Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a scandal-ridden attorney general, launched a series of investigations into the election last week. Both investigations are controversial for different reasons.
Last week, for example, Paxton’s office executed search warrants in the San Antonio area, alleging irregularities. Shortly after, as a New York Times report explained, a Hispanic civil rights group asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Paxton’s efforts, which targeted Hispanic voting activists and political workers.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said many of the targets were Democratic leaders and campaign volunteers, and some were elderly residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said agents conducting the raids seized cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an attempt to suppress Latino voters.
The trial judge has not yet said whether he will continue to pursue the case. The Texas attorney general has said his recent raids were justified, but the simmering controversy is likely to continue.
Paxton’s other election research in the Lone Star State is considerably stranger. The Texas Tribune reported:
Officials in a north Texas county have debunked claims by a Fox News host that immigrants were registering to vote outside a driver’s license office west of Fort Worth. The claim is unsubstantiated and appears to have prompted an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
Apparently, on August 18, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo — whose conspiracy theory is hard to defend — posted a story on her social media account claiming that a friend of hers has a friend, whose wife, saw people registering immigrants to vote outside DMV offices. Despite the clearly tenuous nature of the claim, the host aired the story shortly thereafter, telling viewers that the immigrants in question were “illegals.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety wasted no time in debunking Bartiromo’s claims, explaining that the allegations were “simply false” and “a little bit racist.” The chairman of the Parker County GOP agreed that the reports were “inaccurate.”
Nevertheless, three days after Bartiromo posted her third-hand rumor online, Paxton’s office announced it would open an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering non-citizens to vote.”
Last week, a statewide poll from the University of Houston Hobby School and Texas Southern University’s Jordan-Leland School found that Donald Trump is ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in Texas, but only by about 5 points. The same poll showed Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with a two-point lead over Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in the state’s U.S. Senate race.
Against this backdrop, Gabriel Rosales, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens in the state of Texas, told the Texas Tribune that he saw Paxton’s investigation as an intimidation effort to discourage Hispanic voters from voting.
Republicans “see the handwriting on the wall,” he said. “They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
