Whistleblower Fired From Texas AG Office
Ryan Vassar, who had served as the deputy attorney general for legal counsel, was one of eight senior aides who told authorities they believed Paxton was breaking the law — a report that has sparked an FBI investigation.
The Texas attorney general’s office has fired the last remaining whistleblower who alleged Ken Paxton broke the law in doing favors for a political donor — just days after aides had sued the agency alleging they suffered retaliation for making the report.
Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel Ryan Vassar — who had already been placed on paid leave — was fired Nov. 17, according to internal personnel documents obtained by The Texas Tribune, making him the fifth whistleblower to be fired from the agency in less than a month. The three others who reported Paxton to law enforcement have resigned.
On Nov. 12, Vassar and three of his former colleagues filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the Texas attorney general’s office, claiming they had suffered retaliation after they told law enforcement they believed Paxton broke the law by using the agency to serve the interests of a political donor and friend, Nate Paul.
Joseph Knight, Vassar’s attorney in the lawsuit, said the justification Vassar was given for his termination amounted to “made-up, nonsense reasons” — and that he believes the firing was an act of retaliation. Vassar was hired by the agency in 2015.
Neither the attorney general’s office nor Ian Prior, a political spokesman for Paxton, returned requests for comment on why Vassar was terminated, though Prior has said previous terminations were not acts of retaliation but rather related to policy violations.
The FBI is investigating Paxton over the allegations of the eight whistleblowers, who were all senior aides, the Associated Press reported earlier this month.
Paxton has dismissed the whistleblowers as “rogue employees” and said their allegations are “false.”
According to the lawsuit he and three other top aides filed, Vassar was tapped by Paxton to help carry out favors for Paul. One such instance came when Paxton urged members of his senior staff to release to Paul government documents that should not have been disclosed, the aides claim in their lawsuit.
“Paxton directed Vassar to find a way to release the information. Vassar struggled with this directive because allowing disclosure of the information requested by Paul would overturn decades of settled expectations among sister law enforcement agencies, compromise the [office of the attorney general]’s own law enforcement information and likely spark innumerable lawsuits challenging the newly announced application of the law,” the lawsuit claims.
Then, Paxton “personally took the file” — including documents that had been sealed by a federal court — and “did not return it for approximately seven to ten days,” the lawsuit claims.
In a statement earlier this month, Paxton said the aides’ “allegations are overblown, based upon assumptions and to a large degree misrepresent the facts.”
“Unfortunately, these attorneys chose to air their grievances through the media and through the courts,” Paxton said. “We will be fully prepared to address these allegations through the judicial system, if necessary.”
The open records incident is just one example, the former aides say, of how Paxton used the agency to serve Paul’s interests.
The full scope of the relationship between Paxton and Paul remains unclear, but the two sometimes saw each other socially, and Paul gave Paxton’s campaign $25,000 in 2018. Paul also revealed in an unrelated deposition that he hired a woman at Paxton’s recommendation, though he said doing so was not a favor to the attorney general. The woman he hired had been involved in a romantic relationship with Paxton, according to two people who learned of the affair from Paxton in 2018.
The agency took the highly unusual step of intervening in a lawsuit involving Paul and a local charity, and, aides say, Paxton pushed his staff to write a legal opinion that would help Paul stave off foreclosure sales at several of his properties.
Most strikingly, though, Paxton appointed an outside attorney to vet complaints by Paul, who claimed he had been mistreated by numerous state and federal authorities when his home and office were raided by the FBI in 2019. Top aides have said that they found Paul’s complaint meritless, but Paxton seemed unsatisfied with their investigation and hired a Houston defense attorney with five years of legal experience to probe the claims.
Vassar, as a senior aide, played a role in communicating with the attorney, Brandon Cammack, including drafting a contract for him, at Paxton’s direction, the lawsuit says.
Real Estate Investor Linked to Allegations Against Texas Attorney
Earlier in his career, media reports called the now 33-year-old real estate investor a “wunderkind,” a “rising star” and a “prodigy.” Now he’s fighting more than a dozen bankruptcies and has been linked to criminal allegations against an embattled Texas politician.
