remember, Ken Paxton is the attorney general of Texas who's notable for two things- being an extremely effective conservative culture warrior with often national level impact, and being unusually corrupt.
The corruption charges aren't in themselves particularly notable and it isn't that unusual that the senate acquitted on a more or less party line vote. However, what is notable is that a big chunk of the republican party, and powerful establishment members at that, blame the house, want Paxton as attorney general, and are highly critical of the republicans who brought the impeachment along.
Here's Dan Patrick, Texas' powerful lieutenant governor: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-impeachment-dan-patrick/
He's here referring to Dade Phelan, the most moderate republican of statewide relevance. Phelan is, notably, facing a primary challenger who can be expected to get a who's who of Texas conservative activists in support.
And also:
Whether Dan Patrick was an impartial judge is definitely in question, although I don't attach much credence to the liberal theory that he called senators to demand they vote to acquit for the simple reason that one of the votes to convict was Kelly Hancock.
Ken Paxton, of course, has promised revenge on his opponents in the impeachment trial, albeit on twitter.
Greg Abbott's statement is worth copying in full: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-statement-on-impeachment-trial-verdict
Hardly an unequivocal endorsement of his primary agenda, but definitely an endorsement of him as attorney general, considering that the acting attorney general who would have replaced Paxton indefinitely was literally Abbott's chief of staff.
This promises a general rightward turn for the Texas GOP, which is already one of the farther right state GOP's, and likely a more hostile relationship with the federal government. It is, however, unclear what exactly that looks like.
As I saw it, the prosecution argued that Paxton had been bribed off by having his kitchen renovation paid for, then produced witnesses who demonstrated that there was never a kitchen renovation to begin with. "Unusually corrupt"? Texas state politics is probably one of the most crooked rings in America.
Could they not show that the "kitchen renovation" never happened and the money went straight into Paxton's pocket, if that is what did happen?
Otherwise they really do seem to have done a terrible job. "He got a bribe for X!" Witnesses troop in to show X never happened.
They could have, but didn't try. Everyone in Texas politics knows Ken Paxton is more corrupt than average for a Texas politician, and the prosecution was probably banking on that carrying the day, but just in general they did not do a very good job.
That's the trouble with those pesky court cases, you can't just say "Everybody knows Luigi the Leg-breaker is a crook", you have to show that in this particular instance Luigi really did hold up the liquor store.
If the prosecution really were hoping that their case would work based on "but everybody knows he's a crook", the level of incompetence must be stunning. Are they really that incompetent, or is there the possibility of 3D chess going on, where somebody decided to take a hopeless case that Paxton would win in order to - I dunno - bolster his support or more importantly make the people trying to get him for corruption look bad?
Well, this was an impeachment, not a criminal trial. So you totally can just impeach on vibes if you have the numbers. And likewise you can totally acquit an obviously guilty man if you have the numbers.
On most of the counts it was 12 Democrats +2 Republicans voting to convict and 16 Republicans voting to acquit. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the quality of the evidence wasn't the most important factor here.
the rules of the impeachment trial largely mimicked those of a criminal trial, most importantly the beyond reasonable doubt standard
the fact that anyone, here included, watched that trial and voted to remove Ken Paxton based on a beyond reasonable doubt standard does certainly say a lot about what was or wasn't the most important factor here
However, unlike criminal trials where jurors are selected on the basis of impartiality, the jurors in this trial were people whose entire job is to be partial. It's a political process, and is designed to be one. It doesn't tell us much about what Paxton did or not do - but it tells us plenty about who has the power in Texas politics.
the political process adopted rules which largely mimic rules of a criminal trial, including not being "biased"
so the people whose job it is to be partial put on a charade adopting rules about being impartial and using the reasonable doubt standard, among other things mimicking a criminal trial, and the whole thing was a laughable sham
I reread your comment I originally replied to and I thought you were writing something which is clear you were not and I apologize for that. In this example, it's the Texas Bush machine flexing on the guy who isn't playing the game the way they want it to be played.
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