When the Top Cop is a Criminal

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

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The chief law officer and legal counsel of the government of a state or nation. That is typically how the position of Attorney General is described. What happens, though, when that chief law officer is himself a criminal? Ask the U.S. state of Texas, for they have that very problem. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (Republican) has not been convicted of a crime—yet—but publicly available evidence sure suggests he has committed many, including under the color of his own authority. When do all the people his malevolence has affected—including the People of the State of Texas—receive justice?

The Indictment

Paxton has not been convicted of a crime yet, but a grand jury found sufficient evidence to indict him, all the way back in 2015. A grand jury issues an indictment after reviewing evidence and determining that there is an “adequate basis for bringing criminal charges against a suspect.” In most or maybe all U.S. states, this requires at least a majority of the grand jury to vote in favor of it. And grand juries are made up of the citizenry of no particular political persuasion. Paxton was charged with two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register. According to the New York Times,

In the most serious charges, first-degree securities fraud, Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in McKinney, his hometown. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 into Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment, and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case. The group of investors were Mr. Paxton’s friends and included a colleague in the Texas House, Representative Byron Cook.

Now eight years later, Paxton still has not gone to trial, though the charges remain pending. A big reason for the delay is that the venue—or place—for the trial has changed multiple times, primarily due to repeated legal wrangling among the lawyers on the case. In July of 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, finally determined that the trial will take place in Houston. No date has been set as of this writing.

The Impeachment

In addition to facing a pending criminal trial, with penalties of up to 99 years in prison if convicted, Paxton recently endured an impeachment trial. Impeaching a person means to charge them with some sort of abuse or failure to uphold the oath of a public office. A conviction on impeachment leads to removal from office, but is itself not a criminal adjudication. Republican Texas legislators brought 20 impeachment charges against Paxton related to various forms of corruption. Impeachment prosecutors contended that Paxton improperly used his powers of office to protect a real estate developer friend of his. One witness, a former deputy attorney general, testified that he saw “Attorney General Ken Paxton do brazen things on behalf of Nate Paul. He [Paxton] abused the entire office of the attorney general of Texas to benefit Nate Paul, and it got worse and worse and worse.” Federal authorities recently indicted Paul for making false statements to banks to procure loans.

In particular, the impeachment articles accused Paxton of attempting to “interfere in foreclosure lawsuits, improperly issuing legal opinions to benefit real estate developer Nate Paul, and firing, harassing, and interfering with whistleblowers on Paxton’s staff.” Article 2 stated:

Paxton is accused of misusing his official power to issue written legal opinions. He allegedly had employees prepare an opinion that protected some of Paul’s properties from being sold in foreclosure. Paxton concealed his actions by asking a Senate committee chairperson to seek that opinion. He’s also accused of directing employees to reverse their legal conclusions to help Paul.

Prosecutors presented emails in which Paul—not a member of law enforcement—directed a special prosecutor Paxton appointed to investigate Paul’s business rivals and the FBI. This special prosecutor, Brandon Cammack, testified that he “did everything at [Paxton’s] supervision.” Cammack further told the impeachment hearing that “he met several times with Paxton, [Nate] Paul and Paul's lawyer about Cammack's investigation, and regularly forwarded to Paxton information that Paul's lawyer was sending him about whom to target with grand jury subpoenas.” Prosecutors entered into evidence the list of targets to whom Cammack then issued subpoenas for, among other things, the cellphone records of law enforcement officials, including an agent involved in the search of Paul’s home and the assistant to a federal magistrate. Paul's lawyer accompanied Cammack when he personally served subpoenas on banks. Cammack said “[Paul’s lawyer] was insistent on going. I didn’t really think it was appropriate.” Cammack issued one of those subpoenas specifically to help one of Paul’s ongoing civil suits, according to Darren McCarty, another of Paxton’s appointees who testified and also spoke to the FBI.

Mark Penley, another deputy in Paxton’s office, stated “As the Attorney General’s conduct ramped up to become more and more unreasonable and illogical and crazy, all I can think about in my mind is, he’s pressuring me but I don’t have one iota of evidence of any wrongdoing by the people that Nate Paul is claiming did something wrong.” He was referring to subpoenas Paxton initially ordered him to issue to investigate the FBI’s probe into Paul.