Nate Paul - CEO of World Class Capital Group. Photo by World Class website.
Who is Nate Paul, the real estate investor linked to abuse-of-office allegations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton?
"Who is Nate Paul, the real estate investor linked to abuse-of-office allegations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton?" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.
Walk through downtown Austin or its rapidly developing nearby neighborhoods and it’s impossible to miss the massive black banners draped over office buildings, warehouses and bars. “Another World Class Project,” reads one posted to the metal siding of a squat industrial building downtown. Other banners riff on their own ubiquity with a pithy line popularized by DJ Khaled: “Another One.”
The promotional campaign belongs to an Austin-based real estate investment firm owned by Nate Paul. World Class Capital Group has acquired an enviable portfolio of some of Austin’s choicest parcels with ambitious plans to lease or develop them. Paul has described himself in media reports as wanting to become “the youngest self-made real estate billionaire.”
These days, Paul’s name is associated not just with a real estate empire but with a series of recent high-profile bankruptcies and a much-publicized raid on his home and business office last year by FBI and U.S. Department of Treasury agents. The investigation remained active as recently as April, though no criminal charges have been filed, according to the Austin Business Journal.
And now he has been linked to bribery and abuse-of-office allegations made against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
According to the Houston Chronicle, former top aides to Paxton have alleged that the attorney general inappropriately appointed a special prosecutor to target “adversaries” of Paul, who donated $25,000 to Paxton’s reelection campaign in 2018. Those “adversaries” appear to include agents who raided Paul’s home and business office, though Paxton has confirmed only that he authorized an investigation into “allegations of crimes relating to the FBI, other government agencies and individuals” and that the investigation involved Paul.
A Paxton-appointed special prosecutor, Brandon Cammack, obtained subpoenas to look into allegations Paul made accusing federal authorities of wrongdoing when they raided his home and offices, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
And a text message, which was first obtained by the Houston Chronicle, sent last week by senior staff at the attorney general’s office to Paxton does not specify the nature of the real estate investor’s involvement in the “violations of law” they accuse Paxton of committing, but the aides mention Paxton’s “relationship and activities with Nate Paul.”
Paxton has said the allegations made against him by high-ranking attorneys at his agency are false, brought by “rogue” employees, and that he does not intend to resign. He also said he appointed a special prosecutor to lead the investigation to keep the investigation “independent” of his relationship with Paul.
Paul did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Earlier in his career, media reports called the now 33-year-old investor a “wunderkind,” a “rising star” and a “prodigy,” with an estimated net worth of nearly $1 billion. Raised in Victoria by Indian immigrant parents, Paul changed his name from Natin to Nate, moved to Austin, enrolled at the University of Texas and then dropped out after acquiring a taste for flipping real estate, according to media reports.
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He founded World Class in 2007 and has said he got his start purchasing property at low prices and in a low-interest-rate environment after the 2008 financial crisis. He bought storage facilities, land in Austin, a marina on Lake Travis and a building being used by a call center in south Austin, according to a profile in Forbes. “I was buying at the pit of the crisis,” he told the magazine. “In many of those deals, there was no other bidder.”
By 2015, he had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies, according to the Austin Business Journal.
“Is this guy for real?” the publication asked in a 2015 profile of Paul. The next year, he claimed a spot on Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of promising young financiers.
“I started with zero,” Paul told the Business Journal. “There was no legacy. I’m self-made.”
In brief media appearances, Paul has shown off a taste for luxury. In 2013, a New York Post report documented his attendance at Leonardo DiCaprio’s 39th birthday party. In 2017, he drove a Forbes reporter around Austin in a Bentley to point out his real estate holdings. He has posed for photos in the Austin Business Journal in his office in the penthouse of Austin’s iconic Frost Bank Tower. And he owns a nearly 9,200-square-foot mansion in a wealthy West Austin neighborhood appraised at $2.4 million, according to local tax records.
A 2017 Forbes profile pronounced him a “Texas Tycoon” and estimated his net worth to be about $800 million. Paul’s company at the time had $1.2 billion in assets and 10 million square feet of commercial space, ranging from offices to retail outlets to self-storage facilities, according to Forbes.
