Phelan says AG must go to House over costs
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week announced a $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of taking bribes, he said the agreement would “put this issue to rest.”
Not hardly. Days later, the Texas House speaker is calling for Paxton to explain publicly to lawmakers why taxpayers should cover the settlement, and the U.S. Justice Department has moved its investigation of the bribery allegations to its public integrity unit.
“Mr. Paxton is going to have to come to the Texas House, 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,” Speaker Dade Phelan said in a Wednesday night interview with the CBS DFW news station. “And then he’s going to have to sell it to 76 members of the Texas House. That is his job, not mine.”
Taxpayers have already been on the hook for at least $200,000 of Paxton’s legal fees in this case. If the Legislature does not approve the settlement funds, the lawsuit will continue unless Paxton can find an alternative funding source.
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
News of the settlement broke late last week, when Paxton said the agreement would “put this issue to rest.” The former aides sued the attorney general’s office, alleging that Paxton fired them in retaliation for reporting their accusations to law enforcement.
Under the settlement agreement, Paxton also agreed to apologize to the whistleblowers and remove a news release
from his website that had criticized them.
“I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as attorney general is unburdened by unnecessary distractions,” Paxton, who was elected to a third term in November, said in a statement last week. “This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the people of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”
Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, does not expect that the money will be included in the House budget.
Corruption case shifts
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Texas have been removed from the ongoing investigation into the corruption allegations against Paxton.
The Texas attorneys are handing over the case to the
Justice Department’s public integrity section, according to state prosecutors handling a separate securities fraud case against Paxton, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer. The division prosecutes allegations of official misconduct against elected leaders at the local, state and federal level.
In fall 2020, Paxton’s top deputies accused him of taking bribes and abusing his office to help a friend and campaign donor, Nate Paul.
Paul helped Paxton renovate his $1 million Austin home and gave a job to a woman with whom the attorney general acknowledged he’d had an extramarital affair, according to the lawsuit the whistleblowers filed after they were fired.
It’s not clear what prompted top Justice Department officials to recuse the federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas, but the move was pushed by Paxton’s attorneys.
One of his defense lawyers, Dan Cogdell, said Thursday that he’d asked agency officials
to recuse themselves “well over a year ago” and was told there was no basis for them to recuse. Cogdell told the Associated Press that Texas prosecutors had “an obvious conflict.”
“Frankly, this is the right thing to do — regardless of what I think about the merits of the investigation itself,” Cogdell said. “I am glad that someone has seen the light we’ve been trying to show them for over a year. Good for them.”
It’s unknown whether Paxton will face charges, though investigators in Texas who had worked the case believed there was sufficient evidence for an indictment, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to the AP to discuss an ongoing probe.
Eight of Paxton’s senior staff accused him of crimes in 2020 after the attorney general hired an outside lawyer to look into Paul’s claims of wrongdoing by FBI agents and federal prosecutors who were separately investigating the developer.
Those agents and lawyers are part of the same federal prosecutorial district as the ones who came to investigate Paxton.
The overlap was known to officials within the Justice Department and publicly reported on by the AP within weeks of Paxton’s staff going to the FBI.
Nonetheless, the agency left the investigation to be led by a career federal prosecutor based in San Antonio, who was best known for winning a money laundering and fraud case against former Democratic state Sen. Carlos Uresti.
The federal investigation of Paxton expanded in the years after his former staff told the FBI he was committing crimes to help Paul. It came to look at the renovations to Paxton’s million-dollar home, but it also was drawn out as leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas has repeatedly changed.
Paxton and Paul have broadly denied wrongdoing.
Paxton has seen little political cost from the federal investigation and a separate 2015 securities fraud indictment for which he has yet to face trial. He easily defeated challenger George P. Bush in a contested GOP primary last spring, went on to decisively beat his Democratic opponent and secure a third term in November, and has filed a steady stream of legal challenges to the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The public integrity section has brought a series of highprofile prosecutions in the last decades. One of its former chiefs, Jack Smith, is now serving as the Justice Department special counsel overseeing investigations of former President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents as well as efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 election.
Although the unit has secured major convictions, it has also endured notable setbacks.