In addition to abusing his office’s subpoena power, Paxton took measures to cover up his involvement in these and other activities. In one instance, prosecutors offered an email sent by one of Paxton’s deputies to Ryan Vassar, another of Paxton’s appointees who reported him to the FBI. The email discussed one of the opinions to be released from the AG’s office intended to protect Paul’s properties. The email said,

Paxton requested that I prepare a letter concerning foreclosure sales. [] Paxton told me that he was concerned that foreclosures would proceed without adequate numbers of bidders in light of [COVID-related] restrictions… I was under the impression that a third party had requested that [] Paxton address this issue, and requested that [] Paxton put me in touch with that third party so I could better understand the problem. [Paxton] provided me with the name and phone number of an individual to call. I reached out to that individual, and he claimed to have not spoken with [] Paxton and was not aware our office had been asked to address the issue. Moreover, he was not an authorized requester of an AG opinion. I advised that an authorized requester was needed. [] Paxton agreed that we would reach out to Senator Byron Hughes, which we did, and ask that he make a request, which he did.

To summarize, Paxton could not simply issue an opinion favorable to Paul’s situation without some proper legal predicate. He therefore directed his deputy to obtain that predicate. The state senator to whom Paxton’s deputy spoke complied with the request, and then Paxton proceeded to issue the opinion. Cammack also testified that Paxton ordered him to communicate via the encrypted Signal app for discussions related to the investigation—another sign of his attempt to cover up his actions. For emails, Paxton used Protonmail (ag.wkp@protonmail.com)—an encrypted service—rather than his agency email account. Cammack used his law firm email. None of this was based on any credible function of the Attorney General’s office, which is why several of Paxton’s appointees approached the FBI in the first place.

Other impeachment articles accused Paxton of receiving bribes from Paul. In article 9, Paxton was alleged to have benefited from Paul’s decision to hire a woman—Paxton’s mistress, Laura Olson—in exchange for providing Paul favorable legal assistance from, or specialized access to, the attorney general’s office. In support of this accusation, impeachment managers (or, the prosecutors) provided reams of documents indicating that “Paul had paid thousands of dollars in Uber rides for the attorney general on his credit card. The locations included Paxton’s home, Paul’s home and the home of a woman with whom Paxton was accused of having an affair. Paul later hired her [her meaning Laura Olson].” David Maxwell, who served as director of Criminal Law Enforcement for Paxton’s office from 2015 to 2020, testified that he “refused to involve any of my people in it, because I knew from the beginning that what [Paxton] was asking me to do was not legal and was not right.” Maxwell here was referring to issuing legal opinions beneficial to Paul. He also testified that he said, “Ken, you’re going to get yourself in trouble, and I wish you’d listen to me… You could be charged with bribery.”

Prosecutors provided depositions from a civil case involving Paul in which the witness stated:

Attorney General Ken Paxton in August of 2020 had a letter issued specifically to benefit World Class and Nate Paul, and that that was done, in some form or fashion, related to a relationship that he has or had with Laura Olson. That's the relevance of it from my perspective of understanding, if this was some kind of quid pro quo.

Olson never testified during the trial. Lieutenant Governor Patrick ruled that Olson had “been deemed unavailable to testify,” while some claimed she intended only to invoke her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination anyway.

A few of the impeachment accusations related to the fraud case for which Paxton will soon(?) stand trial. Article 11 asserted that Paxton sought to “thwart justice in the securities fraud case against him” when an associate, Jeff Blackard, filed a lawsuit that interfered with prosecutors receiving their usual income from the attorney general’s office. The lawsuit claimed that state prosecutors on Paxton’s case were receiving exorbitantly high hourly rates, an abuse of taxpayer dollars. In response to the suits, local legislators—allies of Paxton—slashed the prosecutors’ pay. That led to various motions filed buy those prosecutors that continuously delayed the case. Article 14 accused Paxton of failing to fully and accurately disclose his financial interests as required with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Much of this conduct worried senior deputies in Paxton’s own office—people he appointed—so much that they decided to report it to the FBI. Upon discovery of this, Paxton engaged in a retaliation campaign against those employees that led to all of them resigning or getting fired. This formed the basis for at least one of the impeachment articles.