As his real estate ventures expanded across state lines, with World Class and its related companies opening offices in New York and Los Angeles, Paul attracted controversy at home. Former employees of one of his rooftop bars in Austin sued after the bar allegedly cheated them out of tips, according to Forbes. The case was settled privately in 2014.
And among local musicians, Paul became known as something of a venue-killer, as World Class developed a reputation for buying properties leased by bars and clubs and promptly evicting them as tenants.
Vincent Salvaggio, the owner of downtown rooftop venue Ethics Music Lounge, told the Austin Chronicle in 2018 that World Class Capital locked the bar’s doors for delinquent payment immediately after purchasing the property, unbeknownst to Salvaggio.
“They had me locked out before I even got the legal paperwork that they owned it and they haven’t let me back in to get my shit — not my sound system, not even my checkbook,” Salvaggio told the Chronicle at the time. “They’re trying to raise the rent on everything, so it’s good for [them] to get people out who are playing lower rent.”
Recent local news reports and bankruptcy filings indicate Paul’s business may have fallen on difficult times. At least 18 entities connected to World Class Holdings have filed for bankruptcy in the past year, according to the Austin Business Journal. Paul’s firm has used the bankruptcy process to “fend off creditors and provide a degree of breathing room as it tries to find a way out of default on multiple loans tied to real estate across the city,” the publication reported.
In September, American Express sued Paul and World Class Capital seeking to collect more than $300,000 in credit card debt, court records show.
Meanwhile, Paxton’s office has come to Paul’s defense in at least one other legal matter, records show. Paul’s World Class firm works through a complex web of more than a dozen affiliated business partnerships, which jointly own properties with investors.
A dispute arose two years ago between companies affiliated with World Class and the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, which invested in multiple Austin properties with the companies. The foundation is an Austin-based nonprofit that provides grants to charitable organizations and academic scholarships for students with financial needs.
The Mitte Foundation sued Paul in 2018, claiming he wasn’t sharing financial information on their jointly owned investments that Paul’s businesses managed. The case went to arbitration, and on July 1, 2019, a company affiliated with World Class agreed to buy out Mitte’s interest in the real estate partnerships for $10.5 million with payment due that August.
It never came, said Ray Chester, the lawyer representing the Mitte Foundation in the case.
In October 2019, the judge in the case ordered a receiver to take over the business partnerships, which would compel Paul to reveal the financial records that Chester said still hadn’t been shared with the Mitte Foundation. Chester said that within days, Paul “blatantly defied” the arbitrator’s ruling and said he had sold the partnerships at less than half of their market value.
But the sale was to another company affiliated with Paul, Chester said.
“He basically sold it to himself at below market value,” Chester said, although court records show the sale was never consummated.
As Paul’s firm cycled through teams of attorneys and held back on making the $10.5 million payment, Paxton’s office intervened in the case on behalf of World Class and its business affiliates this June, court records show. Paxton argued that his office needed to “protect the interests of the public” because the suit involved a charitable trust.
In July, Paxton asked a judge to halt the case. During that time, Chester said Paxton’s office called him five to 10 times per day to try to get him to settle for “pennies on the dollar,” calls that Chester characterized as “vaguely threatening.”
On Sept. 20, less than two weeks before news broke about the allegations against Paxton, the attorney general’s office reversed itself and announced its intention to step away from the case, which is still ongoing.
After filing for bankruptcy in August, the World Class affiliate handling investments in the property did not pay the $10.5 million or turn over the records, Chester said. But a clause in the settlement agreement does allow the Mitte Foundation to take a valuable, larger ownership share in the downtown property, Chester said.
As media reports surfaced detailing Paul’s connection to the allegations against Paxton, Texas Republican politicians who had received campaign contributions from Paul announced they would donate the funds to charities. Campaigns for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Land Commissioner George P. Bush and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy distanced themselves from Paul’s campaign contributions, which ranged from $2,500 to $10,000.
Roy, formerly a top Paxton aide at the Texas attorney general’s office, also called on Paxton to resign.
