Ken Paxton Property Snafu is Latest Example of AG’s Loose Understanding of the Law

The Associated Press recently broke news that, at this point, seems to be a more frequent occurrence than not. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is in hot water. You’re probably as shocked as we were.

The issue at hand deals with property law, a concept that you’d hope Texas’ leading legal mind would have a decent grasp of.

According to the AP, Paxton and his wife, Angela Paxton, a state Senator who filed for divorce from the AG “on biblical grounds” just two weeks ago, have three different properties claimed as their primary residence. One of the homes is a $1.5 million estate in McKinney. The other two homes are outside of Austin.

By declaring all three properties as the couple’s primary residence, the Paxtons were likely able to lock in low interest rates, which would have saved them tens of thousands of dollars over the years of property ownership. It is a federal and state crime to knowingly make false statements on mortgage documents, which means the Paxtons may have violated the law in their property dealings.

The New York Times reports that mortgage fraud is one of the more difficult types of fraud to prove, and the issue tends to be settled outside of court.

The attorney general is familiar with this territory. See here our 2023 report that AG Paxton failed to disclose a rental property in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, on the annual transparency report that elected officials are required to submit to the state.

The Paxtons purchased the Copper Canyon Lodge for $1.6 million in 2022 — five bedrooms, a hot tub, you know the drill. According to KUT, a blind trust managed by Paxton was listed as the owner of rental properties in Hawaii, Florida and Utah. Interestingly enough, none of the properties were properly disclosed to the state, either.

Law = afoul, we think.

When all of this came to light two years ago, Paxton vowed to work with the Texas Ethics Commission to determine what information he needed to claim on future transparency reports. Did that happen? At least in the following five months, it didn’t, KUT reported. It’s impossible to say if Paxton ever actually followed through on the pledge, because the commission’s advisory opinions are kept confidential.

Clearly, though, Paxton wasn’t too worried about the whole deal. Based on online listings, The New York Times believes that the two Austin properties owned by the Paxtons are also rental properties. Not only does this mean that Paxton must be raking it in through his Airbnb side hustle, but the Times speculates that by failing to classify the Austin homes as investment properties, the Paxtons were likely able to secure better financing options.

Moreover, the Times found that the Paxtons have received homestead exemptions on both the McKinney and one Austin property. The exemption forms require a resident to claim a property as their primary residence, meaning a household should only qualify for one exemption claim. Homestead exemptions can help reduce a person’s property taxes by lowering the percentage of property value that can be collected.

To put it bluntly: Ken Paxton, god love him, is likely benefiting from the type of mortgage and tax fraud his very office would investigate and potentially prosecute. And yet, he’ll still probably beat John Cornyn in the Republican Senatorial primary.

At this point, he’s scandal immune.