Investigators with the D.C. office of the Justice Department known as the Public Integrity Section, which deals with cases involving political figures like elected officials and judges, will now be conducting the corruption investigation into Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a Republican.
Paxton was accused of using his position to benefit an associate of his, Nate Paul. One example is that Paxton appointed a special counsel to examine the circumstances of federal authorities raiding a residence of Paul’s in 2019, and Paxton’s team evidently had concerns about a conflict of interest on the part of staff with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, which was previously handling the corruption probe and was among the teams connected to that disputed raid. A relevant component of the underlying case is that Paul donated tens of thousands of dollars in support of Paxton’s 2018 campaign, which could suggest some kind of pay-for-play scheme. Eight individuals who worked on the state attorney general’s team helped expose the news. All no longer work with Paxton, and for part of the group, that’s because they were fired.
Paxton agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit from several of the now former staff members who raised concerns about him, but the millions in financial penalties that would be imposed would be drawn from state funds, and Republicans in the state legislature didn’t sound thrilled about that idea. “Mr. Paxton is going to have to come to the Texas House,” Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said to a Texas news outlet. “He’s going to have to appear before the appropriations committee and make a case to that committee as to why that is a proper use of taxpayer dollars, and then he’s going to have to sell it to 76 members of the Texas House. That is his job, not mine.” Phelan was evidently not personally in support of the idea.
Besides Paxton’s handling of the special counsel’s investigation into the raid on his associate, that individual is also said to have provided employment for a woman with whom Paxton was alleged to have had an affair. “The former top deputies also allege Paxton pushed the attorney general’s office to get involved in a real estate deal involving one of Paul’s companies and an Austin charity,” The Texas Tribune reported. Paxton was elected to another term as the top law enforcement official in Texas just last year. He was infamously among the state officials seemingly most eager to try and help attempts by Donald Trump to stay in the White House despite the clear evidence of the legitimacy of his loss, having filed a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the 2020 results from four states where Biden won.
