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A newly revealed doc reveals that Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton requested Trump administration officers to rescind federal virus aid fuding that Houston used to increase individuals’s voting choices
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton requested Trump administration officers to rescind federal virus aid funding that Houston used to increase individuals’s voting choices, in response to a doc revealed Tuesday.
In a Might 21 letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Paxton accused officers in Harris County, which incorporates Houston, of misusing as much as $12 million of the federal funding and violating state regulation with their plans to increase using mail-in ballots for the presidential election.
“We respectfully ask the division to scrutinize its award of CARES Act funding to Harris County in gentle of the county’s acknowledged intent to make use of federal funding in violation of state regulation, and to the extent potential, search return of any quantities improperly spent on efforts to advertise unlawful mail-in voting,” Paxton wrote. “With out implementing satisfactory protections in opposition to illegal abuse of mail-in ballots, the division may very well be solid ready of involuntarily facilitating election fraud.”
The Washington-based Residents For Duty and Ethics obtained and printed the letter, in what has grow to be the newest instance of the Republican lawyer common’s efforts to maintain in place Texas’ strict guidelines requiring most voters to solid ballots in-person, even throughout a pandemic.
Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria mentioned the best way the cash was used helped shield elections employees and voters from the coronavirus. Some individuals used a drive-thru choice to vote, others stood in socially distanced traces, and a few polling locations have been open for twenty-four hours.
“Simply as supposed, voters had extra choices to vote with out jeopardizing their well being,” Longoria mentioned in a press release. “We invested in public security that resulted in report voter turnout. We’re proud to point out Ken Paxton what it appears wish to spend money on public security moderately than politicized letters.”
Paxton’s workplace and the Division of Treasury didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Texas is certainly one of solely 5 states that didn’t broaden using voting by mail for the November election. State and federal courts blocked efforts by officers in Houston and different Democratic-run Texas cities to supply mail-in voting purposes to anybody who feared contracting COVID-19 in the event that they voted in individual.
Paxton and different Republican officers have echoed President Donald Trump‘s baseless claims that widespread election fraud altered the outcomes of the presidential election, which Democrat Joe Biden received by a pretty big margin. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom threw out a lawsuit led by Paxton to invalidate Electoral Faculty votes from a number of states that voted for Biden, which might have given the election to Trump.
Some have speculated that Paxton is angling for a preemptive pardon within the waning weeks of Trump’s administration.
Paxton is being investigated by the FBI after eight senior officers in his workplace accused him of bribery, abuse of workplace and different offenses they mentioned he dedicated in serving to a rich donor attempt to fend off his personal federal investigation. Paxton has broadly denied wrongdoing.
Texas’ prime regulation enforcement official additionally has spent most of his 5 years in workplace beneath a state felony indictment for securities fraud. Paxton pleaded not responsible in that case, which has been stalled for years by authorized challenges.
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Acacia Coronado is a corps member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
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