Although Paul has not said much publicly since garnering attention in the past year for the FBI raid and his bankruptcy lawsuits, he frequently shares inspirational quotes on his LinkedIn profile. He shared a Sun Tzu quote this summer: “Pretend to be weak, so your enemy may grow arrogant,” appending the hashtag #WorldClass.
On Monday, he posted another update: “Work Hard in Silence, Let Success Make the Noise.”
In the Austin Business Journal’s 2015 profile of Paul, outside observers praised him with a tinge of skepticism. David Armbrust, a real estate attorney at Armbrust & Brown, called Paul’s meteoric rise “very impressive.”
“I suppose like many in the real estate business, he may fit into one of two categories — either a rising star or a shooting star,” Armbrust said at the time. “Only time will tell.”
Shannon Najmabadi and Emma Platoff contributed reporting.
Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin, Frost Bank and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/07/nate-paul-ken-paxton/.
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A Predicament Familiar to Texas Attorney Generals
Four of the seven Texas attorneys general since 1972 have gone on to higher office, one stalled and one went to prison. Ken Paxton, the current AG, is in a situation now that could determine which way his career will go.
Analysis: Ken Paxton faces a predicament familiar to Texas attorney generals
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Texas has had seven attorneys general in the last five decades. Two became governors, one became chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, another became a U.S. senator and the other three got into the kind of legal trouble that can stop a political career dead in its tracks.
Jim Mattox was acquitted. Dan Morales went to federal prison. And now, Ken Paxton — who is already under indictment on securities charges — faces allegations from seven of his top aides of “abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses.”
Paxton is at an inflection point familiar to some of his predecessors, one that resolves into an absolution on the way to higher political office or into the last station in what has been his steady rise in state politics. The best thing going for him right now might be the timing: He’s not on the 2020 ballot. Neither is his spouse, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, who might otherwise suffer from having the same last name as the guy getting all of those negative headlines.
Those headlines are doozies. The Austin American-Statesman and the Houston Chronicle reported that the seven agency lawyers acted after the AG appointed a special prosecutor who targeted “adversaries” of Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and Paxton donor.
Last week, those Paxton assistants made their accusations in a letter delivered to the agency’s human resources department — a way of protecting their jobs while pointing the finger at their boss. One of them, First Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer, abruptly quit. The other six remain in an awkward work environment on the same floor of the Price Daniel State Office Building as the boss they’ve confronted.
Chip Roy, a former top Paxton assistant who’s now in Congress, said Monday that Paxton should resign.
The AG has no such plans. “Despite the effort by rogue employees and their false allegations I will continue to seek justice in Texas and will not be resigning,” he said in a statement released Monday.
And this is not his first hoedown. Paxton rode into office in 2014 amid allegations of securities fraud that quickly became indictments that are still pending today, more than six years later. He’s accused of advising investors to buy stock in a technology firm without telling them he was being paid to do so.
This is not the tale of an elected official who is in a hot mess for the first time. It’s the story of a politician who has become accustomed to a hot mess. In the first case, he has blamed political enemies and has said he did nothing wrong. Faced with new allegations, he says his employees “impeded the investigation” and that he appointed a special prosecutor to make “an independent determination” since he knows Paul.
The politics reach from here to 2022 and beyond. Paxton is one of several Republicans serving in statewide office, and only one person in that group — Greg Abbott — is serving in the top statewide office. He’s in his second term, and has a group of allies, like Paxton, who are both supportive and personally interested in what he might do next, and when.
They’re playing a game as old as government. So old, it comes with jokes, one of which is that AG — the shorthand for attorney general — stands for “almost governor.”
Paxton has never said publicly he will seek higher office. It’s just that the six Texas AGs who preceded him — a line extending back to 1972 — have all sought higher office. It’s been a mixed bag.
John Hill, a Democrat elected attorney general in 1972, lost the 1978 race for governor to Bill Clements, the first Republican to win that office since Reconstruction. Hill recovered from that loss, later becoming chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. His successor in the AG’s office, Mark White, beat Clements in 1982 and became governor. Clements came back and won in 1986. White’s comeback bid in 1990 stalled out in the Democratic primary that included his successor in the AG’s office, Jim Mattox. (State Treasurer Ann Richards beat them both and went on to become governor.)
