There’s no good scenario for state Sen. Angela Paxton, wife of suspended Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

If she were allowed to deliberate and vote in her husband’s upcoming impeachment trial on corruption charges, she’d run smack dab into a conflict of interest as big as a Mack truck and, one would assume, an impossible Sophie’s choice between doing the ethical thing and doing the loyal wifely thing.

Of course, that won’t happen now that the Texas Senate has adopted rules banning her from having a say: “I am ineligible to vote on any matter, motion, or question before the Court, or to participate in deliberations,” Angela Paxton said in a press release Thursday.....

We won’t pass judgment on Angela Paxton, whose untenable position and internal conflicts we don’t envy. She has watched through the years as the allegations piled up against her husband, including but not limited to: his indictment on felony securities fraud, whistleblower complaints alleging abuse of office to benefit political donor Nate Paul and to hide an extra-marital affair, and the recent 20 articles of impeachment filed against him. Those include misapplication of public resources, constitutional bribery, obstruction of justice, unfitness for office, abuse of the public trust, and more. .....

We hope so. And we hope it’s for the right reasons, so aptly articulated in an op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle earlier this month by Chairman Murr:

“Some have questioned why Republican House members would bring articles of impeachment against a member of our party who has won numerous statewide elections and whose troubling behaviors have been the subject of news coverage through the years,” Murr wrote. “Electoral victory is not a license to abuse the public’s trust, and the General Investigating Committee does not make decisions based on what has and has not been in the news media. We had a reason to ask questions, we asked them, and the evidence we found was conclusive.”