Recently, Republican senators acquitted Paxton at his impeachment trial. The vote tally is unsurprising as removal by impeachment typically follows party lines, and the vote in Texas occurred almost entirely that way. This is despite the fact that the Texas House of Representatives, a Republican majority and members of Paxton’s own party, were the ones to launch the impeachment process. The Dallas Morning News described the acquittal this way:

[S]o compelling was the evidence brought forward through the testimony of Paxton’s former top aides and through an avalanche of documents that it was hard to understand how any juror, much less one sworn to defend this state and its constitution, could hear it and see it and vote to acquit not simply on one article, but on every single article brought to bear…

Yet that is exactly what a majority of the Senate did, a result that in hindsight was so predictable as to be predetermined, regardless of the evidence, the truth or the damage to our democracy and our state.

We have come to a place of great danger, where the plain evidence of corruption can no longer overcome the majority party’s determination to protect its self-interest and its agents. The philosophy at play is that the end justifies the means, and the means don’t seem to matter.

The outcome, predictable as it may have been, was seemingly influenced in an even more nefarious way than mere unethical, cynically tribal politics. The presiding figure (i.e., the judge) over the impeachment was Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. Despite not being up for re-reelection for three more years, Paxton’s PAC “loaned” $2 million and donated another $1 million to Patrick’s campaign during the impeachment process. The Wall Street Journal explained the situation:

What really happened Saturday is that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who runs the state Senate, chose to rescue Mr. Paxton in a rebuke to his rival, House Speaker Dade Phelan. All politics is very local here.

We wrote at the beginning of the Senate trial that Mr. Patrick looked like he might examine the evidence with an open mind. He had kept quiet during the House debate. But we were wrong. It’s now obvious the fix was in from the start and that Mr. Patrick lobbied his fellow GOP Senators to unite against the House articles of impeachment. Only two GOP Senators voted to convict Mr. Paxton, and one of them is 78-year-old Robert Nichols, an independent-minded committee chairman.

The obscene $3 million transaction between Ken Paxton’s PAC and the official who would preside over his trial—Dan Patrick—was funded by anonymous donors protected by Citizens United. That anonymity grants dark money donors great power in the absence of accountability. Overruling Citizens United should be among the first tasks of a newly expanded Supreme Court.

Let’s be frank about what this is if the allegations are true. It is a bribe. Paxton’s PAC may have literally bribed the lieutenant governor of Texas. Robert Hubbell framed it well:

That move is similar to a criminal defendant “loaning” $2 million and “donating” $1 million to the reelection campaign of the judge presiding over his criminal trial—even though the judge is not up for reelection for another three years. In other words, it stinks.

No one is in charge of House GOP

Patrick defended the transaction stating, “[The $3 million] got headlines because people wanted to make it a headline … but I also raised almost the same amount of money from people who may not be anti-Paxton, but they weren’t out there being pro-Paxton.” In courts, lawyers would object to this answer as “non-responsive.” Tellingly, few senators who voted to keep Paxton in power commented about the basis of their vote. This may have to do with the damning amount of evidence presented and the subsequent bad look of not convicting in the face of it.

To read the 3,760 pages of evidence presented against Paxton at his impeachment, click here.

Just before the proceedings began, the Dallas Morning News posted an article wondering whether the FBI would be “listening in” at the impeachment trial. The reason? The FBI is currently investigating Paxton for more corruption.

The FBI Investigation

Beginning in October 2020, federal investigators launched a probe into a host of allegations of corruption involving Paxton. This commenced—at least partly—from some of the same conduct mentioned in the impeachment. Specifically, the FBI seems to be responding to the complaint of former top deputies in Paxton’s office who claimed that his longtime relationship with Nate Paul included a litany of bribes and other abuses of office. The FBI executed a search warrant on Paul’s home and later charged him with several crimes.

