Ken Paxton Won’t Stop Wasting Taxpayer Money

What’s a couple million bucks to a guy like Ken Paxton?

Evidently, not much, especially when it's not his money.

We feel confident in this conclusion because, two years ago, the Texas attorney general had the opportunity to convince state legislators he needed $3.3 million to pay a settlement to four former employees who accused our state’s judicial leader of firing them in retaliation for their reporting him to the FBI. The accusations centered mainly on an alleged bribery scheme that Paxton benefited from and then covered up, and the fired employees accused Paxton of violating a Texas statute that protects public employees who report violations of the law.

That 2023 settlement agreement was contingent on Paxton securing the money from the Legislature and the state’s general fund, i.e., your money. It was pretty evident that Paxton was exploiting court procedures to keep the case from going to discovery — the legal process when text messages and emails would come into play — by pausing a secondary case in the Texas Supreme Court while he attempted to get the money from the Lege.

Paxton ultimately failed to secure the settlement funds, although it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The Dallas Morning News reported at the time that multiple legislators, while on the House floor taking up a resolution to impeach the AG, received phone calls from Paxton who “threatened them with political consequences” if they didn’t throw him a bone.

Instead of coughing up the cash, legislators went the impeachment route. Paxton was brought up on corruption and bribery charges, and testimony from the four employees involved in the settlement was crucial to the case. Nonetheless, the Senate voted to acquit Paxton. The trial cost taxpayers $5.1 million, and Paxton was dropped back off at square one on the whole whistleblower settlement thing.

In early 2024, Paxton signaled he wanted all of this “wasteful” hubbub to come to an end by saying he was prepared to accept a judgment in the case and would not contest the facts. That judgment didn’t come until April of this year, and what do you know? Paxton immediately vowed to appeal it.

You know what they say about (alleged) fraudsters: they never go back on their word.

Travis County District Judge Catherine Mauzy ordered the Office of the Attorney General to pay the four plaintiffs involved in the case between $1.1 and $2.1 million each for wages lost, compensation for emotional pain, attorney’s fees and other costs. The OAG would also be stuck with attorney’s fees in the case of an appeal.

Paxton’s appeal lasted a whopping two months before, last Wednesday, the AG announced his surrender. In a statement, attorneys for the plaintiffs accused Paxton of doing so “to avoid answering questions under oath about his corruption.” The total payout in the whistleblower case will now amount to $6.6 million, double the amount from 2023 that would've completed the settlement then.

For those keeping score, that means taxpayers have been dunned with a bill $8.4 million higher than what it would’ve been two years ago, when you add in the cost of the impeachment trial, all because of one big, bruised ego. And this time, it really is the Legislature that will be stuck with figuring out how to pay that $6.6 million bill.

If Paxton hadn’t spent the last two months resisting the judgment he promised to accept, legislators could have figured out how to come up with that money during the legislative session. Now, though, they’ll have to do so either in the upcoming special session or during the next legislative session in 2027. Paxton could be jetted off to Washington, D.C., to represent our state in the U.S. Senate by then.

The state of Texas, meanwhile, will be stuck with an additional $1.2 million in interest if the settlement goes unpaid until then.

Thanks, Ken.