Ken Paxton
- 2008 — Undisclosed WatchGuard investment. Paxton had to amend a financial disclosure after failing to report a lucrative investment in WatchGuard Video, a company that did business with the Texas government.
- 2013 — The $1,000 Montblanc pen. Courthouse security video showed Paxton picking up another lawyer’s expensive pen from the security checkpoint and leaving with it. The owner eventually got it back; no criminal charge was filed.
- 2014 — Repeated financial-disclosure problems. Paxton amended nine personal financial statements after failing to disclose service on nonprofit boards and other business relationships.
- 2014 — Broke Texas securities law. The Texas State Securities Board found that Paxton had solicited investment clients without being properly registered. The board reprimanded him and fined him $1,000. Investigators found unregistered solicitation activity in 2004, 2005, and 2012.
- 2015 — Felony securities-fraud indictment. A Collin County grand jury indicted the newly elected attorney general on charges arising from his recruitment of investors into Servergy. Prosecutors alleged he failed to disclose that the company was compensating him. Paxton denied wrongdoing.
- 2015–16 — $100,000 legal-defense donation from an executive whose company his office was investigating. Paxton accepted the money while the donor’s medical-imaging company was under investigation by the attorney general’s office for Medicaid fraud. Paxton’s office said he was not personally handling the investigation.
- Another legal-defense donor and a strange hiring episode. An Arizona retiree gave Paxton’s defense fund $50,000. Paxton later hired the donor’s son to a senior AG position; the employee was eventually fired after showing child pornography during a meeting.
- 2020 — Eight senior aides reported Paxton to the FBI. His own Republican appointees accused him of abusing the attorney general’s office to help wealthy donor and real-estate developer Nate Paul.
- Nate Paul favors. The aides alleged that Paxton intervened in legal matters, pushed unusual legal opinions, and arranged for an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s enemies. Paxton denied corruptly helping Paul.
- The affair. Paxton acknowledged to staff that he had had an extramarital affair. Nate Paul later said he employed the woman involved at Paxton’s recommendation, making the affair part of the corruption allegations.
- Alleged home renovations. House investigators alleged that Nate Paul paid for expensive renovations to Paxton’s home while Paxton was using his office to benefit Paul. This became part of the impeachment bribery case. Paxton was ultimately acquitted by the Texas Senate.
- Whistleblower retaliation. Four senior aides who reported Paxton were fired and sued under the Texas Whistleblower Act. In 2025, a judge ruled that Paxton’s office had violated the law, finding the whistleblowers proved their case by a preponderance of the evidence.
- The taxpayers get the bill. Paxton originally agreed to settle that whistleblower lawsuit for $3.3 million in taxpayer money. His request that the Legislature pay it helped trigger the Texas House investigation that led to impeachment.
- 2023 — Impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House. The House voted 121–23 to impeach Paxton on allegations including bribery, abuse of office, and obstruction. Sixty House Republicans voted for impeachment.
- 2023 — Acquitted by the Texas Senate. The Senate tried 16 impeachment articles and acquitted Paxton on all of them. Four other articles involving his securities case and financial disclosures were not tried.
- 2020–2025 — Federal corruption investigation. The FBI/Justice Department investigated whether Paxton improperly helped Nate Paul. The Justice Department ultimately declined to prosecute him. That is important: the federal investigation ended without criminal charges.
- 2020 election challenge. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn election results in four states won by Joe Biden. The Supreme Court rejected the case for lack of standing.
- State Bar misconduct case. The State Bar sought to discipline Paxton over the 2020 election lawsuit, alleging that he made false or misleading claims to the Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ended the disciplinary effort in 2025 on separation-of-powers grounds, not by deciding whether every factual assertion Paxton made was true.
- 2023–24 — More property-disclosure questions. Investigative reporting found Paxton and his blind trust owned about 10 properties from Hawaii to Florida, while his 2024 ethics filing disclosed only one. Paxton maintained the disclosure rules did not require him to list the others. The Texas Ethics Commission subsequently clarified that officials must disclose known blind-trust properties.
- 2024–25 — Securities case ends, but not with a simple exoneration. Paxton avoided trial through a pretrial-diversion agreement. He ultimately paid approximately $271,000 in restitution, performed more than 100 hours of community service, and completed 30 hours of ethics training. The three felony charges were then dismissed in June 2025 without a guilty plea or conviction.
- 2025 — $6.6 million whistleblower judgment. The court awarded four former deputies approximately $6.6 million after finding that Paxton’s office violated the Whistleblower Act. Paxton eventually dropped his appeal, leaving Texas taxpayers responsible for the judgment.
- 2025 — Angela Paxton files for divorce alleging adultery. After 38 years of marriage, state Sen. Angela Paxton filed for divorce, explicitly alleging adultery and publicly saying she was acting on “biblical grounds” after “recent discoveries.”
- 2025–26 — Questions about how Paxton became wealthy in public office. The Wall Street Journal reported that Paxton went from relatively modest assets when he entered state government to reporting about $5.5 million in net worth by 2018, excluding additional assets in a blind trust, and later received a previously undisclosed $2.2 million gain from his WatchGuard investment. The reporting raises ethics and disclosure questions; it does not itself establish that the wealth was illegally obtained.
- 2026 — Blind-trust questions deepen. Reporting based on previously private records raised questions about whether Paxton was actually insulated from knowledge of transactions occurring within a trust described as “blind.” His representatives have disputed suggestions of wrongdoing.
- 2026 — Secret deposition raises another lawyer-ethics question. The Wall Street Journal reported that in a previously undisclosed 2019 deposition, Paxton acknowledged giving communications from a former client to an attorney who was suing that former client, raising questions among legal experts about privilege and professional ethics.