After they complained to the FBI, all eight whistleblowers either resigned or were fired. In response to Paxton’s campaign against them in subsequent months, they sued him. In February 2023, they reached a settlement of $3.3 million and will receive an apology from Paxton for referring to them as “rogue employees.” Indeed, the settlement itself also became an article of impeachment, and may have been the impetus for launching the impeachment process in the first place. This is because the settlement requires the approval of the Texas state legislature and would be paid from taxpayer funds. While it is believed that the conduct alleged in the impeachment, the whistleblower complaints, and the subsequent retaliation form the basis of the FBI’s investigation, it is not clear if that comprises the full extent of whatever federal agents are looking into. In any case, Paxton will not have the protection of intra-party sycophants if the FBI determines there is sufficient evidence to criminally charge him.

Seditious Conspiracy

Paxton vociferously repeated former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Trump and numerous others have been charged in various conspiracies related to that lie and their attempts to illegally oppress or overturn the vote in jurisdictions including the District of Columbia, Michigan, and Georgia. Paxton also engaged in several unethical—possibly criminal—pursuits in furtherance of that political fantasy.

In May of 2022, a disciplinary committee for the State Bar of Texas filed a professional misconduct case against Paxton for “his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in four battleground states won by President Joe Biden.” This action is based on a lawsuit Paxton filed challenging the 2020 election results in those four states that was so frivolous and ridiculous that the US Supreme Court rejected it in a terse, unsigned opinion. The Court wrote, “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Paxton’s lawsuit made three primary claims:

1 - Non-legislative actors’ purported amendments to States’ duly enacted election laws, in violation of the Electors Clause’s vesting State legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.

2 - Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters – whether lawful or unlawful – in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States.

3 - The appearance of voting irregularities in the Defendant States that would be consistent with the unconstitutional relaxation of ballot-integrity protections in those States’ election laws.

To be clear, Paxton sued four other states under the color of authority of the state of Texas. Those four states—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin—according to Paxton, purportedly violated their own laws creating the “appearance of voting regularities.” The glaring fault in the foundational premise of the suit is the reason why the Supreme Court so quickly dismissed it. States generally cannot sue other states based on their internal enforcement of their own laws. Notwithstanding the uncontestable lack of standing, the suit’s second basis asserts a pure fantasy—that “evidence of material illegality in the 2020 general elections held in Defendant States grows daily.” This was materially false at the time of filing, just as it remains false today.

The Attorney General of Pennsylvania, one of the states targeted in Paxton’s frivolous suit, commented “The US Supreme Court saw through this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and its swift denial should make anyone contemplating further attacks on our election think twice.” Shapiro was correct that the filing constituted a seditious abuse of the judicial system, an abuse in which many others participated. Many of them are now indicted or unindicted co-conspirators or have suffered other legal punishment for their roles.

Lin Wood, for instance, filed a supportive brief in Paxton’s suit that attorneys across the country could only characterize as “bizarre.” U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg, who ruled on Wood’s nearly identical papers filed in Georgia, wrote “To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law.” A special grand jury voted in favor of indicting Wood as part of the RICO conspiracy led by Donald Trump in Georgia; prosecutors ultimately did not indict Wood (yet, anyway), probably because he will testify against the defendants in that case. Wood also “retired” his law license rather than face disbarment for his numerous efforts to assist in the election fraud conspiracy.

Over a hundred members of the Republican House of Congress also submitted a brief in support of Paxton’s ludicrous suit. Lawyering like they govern, they began their brief with a less-than-clever misdirection:

This brief amicus curiae presents the concern of amici as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections.

What they left out is that the “concerns” of “untold millions of their constituents” derived from those same Congressional members spouting frequently repeated lies about the election, not any actual evidence. Their brief then reiterates a number of arguments that courts across the country had already summarily rejected. In fact, many of those lawsuits that put forth the same claims as this one led to the participating lawyers getting sanctioned or even disbarred for filing meritless and frivolous cases. One should wonder whether any of these representatives, some of them lawyers, should also face censure against their law licenses.

