Erick Erickson: Ken Paxton, facing FBI probe, ‘would love’ a presidential pardon

Influential conservative commentator Erick Erickson says Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s “absurd” lawsuit against the results of the 2020 election could be more about staying on President Trump’s good side and scoring a presidential pardon than anything else.

Mr. Erickson said the attorneys general from other states that have rallied behind the legal push “are willing to beclown themselves and their states all to get in good with the losing presidential candidate.”

“Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, is under a federal investigation and would love a presidential pardon,” Mr. Erickson said in his daily email blast. “His lawsuit is just more performative leg humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump.”

Mr. Erickson has been a vocal critic of the charge from Mr. Trump and his allies that the election was rigged against him and that presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s victories in states including Georgia were the result of voter fraud and corruption in Democratic cities.

Seeking to swing the election to Mr. Trump, Mr. Paxton has filed a lawsuit demanding that the 62 total Electoral College votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin be invalidated.

Sen. John Cornyn, a fellow Texas Republican, has raised doubts about the lawsuit, questioning the legal theory behind it.

Dozens of pro-Trump legal challenges have been knocked down in courts across the country, but his supporters and activists are holding out hope and raising money off the prospect that he can still win.

The Associated Press reported last month that the FBI is investigating whether Mr. Paxton illegally used the power of his office to help a real estate investor and friend who donated his 2018 campaign.

“The various attorneys general who have joined his lawsuit all want to either get re-elected or seek higher office,” Mr. Erickson said of the Paxton suit. “Joining the lawsuit gives them some measure of ring kissing or protection from any rabid Trump supporters who wanted a ’just fight’ moment.”

“The level of debasement these people have been willing to engage in makes them seem more the ball-gagged gimp from Pulp Fiction, humiliating themselves for their master,” he said. “They should be ashamed and embarrassed.”