RIDICULOUS REQUEST

Texas AG Asked Trump Admin to Revoke County’s COVID Relief Funds

Harris County planned to use the money to expand mail-in voting during the pandemic.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made the unusual move this spring of trying to get the Trump administration to take money away from a county in his state. The Houston Chronicle reports that new documents show Paxton sent a letter to the administration in May asking that they take back Harris County’s CARES Act funding that had been budgeted to improve access to mail-in voting. “We respectfully ask the department to scrutinize its award of CARES Act funding to Harris County in light of the county’s stated intent to use federal funding in violation of state law, and to the extent possible, seek return of any amounts improperly spent on efforts to promote illegal mail-in voting,” Paxton wrote in the letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Without implementing adequate protections against unlawful abuse of mail-in ballots, the Department could be cast in a position of involuntarily facilitating election fraud.” Paxton recently led a failed lawsuit that attempted to overthrow the results of the presidential election.