Mattox had been acquitted but politically scarred after a commercial bribery indictment early in his first term in 1983. He was accused of threatening a major law firm’s bond practice after the firm’s client tried to depose his sister in a lawsuit that involved a major Mattox contributor. He won reelection, but AG was his last elected office. Mattox made a couple of unsuccessful runs after that — first for U.S. Senate and then for a return to the AG’s office — but never clawed his way back in.
Not quite governor.
His successor, Dan Morales, ran for governor, too, in 2002 — four years after leaving the AG’s office. He lost a one-sided Democratic primary to Tony Sanchez Jr. and in a surprising turn of fortune, pleaded guilty in 2003 to charges of filing a false tax return and mail fraud, and admitted to altering and forging government records to benefit himself and others. He’d been charged with trying to divert money from a state settlement with tobacco companies to another lawyer. Morales did prison time, lost his law license and squandered a once-promising political career.
The next two AGs did what Hill, Mattox and Morales had been trying to do. In 2002, Republican John Cornyn, a Texas Supreme Court justice who had succeeded Morales, won an open U.S. Senate seat and now, 18 years later, is trying to win a fourth term. His successor, Greg Abbott, was the state’s longest-serving AG — 12 years — before running successfully for governor in 2014 and again in 2018.
For Abbott, that “almost governor” joke was a good omen, as it was for White and Cornyn, and in its way, for Hill. It was a bad omen for Mattox and Morales. It has worked a little more than half the time for almost 50 years.
For Paxton, the AG now, the answer is still ahead.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/06/ken-paxton-texas-attorneys-general/.
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Accusations Against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "Raise Serious Concerns"
Seven senior officials said in a letter obtained by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE that they have reason to believe Paxton should be investigated for "abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses."
Gov. Greg Abbott says accusations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "raise serious concerns"
"Gov. Greg Abbott says accusations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "raise serious concerns"" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Senior officials in the Texas Attorney General's Office have asked federal law enforcement to "investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes" by their boss, the Austin-American Statesman and KVUE-TV first reported Saturday.
The senior staff members, including Jeff Mateer, who resigned from his post as Paxton’s top aide this week after several years leading the agency, notified the agency’s human resources director that they sought the investigation.
“We have a good faith belief that the attorney general is violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses,” seven agency leaders wrote in a one-page letter obtained by the Statesman.
The brief letter, dated Oct. 1, says the officials notified law enforcement of a potential crime on Sept. 30, but does not provide detailed accusations. The officials also say they notified Paxton himself of the accusation via text message on Oct. 1.
Paxton, a second-term state official and former state legislator who serves as co-chair of the Lawyers for Trump coalition, has been under indictment for more than five years on felony charges of securities fraud. Paxton has yet to go to trial on the charges amid side battles over where the case will be heard and how much the special prosecutors appointed to take the case to trial will be paid.
The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that the allegations are tied to Paxton's relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and campaign donor, citing the text message Mateer and the other officials sent to Paxton last week.
"General Paxton, yesterday, each of the individuals on this text chain made a good faith report of violations of law by you to an appropriate law enforcement authority concerning your relationship and activities with Nate Paul," Mateer told Paxton in the Oct. 1 text, obtained by the Chronicle.
According to the report, Mateer and the other officials felt compelled to act after Paxton allegedly appointed a special prosecutor to target "adversaries" of Paul.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said in a statement that "the complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”
She declined to comment further, citing an open investigation.
Ryan Bangert, the deputy first assistant attorney general and one of the seven aides who signed on to the letter, wrote to agency staff Sunday encouraging them "to ensure the agency continues its important work without interruption."
"I write to assure you that the executive team remains committed to serving you, this office, and the people of Texas. The work we do together makes a difference every day in the lives of our fellow citizens," Bangert wrote. "Your work, your sacrifice, and your dedication to this office inspire us all."
Meanwhile, top Texas Republicans reacted cautiously to the allegations against Paxton.
"These allegations raise serious concerns," Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday in a prepared statement. "I will withhold further comment until the results of any investigation are complete."