The participants in Paxton’s clown show merely used (and abused) the court system to broadcast more of their fraudulent political messaging. Even some Republicans said so (in slightly different words). Senator John Cornyn of Texas told CNN:

I read just the summary of it, and I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it. Number one, why would a state, even such a great state as Texas, have a say so on how other states administer their elections? We have a diffused and dispersed system and even though we might not like it, they may think it’s unfair … those are decided at the state and local level and not at the national level. So it’s an interesting theory, but I’m not convinced.

More importantly, however, the suit may comprise yet another arm of the Conspiracy to Defraud the United States—a crime Trump has been charged with in Washington D.C. According to the New York Times, lawyers “close” to the Trump campaign drafted the papers, but handed them off to Paxton’s office because they needed a state AG to file them. The Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, purportedly would not sign on to the suit, which is why they turned to Paxton. Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins resigned not long after he, too, refused to sign on to the lawsuit. Apparently both of them smelled something fishy.

Christopher Carr, the Attorney General of Georgia—a defendant state in the lawsuit—called it “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.” In response, Trump himself called Carr to complain about Carr’s criticism of the suit and to warn him not to rally other Republicans to oppose it. Regardless, Carr filed a motion in opposition with the court, writing “Texas presses a generalized grievance that does not involve the sort of direct state-against-state controversy required for original jurisdiction.” Paxton’s participation in the criminal conspiracy involved other conduct. For instance, he expressed his support for the January 6 insurrection by speaking at the event in D.C. He said:

What we have in President Trump is a fighter. And I think that’s why we’re all here. We believe in what he’s accomplished over the last four years… Because we’re here today, the message goes on. We will not quit fighting. We’re Texans… We’re Americans… and we’re not quitting.

Only a little later, the first criminals besieged the police line and began their attack. Paxton later resisted a public records request for documents related to his activities in the events of January 6 and his communications about them.

Paxton speaking at the elliptical accompanied by his wife.

One reason Paxton probably involved himself in all this seditious tomfoolery is that he quietly hoped for a pardon from the then-president. Knowing he could not deflect his state criminal trial forever (the one about securities fraud), he probably at least sought to preclude any potential federal charges. When some people—including Republican commentators—questioned whether obtaining a pardon motivated his filing of the lawsuit, Paxton quipped that such claims were “ridiculous.” Dana Nessel, who is currently prosecuting more than a dozen pro-Trump criminal conspirators in Michigan had a starkly different take, stating “The FBI continues to investigate him, not just for securities fraud but for a variety of other matters, and I think this is a clear signal that he is sending to President Trump requesting a presidential pardon, and that's it. It's a last-ditch effort.” As so often happens to those who seek some payback from Trump for acting as his toadies, Paxton did not receive a pardon and may end up facing a federal trial… possibly from state prison.

Paxton may be facing more than one criminal trial in his future. We don’t yet know exactly what the FBI is currently investigating, but the evidence suggests Paxton’s involvement in Trump’s vast conspiracy could be one aspect. Trump’s direct involvement in promoting Paxton’s election fraud lawsuit, his efforts to curtail Republican opposition, the possibility that his own attorneys drafted the complaint, along with Paxton’s appearance at the January 6 rebellion and his unlawful defiance of requests for records about it all suggest the existence of a coordinated, criminal effort. Put another way, the evidence strongly indicates that an investigation into whether Paxton was involved in this traitorous conspiracy is warranted. If investigators can prove it, he should be charged as a co-conspirator.

Coda

Texas clearly has a serious corruption problem. It’s “top cop” is already under criminal indictment. Although he defeated the political impeachment, thousands of pages of evidence presented there strongly suggest he abused his office and took bribes. His settling the civil case, the conditions of which require Paxton’s apology, shows he violated the rights of members of his own office (also a crime). His actions related to the lies about election fraud indicate he may have participated in that criminal conspiracy. A conviction on just half of the criminal charges that could be levied against him would put him in prison for the rest of his natural life. But instead, he remains the chief law officer of one of the biggest states of the union.

***

I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.

Find more about me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Or visit my EALS Global Foundation’s webpage page here.

For a deep dive into the Michigan arm of Trump’s seditious conspiracy, click below.