{"id":40565,"date":"2019-12-31T00:11:30","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T00:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=40565"},"modified":"2019-12-31T00:11:30","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T00:11:30","slug":"bonnen-broke-the-law-but-lets-not-prosecute-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=40565","title":{"rendered":"Bonnen broke the law, but let’s not prosecute him"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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BLOGGER’S NOTE<\/strong>: This blog post was published initially on the KETR-FM website<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I guess the verdict is in on Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen\u2019s secret meeting with a right-wing activist.<\/p>\n

The speaker likely broke a campaign finance law when he met with Empower Texans guru Michael Quinn Sullivan, offered up the names of 10 fellow Republican legislators that Empower Texans could try to defeat in the 2020 election and then offered the right-wing PAC a media pass, giving the PAC immediate access to House members working on the floor of the chamber.<\/p>\n

The House General Investigating Committee issued the report, then closed its investigation.<\/p>\n

What should happen now? My hope \u2013 and it\u2019s just me speaking for myself \u2013 is that Bonnen can retire quietly at the end of next year and disappear into the tall grass, never to be seen or heard from again in public life. There need not be a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

General Investigating Committee Chairman Morgan Meyer, a Dallas Republican, suggested that the report precludes any criminal investigation, even though Bonnen likely broke the law.<\/p>\n

According to the Texas Tribune: Bonnen \u201clikely violated\u201d a section of the Texas Government Code, according to Meyer, who was reading from the report \u2026 — but advisers in the report said the law provided no \u201cindependent statutory consequences\u201d for a state official who breaches it.<\/em><\/p>\n

That section states that a state officer or employee should not \u201caccept or solicit any gift, favor or service that might reasonably tend to influence the officer or employee in the discharge of official duties, or that the officer or employee knows or should know is being offered with the intent to influence the officer\u2019s or employee\u2019s official conduct.<\/em><\/p>\n

I get all that. Here\u2019s the deal, though: Bonnen took a lot of political heat and pushback from his fellow Republicans, about 30 of whom demanded he resign the House speakership. He at first denied the meeting with Sullivan. Then Sullivan produced a recording of the meeting. He outed Bonnen, who then announced he wouldn\u2019t seek re-election to his House seat in Angleton in 2020.<\/p>\n

Good riddance! That ought to be enough of a punishment for the speaker who double-crossed his supposed allies in the Texas House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

As the saying goes: This case is closed. Let\u2019s move on and let the next Texas House of Representatives select a speaker who will remain faithful to any pledge he or she makes to work with<\/em> his colleagues and avoid stabbing them in the back.<\/p>\n\n

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BLOGGER’S NOTE: This blog post was published initially on the KETR-FM website. I guess the verdict is in on Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen\u2019s secret meeting with a right-wing activist. The speaker likely broke a campaign finance law when he met with Empower Texans guru Michael Quinn Sullivan, offered up the names of 10 fellow … Continue reading Bonnen broke the law, but let’s not prosecute him<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[8265,1582,3031,4644,4728],"class_list":["post-40565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-dennis-bonnen","tag-empower-texans","tag-michael-quinn-sullivan","tag-texas-house-speaker","tag-texas-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40566,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40565\/revisions\/40566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}