109 Facts About Ken Paxton

1.

Ken Paxton previously served as Texas State Senator for the 8th district and the Texas State Representative for the 70th district.

2.

Ken Paxton rose to power as an ally of the Tea Party movement of insurgent conservatives.

3.

Ken Paxton won a third term as Attorney General in 2022.

4.

Ken Paxton filed the unsuccessful Texas v Pennsylvania case in the US Supreme Court and spoke at the rally Trump held on January 6,2021, in Washington, DC, that immediately preceded the attack on the US Capitol.

5.

Ken Paxton has been under indictment since 2015 on state securities fraud charges relating to activities prior to taking office.

6.

In October 2020, several high-level assistants in Ken Paxton's office accused him of "bribery, abuse of office and other crimes";.

7.

Ken Paxton was impeached with bipartisan approval in May 2023 by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives.

8.

Ken Paxton was born on Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota where his father was stationed while in the United States Air Force.

9.

At the age of twelve, Ken Paxton nearly lost an eye in a game of hide-and-seek; a misdiagnosis led to long-term problems with his vision.

10.

Ken Paxton received a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1985 and a Master of Business Administration in 1986, both from Baylor University.

11.

Ken Paxton then worked for two years as a management consultant before returning to school in 1988.

12.

In 2002, Ken Paxton ran in the Republican primary for the Texas House in District 70.

13.

Ken Paxton went on to face Fred Lusk and Robert Worthington for the newly redistricted open seat.

14.

On November 4,2002, Ken Paxton won with 28,012 votes to Lusk's 7,074 votes and Worthington's 600 votes.

15.

Ken Paxton won re-election in 2006, defeating Rick Koster and Robert Virasin.

16.

Ken Paxton received 30,062 votes to Koster's 12,265 votes and Virasin's 1,222 votes.

17.

Ken Paxton won re-election by again defeating Robert Virasin, 73,450 to 11,751 votes.

18.

Ken Paxton said that if elected speaker, he would take "bold action in defense of our conservative values".

19.

Ken Paxton was endorsed by HuckPAC, the official political action committee of Mike Huckabee, and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

20.

Ken Paxton was in the Texas State Senate from 2013 until January 2015 when his term as Attorney General began.

21.

Ken Paxton became a candidate for Texas attorney general when the incumbent Greg Abbott decided to run for governor to succeed the retiring Rick Perry.

22.

Ken Paxton led a three-candidate field in the Republican primary held on March 4,2014, polling 566,114 votes.

23.

Ken Paxton faced Dan Branch in the runoff election on May 27,2014, and won with 465,395 votes.

24.

Ken Paxton won the attorney general's election without the endorsement of a single Texas newspaper.

25.

In 2018, Angela Ken Paxton won the District 8 seat in the Texas Senate.

26.

In 2018, Ken Paxton ran unopposed for re-election in the Republican primary.

27.

Justin Nelson's campaign ad for attorney general included surveillance video from the Collin County courthouse in 2012, showing Ken Paxton taking a Montblanc pen worth $1,000, which had been accidentally left behind at a metal detector by fellow lawyer Joe Joplin.

28.

The 2022 Texas Attorney General election took place on November 8,2022, where Ken Paxton won the Attorney General of Texas office for the third time.

29.

In 2022, Ken Paxton was sued by Fund Texas Choice, a non-profit organization aiming to prevent Ken Paxton from prosecuting people who assist Texans to receive out-of-state abortions.

30.

Ken Paxton initiated a lawsuit seeking to have the Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional in its entirety.

31.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ken Paxton threatened to file lawsuits against local governments unless they rescinded stay-at-home orders and rescinded rules regarding the use of face masks to combat the spread of coronavirus.

32.

The city of Austin encouraged restaurants to keep logs of contact information, so as to as to ensure contact tracing in the event of an outbreak; Ken Paxton described this as "Orwellian".

33.

In March 2021, Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Austin as well as Travis County, this time for the city and county continuing their local mask wearing requirements after Governor Abbott had signed an order ending the statewide mask-wearing mandate.

34.

Ken Paxton defended Texas in a federal lawsuit involving allegations that Texas's congressional districts were gerrymandered.

35.

Ken Paxton created a human trafficking unit in the AG office in 2015.

36.

In 2018, Ken Paxton falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants had committed over 600,000 crimes since 2011 in Texas.

37.

Ken Paxton led a coalition of twenty-six states challenging President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents executive action, which granted deferred action status to certain undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States since 2010 and had children who were American citizens or lawful permanent residents.

38.

Ken Paxton argued that the president should not be allowed to "unilaterally rewrite congressional laws and circumvent the people's representatives".

39.

In July 2017, Ken Paxton led a group of Republican Attorneys General and Idaho Governor Butch Otter in threatening the Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama, although never implemented in Texas because of legal action on behalf of the state.

40.

In 2017, Ken Paxton voiced support for the application of eminent domain to obtain right-of-way along the Rio Grande in Texas for construction of the border wall advocated by President Donald Trump as a means to curtail illegal immigration.

41.