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the news "obviously concerning."
"I learned about this from media reports," Patrick said in a statement. "I will wait until the investigation is complete before making any additional comments."
The office of House Speaker Dennis Bonnen did not immediately return requests for comment.
An attorney with Paxton's defense team in the securities fraud case, Philip Hilder, declined to comment. Brian Wice, one of the special prosecutors on the case, said Sunday that "we're going to look into this," but declined to elaborate further. It's not clear whether the latest allegations are related to the pending securities fraud charges.
Jordan Berry, a political adviser to Paxton, confirmed Sunday that he had resigned in the wake of the allegations.
Michelle Lee, a public affairs officer for the FBI, declined to comment on the matter, citing internal policy within the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice not to comment on the existence of pending or potential investigations. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the region said "we have no comment." Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore said Saturday evening "we do not have an investigation."
Paxton has faced numerous questions over his ethics over his more than a decade in public life. To help pay for his stacked team of defense attorneys, he has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts for his legal defense fund, claiming the contributions came from “family friends” and are exempt from a state bribery law that bars elected officials from receiving gifts from people who are subject to their authority.
In the securities fraud charges that are still pending, Paxton is accused of convincing investors to buy stock in a technology firm without disclosing that he would be compensated for it. He has maintained his innocence and criticized the prosecution as politically motivated. In 2014, the Texas State Securities Board fined Paxton $1,000 for soliciting investment clients without being registered, and he signed a disciplinary order without disputing its findings.
Last year, his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed a bill that would have expanded her husband’s power as attorney general, giving him the power to exempt individuals from state regulations like the one he has been charged with violating.
In 2018, Paxton’s office filed — and then abruptly recalled — a formal court brief in a lawsuit over Plano’s zoning policies, in a move that his supporters attributed to political influence from conservatives in his home county.
Paxton, a conservative who has often elbowed for airtime as the state’s top culture warrior, has kept up a busy and high-profile role during the coronavirus pandemic.
This spring, he declared that Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on elective medical procedures, an effort to conserve hospital resources for coronavirus patients, also barred abortions in the state, sparking a lawsuit that would drag on for weeks and force hundreds of women to cancel appointments to terminate their pregnancies. His office threatened to sue the state’s biggest cities if they did not roll back coronavirus-related safety precautions, including mask mandates, and told local officials they could not keep landlords from evicting their tenants during the pandemic.
Paxton used the power of his office to lean on a Colorado county after it shut its doors to vacation home owners — including a top donor.
Paxton has led major multi-state lawsuits to overturn laws like the Affordable Care Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, often landing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s made equally political choices in the cases he chooses not to take. His office refused to defend a state agency, as it typically would, when it was sued for disciplining a state judge who refused to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. And it declined to defend the Texas Ethics Commission in a lawsuit brought by the hardline conservative group Empower Texans, a political donor.
Last year, he was a major player in Texas’ botched effort to review its voter rolls.
Paxton often boasts of his close relationship with the president, frequently greeting him on the tarmac when Air Force One touches down in Texas, and sharing stories during public appearances about their communication on major Texas-led litigation — the time Trump called while Paxton was in the shower is a favorite.
In 2018, Paxton narrowly bested his Democratic opponent, Justin Nelson, to win reelection in an unexpectedly tight race. Nelson had made Paxton’s indictments the centerpiece of his campaign.
“Ken Paxton is the top law enforcement official in the state,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement Saturday. “Yet, he has proven for years that he cannot follow the law himself.”
Calls could build in the coming days among other Republicans for Paxton to more specifically address the charges or resign. On Sunday, state Rep. Sarah Davis, a Houston Republican representing a district that Democrats are targeting this year, became the first known GOP member at the Legislature to suggest Paxton resign if he does not "quickly address these allegations."
"Although innocent until proven guilty, AG Paxton has been under indictment for the past five years," Davis tweeted. "With these new allegations of bribery and abuse of office, Paxton needs to quickly address these allegations or resign so he can devote his time to his own personal legal matters."
Cassandra Pollock, Patrick Svitek and Abby Livingston contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/03/texas-ken-paxton-bribery-investigation/.
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