Prosecutors strike back against Paxton
AUSTIN — The special prosecutors assigned to Ken Paxton’s securities fraud case have responded to the attorney general’s latest attempts to throw out his indictments with particular intensity and aplomb, calling his legal moves a “shell game” based on a “quicksand-like foundation.”
Kent Schaffer, Brian Wice and Nicole DeBorde, the three special prosecutors, on Thursday filed their first response to Paxton’s attempt to quash his three felony indictments. The 19-page filing will be the first of several seeking to persuade the presiding judge to continue the case and argues that the jurist who oversaw the grand jury process acted in good faith and followed the letter of the law.
“Paxton’s motion is a tale of sound and fury calculated to cast himself as a victim, and not a criminal defendant, in the court of public opinion,” the prosecutors wrote. “That Paxton’s motion is not only desperate, but utterly without merit is predictable; that it recklessly and unnecessarily tars both a respected jurist and his spouse without a legal or factual basis to do so is unconscionable.”
Earlier this week, Paxton’s legal team filed more than 100 pages of motions seeking to get the indictments thrown out, some of which claimed Collin County Judge Chris Oldner improperly empaneled and interacted with the grand jury and then told his wife about the indictments while they still were under seal. In several other documents, Paxton’s attorneys argued his indictments should be thrown out because the prosecutors allegedly told the media of the indictment details, the cases were not referred by the Texas State Securities Board and the statute of limitations had run out, among other reasons.
The prosecutors called the claims against Oldner absurd and called the defendant’s inclusion of text messages discussing the indictment between Oldner’s wife and Collin County Commissioner Susan Fletcher “a mere sideshow for the public’s titillation that Paxton employs like a drunk uses a lamppost — for support and not illumination.” More responses to Paxton’s many other accusations are forthcoming.
The legal tête-à-tête is just the latest exchange of blows between Paxton’s team and the prosecutors. Wice and Schaffer, two top criminal defense attorneys from Houston, repeatedly have sparred with Paxton’s previous spokesmen and lawyers, defending their work and experience against accusations they are politically motivated.
They have done so each time with biting acerbity, once calling Paxton’s response “sound bites culled from the play book of any public official whose conduct places them in the cross-hairs.”
Paxton was indicted in July on three felony charges of violating state securities laws.
He is accused of deceiving investors, including a Texas House committee chairman, by persuading them to buy stock in a North Texas tech startup without disclosing that he was being compensated by the company.
He also is accused of misrepresenting himself as an investor, when he was not, and funneling clients to a friend’s investment firm without being properly registered with the state.
Paxton previously admitted to not being registered as an investment adviser representative with the Texas State Securities Board, and paid a $1,000 fine.