In 2017, Ken Paxton joined thirteen other state attorneys general in filing a friend-of-the-court briefs in defense of both Trump's first and second executive orders on travel and immigration primarily from majority-Muslim countries.

42.

In May 2017, Ken Paxton filed a preemptive lawsuit designed to ascertain the constitutionality of the new Texas law imposing penalties on sanctuary cities, known as SB 4, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott.

43.

Ken Paxton said that the measure "is constitutional, lawful and a vital step in securing our borders".

44.

Ken Paxton has mounted a legal challenge to the Clean Power Plan, which is President Obama's "state-by-state effort to fight climate change by shifting away from coal power to cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable resources".

45.

Ken Paxton has said that the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to "force Texas to change how we regulate energy production" through an "unprecedented expansion of federal authority".

46.

Ken Paxton says the required reductions would cost the state jobs, push electricity costs too high, and threaten reliability on the electrical grid.

47.

Ken Paxton says there is no evidence that the plan will mitigate climate change, directly contradicting studies by the EPA that have shown the regulation will reduce carbon pollution by 870 million tons in 2030.

48.

Ken Paxton further asserts that the EPA lacks the statutory authority to write the state's policies.

49.

In 2016, Ken Paxton was one of eleven Republican state attorneys general who sided with ExxonMobil in the company's suit to block a climate change probe by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

50.

Ken Paxton questioned Healey's use of law-enforcement authority regarding the global warming controversy, which he called an "ongoing public policy debate of international importance".

51.

Ken Paxton sued the Obama administration over a new rule by the United States Department of Labor which would make five million additional workers eligible for overtime pay.

52.

Ken Paxton called the injunction "a victory for the preservation of the sanctity of attorney-client confidentiality".

53.

In June 2015, after the issuance of the Obergefell v Hodges decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, Paxton offered support for clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

54.

In 2016, Ken Paxton led a coalition of thirteen states that sought an injunction to block a guidance letter issued by the Department of Education and Department of Justice that interpreted Title IX to require public schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms that accorded with their gender identity.

55.

Ken Paxton submitted court filings alleging the Obama administration had "conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment" and termed the directive a "gun to the head" that threatens the independence of school districts.

56.

On February 18,2022, Ken Paxton issued a new interpretation of Texas law in a written opinion that characterized gender-affirming health care for transgender youths as child abuse.

57.

In 2012, Ken Paxton was part of a lawsuit by 33 state attorneys general against Apple, charging the company with violating antitrust laws by conspiring with publishers to artificially raise the prices of electronic books.

58.

Ken Paxton is part of a 21-state lawsuit against the state of Delaware.

59.

In 2016, Ken Paxton intervened in a lawsuit challenging the practice of school districts reducing or repealing their local optional homestead exemptions.

60.

In 2016, Ken Paxton sued the City of Austin to allow license holders to openly carry handguns in Austin City Hall.

61.

Ken Paxton prevailed, and the court decided not only that the city of Austin must allow such carry, but ordered it to pay a fine to the state for each day it prevented investigators from the attorney general's office from carrying their firearms.

62.

In March 2017, Ken Paxton told The Washington Times that he was convinced that voter fraud exists in Texas, and claimed that local election officials in Texas were not on the lookout for detecting fraud.

63.

Ken Paxton had filed charges against Hervis Rogers, a Black man who was working two jobs.

64.

The Rogers case was not the first time that Ken Paxton had indulged in "forum shopping".

65.

Ken Paxton tried to get a Harris County elections official indicted and tried for alleged interference with a poll watcher, attempting to obtain that indictment in Montgomery County.

66.

Ken Paxton admitted to KXAN-TV that few people served time for voter fraud.

67.

In May 2020, Ken Paxton opposed an expansion of absentee voting to voters who lack immunity to COVID-19.

68.

Ken Paxton lost in the trial court and in the intermediate court of appeals, but the Texas Supreme Court reversed and directed the trial court to enter an injunction against Hollins.

69.

On December 8,2020, Ken Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed President-elect Joe Biden the victor over President Donald Trump, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had already been rejected in other courts.

70.

In Texas v Pennsylvania, Paxton asked the United States Supreme Court to invalidate the states' sixty-two electoral votes, allowing Trump to be declared the winner of a second presidential term.

71.

Ken Paxton's lawsuit included claims that had been tried unsuccessfully in other courts and shown to be false.

72.

Republican Senator Ben Sasse opined that the situation of Ken Paxton initiating the lawsuit "looks like a fella begging for a pardon filed a PR stunt", in reference to Ken Paxton's own legal issues.

73.

Ken Paxton has called the pardon speculation "an absurdly laughable conspiracy theory" and said the lawsuit is about election integrity.

74.

In reaction to the violence and loss of life, Ken Paxton falsely claimed that the rioters were liberal activists posing as Trump supporters.

75.

Ken Paxton was the only state attorney general to not condemn the insurrection.

76.

In early 2021, Ken Paxton's office refused to provide his work emails and text messages he sent or received while in Washington on January 6, after several Texas news organizations requested them in accordance with the state's open records law.

77.

