AUSTIN (Nexstar) — On Thursday afternoon, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Texas House financial records relating to the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton are now in the hands of the State Auditor.
Patrick said House records indicate over $4.4 million was spent on the impeachment proceedings.
“It has been 1 year, 5 months, and 16 days since I called for an audit of all impeachment spending by the Texas House and Senate,” Patrick said in a post on X.”
“Former Speaker Dade Phelan failed to comply with the audit and refused to release the House’s expenses to the State Auditor despite multiple calls for him to do so on behalf of taxpayers. Taxpayers have a right to know how their money was spent on an impeachment and trial that should never have taken place. Dade officially left the speaker’s office 2 months ago and still had not released the records. I asked the new Speaker (Dustin Burrows) to release the documents. Yesterday, he handed me 2 boxes of detailed expenditures, which I turned over to the State Auditor today.”
Patrick accused Phelan of hiding the records to help his re-election campaign.
We reached out to Phelan’s office for comment after regular business hours. As of publication, his team has not yet gotten back to us.
“The Senate spent taxpayer funds as prudently as possible, only spending roughly $435,000 on the entire impeachment trial. That included $135,000 spent to print every word in the journal, which was required of the Senate,” Patrick wrote. “We will await the State Auditor’s final report, but by the House’s own count in the documents, Speaker Phelan spent over $4.4 million. That is 10 times more than what the Senate had to spend on the House’s failed impeachment of our attorney general. What a total waste of taxpayer money!”
In a quote post to Patrick, Paxton weighed in.
“The sham impeachment will be remembered as one of the most corrupt political scandals in Texas history. Today, we are one step closer to learning how much unethical Speaker Dade Phelan and his cronies cost Texas taxpayers,” he said.
