The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday appealing the State Bar of Texas’s discipline of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top deputy for bringing the election lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania with Paxton over the election irregularities in four states in 2020, which was joined by 21 other states. The bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline filed lawsuits against Paxton and First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster in 2022 asking for sanctions over allegedly violating several broad, vague ethical rules increasingly used to target conservative attorneys.
The bar claimed that Paxton (pictured above, right) and Webster (pictured above, left) violated the ethical rule against making “false statements of material fact or law to a tribunal” when they alleged there were unregistered voters and other types of illegal votes, and that tabulators from Dominion Voting Systems switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. They were also accused of violating an ethical rule that prohibits conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” and a third rule that prohibits bringing frivolous claims.
A trial court judge initially ruled in favor of Webster in September 2022, but on appeal, an intermediate court issued a split decision, suspending his license. The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) appealed to the Texas Supreme Court (SCOTX) arguing that the bar’s actions infringe on its constitutional duties. The Texas 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is still handling Paxton’s appeal.
Aaron Nielson, solicitor general for the OAG who is currently on leave from his position as a law professor at Brigham Young University, began his oral argument stating that disciplining Webster for this “is so broad that every lawyer in Texas’ license is at risk. … We’re talking about what was essentially a complaint filed in the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not think it was frivolous or sanctionable, nor did any party argue that it was.”
Read the rest of the article at The Tennessee Star