In October 2021, Ken Paxton falsely claimed that Biden "overthrew" Trump in the 2020 election.

78.

Ken Paxton "has often criticized what he calls anti-Christian discrimination in Texas schools".

79.

In 2015, Ken Paxton opposed an atheist group's legal action seeking a halt to the reading of religious prayers before school board meetings.

80.

In December 2016, Ken Paxton gained attention after intervening in a dispute in Killeen, Texas, in which a middle school principal told a nurse's aide to take down a six-foot poster in the school containing a quote from Christian scripture.

81.

The Frisco Independent School District superintendent, in a letter sent in response to Ken Paxton, called his press release "a publicity stunt by the [Office of Attorney General] to politicize a nonissue".

82.

Texas v Garland is a lawsuit Paxton filed against the United States government.

83.

In late February 2023, Ken Paxton asked the Appropriations subcommitee of the Texas House of Representatives to provide more taxpayer funds to his office, including the full amount of the intended $3.3 million settlement of the lawsuit brought by whistleblowers from his office.

84.

On May 23,2023, Ken Paxton accused Phelan of performing his Texas Speaker duties the week prior in a "state of apparent debilitating intoxication", and demanded that the House General Investigating Committee investigate Phelan.

85.

Later that day, the House General Investigating Committee revealed to the public its months-long investigation of Ken Paxton, and subpoenaed Ken Paxton and his office.

86.

Ken Paxton responded that his impeachment was a "politically motivated sham".

87.

Ken Paxton became the third Texan official to be impeached, after a governor in 1917 and a state judge in 1975.

88.

Ken Paxton's indictment marked the first such criminal indictment of a Texas Attorney General in thirty-two years since Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox was indicted for bribery in 1983.

89.

Ken Paxton and Cook were former friends and roommates while serving together in the Texas House.

90.

The state prosecution against Ken Paxton grows out of Ken Paxton selling shares of Servergy Inc.

91.

Prosecutors allege that Ken Paxton sold shares of Servergy to investors while failing to disclose that he was receiving compensation from the company in the form of 100,000 shares of stock in return.

92.

Ken Paxton says the 100,000 shares of stock he received from Servergy's founder and CEO were a gift, and not a sales commission, and they were provided to Ken Paxton long before the sales transactions occurred.

93.

Ken Paxton pleaded not guilty, and has portrayed "the case against him as a political witch-hunt".

94.

Ken Paxton's trial has been delayed multiple times over side issues, such as the venue where the trial will take place and the amount of the special prosecutors' fees.

95.

Ken Paxton filed a motion to move the case from Harris County to his native Collin County, in 2019.

96.

The SEC's complaint specifically charged Ken Paxton with violating various provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and various provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by defrauding the Servergy investors.

97.

In October 2016, US District Judge Amos L Mazzant III conditionally dismissed the complaint, finding the SEC had not alleged Paxton had any legal obligation to inform investors that he was receiving a commission, but gave the SEC two weeks to refile an amended complaint.

98.

The SEC refiled its securities fraud claims against Ken Paxton, making the additional allegations that Ken Paxton and Cook's investment club required all of its members to accept the same risks on all investments and that it specifically forbade members from making money off investments of other members.

99.

The SEC further alleged that Ken Paxton did not properly disclose his Servergy ownership stake on his taxes and that he attempted to conceal the stake by at different times claiming it was his fee for legal services, that it was a gift, and that he had only received it after investing money.

100.

The Associated Press reported that the allegations involved Ken Paxton illegally using his office to benefit real estate developer Nate Paul, who had donated $25,000 to Ken Paxton's 2018 campaign.

101.

The Associated Press reported that the allegations include the claim that Ken Paxton had an extramarital affair with a woman, and that he had later advocated for that woman to be hired by Paul's company, World Class.

102.

In 2020, four of the former members of the Texas AG's Office sued the Office of the Attorney General, alleging that Ken Paxton fired them for reporting misconduct to law enforcement, a form of illegal retaliation under the state's Whistleblower Act.

103.

Ken Paxton claimed that the Whistleblower Act did not apply to allegations of misconduct by Ken Paxton, as an elected executive-branch officer, and that as an elected official he must have the power to control his top lieutenants, who are high-level political appointees, but in October 2021, the Texas Third Court of Appeals rejected his appeal, affirming the trial court's order.

104.

In early February 2023, Ken Paxton agreed to issue an apology to the four whistleblowers and pay them $3.3 million in a tentative settlement.

105.

Ken Paxton then asked the state to use taxpayer funds to pay the settlement.

106.

Also in February 2023, the US Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington assumed an investigation of Ken Paxton that had previously been managed by federal prosecutors in Texas.

107.

Similar ethics complaints against Ken Paxton, seeking disbarment or other sanctions against him, were filed by various others, including Lawyers Defending American Democracy, whose complaint was signed by four former presidents of the State Bar of Texas and a former chair of the Texas Supreme Court grievance oversight committee.

108.

The Bar's filing said that Ken Paxton had made numerous specific "dishonest" representations in his attempt to challenge the election results.

109.

Ken Paxton banned Texas AG's Office employees from speaking at any State Bar events.