Nope.

Admitting to another crime on the air. https://t.co/wwyYGzr0re

— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) May 30, 2023

I’d like this to be true, but: nope.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters. 

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton's office. 

"If we'd lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them," Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter's War Room podcast on Friday. 

"Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation—we would've been on Election Day, I was watching on election night and I knew, when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would've been Texas. We would've been in the same boat. We would've been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would've lost the election," the Republican official said.

Besides, Paxton was bragging to Steve Bannon. Reality was harsher:

Although the [Texas Supreme] court sided with Paxton's interpretation of what constitutes a disability, it indicated that it is up to voters to assess their own health and determine if they meet the state's definition. 

"We agree, of course, that a voter can take into consideration aspects of his health and his health history that are physical conditions in deciding whether, under the circumstances, to apply to vote by mail because of disability," the court ruled.

The high court also rejected Paxton’s request to prevent local election officials from sending mail-in ballots to voters who were citing lack of immunity to the coronavirus as a disability. Those officials denied they were operating outside the law and argued they cannot deny ballots to voters who cite a disability — even if their reasoning is tied to susceptibility to the coronavirus. 

When voters cite disability to request an absentee ballot, they're not required to say what the disability is. The voters simply check a box on the application form, and if their application is properly filled out, locals officials are supposed to send them a ballot. The state ultimately conceded that officials can't reject those voters.

I remember this case, and though I’m too lazy to search my archives, I remember it wasn’t a victory for Paxton. He tried to spin it into one, but the Supreme Court threw all his legal theories into the shredder. He’s not belatedly confessing a crime here. He’s bragging about something he bragged about 2 years ago. And his brag has all the substance of Trump’s brag that he built the border wall.

Sorry, but there’s no there, here.