Words Have Consequences: Jeff Leach Gets Served Over the Treason Smear

Daniel Miller returned to Late Night Coffee Talk after almost a month off the air, most of it on the road and the rest fighting whatever bug has been going around. He opened with a straight read on where HB 3596 stands. The TEXIT bill has stalled, and the trouble swirling around its author, Rep. Brian Slaton, has made it harder to win a hearing in Todd Hunter’s committee. Miller would not touch the allegations against Slaton, but he was blunt that the name attached to the bill has hamstrung the effort. His answer is not to quit. It is to keep the calls coming, peel pieces of the bill onto other legislation as amendments, and build pressure until a vote cannot be denied. Elections have consequences, he said, and a legislature short on committed pro-TEXIT members is the real bottleneck.

Then he got to the night’s main event. State Rep. Jeff Leach was served on camera with a defamation lawsuit brought by TNM supporter Morgan McComb and argued by attorney Paul Davis, the same lawyer on the Facebook suit. The charge is that Leach publicly branded TEXIT supporters guilty of treason and sedition, then doubled down when McComb gave him a chance to walk it back. Miller laid out the theory. Defamation per se assumes harm when you accuse someone of a crime, the only real defense is truth, and the suit quotes the actual federal definitions of seditious conspiracy and treason. Every one of those crimes turns on force. A peaceful vote on Texas independence is not force, and that gap is why the accusation is actionable.

He tied it to a longer fight that runs back to his earliest party conventions in Jefferson County and through a July 2022 TNM article asking whether supporters should start suing. He also took the immunity question head on, citing a 2021 Attorney General opinion and Article 3, Section 21 of the Texas Constitution. Lawmakers get absolute immunity for floor speech and committee proceedings. What they post on a personal, campaign-stuffed Twitter account is not protected. His message to supporters was to stop absorbing the abuse and refuse to let the smear stand. Donations for the legal effort go through defendtexit.com, straight into a trust account for legal expenses.