{"id":522521,"date":"2016-08-09T23:10:48","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T04:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=522521"},"modified":"2016-08-10T23:10:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T04:10:17","slug":"joel-baker-cancels-upcoming-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=522521","title":{"rendered":"Joel Baker Cancels Upcoming Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2016\/03\/joelbaker-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2016\/03\/joelbaker-1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"joelbaker-1\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-465561\" \/><\/a>TYLER &#8211; Suspended Smith County Judge Joel Baker was scheduled to appear at a  post suspension hearing in Austin Thursday. But Baker has withdrawn his request for the hearing. In an email to the Executive Director of State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Seana Willing, Baker said he was withdrawing the request for the post-suspension hearing because he has confidence in the man named interim county judge, former Tyler city councilman Nathaniel Moran. In the email to Willing, Baker said, &#8220;I will continue to contest the Open Meetings charge that is the sole basis for my suspension, and expose the political motivations that led to the indictment of only one member of the Smith County Commissioners Court.&#8221;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>On June 21, Baker was suspended without pay by the state commission. Four days before his suspension, Baker turned himself in to Smith County authorities on three counts of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act.  The case stems from an alleged illegal executive session on August 12, 2014, in which the commissioners agreed to purchase traffic cameras. Baker is also under investigation for allegations he was involved in explicit sexual behavior online while conducting government business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TYLER &#8211; Suspended Smith County Judge Joel Baker was scheduled to appear at a post suspension hearing in Austin Thursday. But Baker has withdrawn his request for the hearing. In an email to the Executive Director of State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Seana Willing, Baker said he was withdrawing the request for the post-suspension hearing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=522521\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Joel Baker Cancels Upcoming Hearing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":465561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-18 08:20:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=522521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522522,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522521\/revisions\/522522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/465561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}