Ken Paxton weathered an extended checklist of scandals in the years main as much as his decisive victory Tuesday in the Republican primary runoff for Senate in Texas.
Through legal costs and allegations of infidelity, the Texas legal professional common has remained a power in state politics and maintained a detailed relationship with President Donald Trump, who gave him a crucial endorsement every week earlier than his hard-fought runoff towards Sen. John Cornyn.
Paxton has typically dismissed the allegations towards him as politically motivated, and plenty of of his supporters have been prepared to miss them as a result of they like how aggressively he pushes a conservative agenda as legal professional common.
The controversies are set to issue closely into the overall election. The Democratic nominee, James Talarico, responded to Paxton’s emergence because the GOP standard-bearer by labeling him “The Most Corrupt Politician in America.” The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee stated in an announcement that Paxton is “so corrupt that even his own party tried to remove him from office,” a reference to his 2023 impeachment by the state House.
Meanwhile, Republicans have signaled they hope to maintain the concentrate on Talarico and hound him on culture war issues. In his victory speech, Paxton stated Talarico is the “most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.”
Here’s a recap of Paxton’s controversies:
Several months after taking workplace as legal professional common in 2015, Paxton was indicted on felony securities fraud charges in Texas and was accused of deceptive traders in an organization years earlier. He would have confronted many years in jail if convicted.
The case dragged on for practically 9 years, ending in a pretrial agreement in March 2024 that required him to finish neighborhood service and pay restitution. Paxton didn’t need to enter a plea below the deal.
Along the way in which, Paxton additionally faced a civil case based on similar allegations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That case didn’t final practically as lengthy, and a decide threw it out in 2016.
In 2020, a gaggle of prime Paxton deputies reported him to the FBI, voicing concern that he was abusing his workplace to assist an Austin actual property investor and political donor, Nate Paul. Some of the Paxton staff resigned, however 4 have been fired and later sued Paxton below the Texas Whistleblower Act.
Paxton fought bitterly with the previous aides in courtroom and in public, branding them as “rogue” and disgruntled.
In 2025, a Travis County district courtroom decide agreed the previous aides have been improperly fired and awarded them $6.6 million. Paxton appealed towards the judgment however dropped his appeal just a few months later, after saying his Senate marketing campaign.
While the FBI investigated the whistleblower claims towards Paxton, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Paxton in the ultimate weeks of President Joe Biden’s time period, according to the Associated Press.
The claims by the whistleblowers have been central to the Texas House’s decision to impeach Paxton in 2023. The vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan and posed a dire risk to Paxton’s political profession as a result of the state Senate may take away him from workplace by convicting him.
But after a two-week trial, the Senate acquitted him of all 16 articles of impeachment accusing him of corruption and bribery. Only two members of the GOP majority voted in favor of convicting him of any of the articles.
Trump brazenly pressured senators to let Paxton off the hook and repeatedly attacked the Republican House speaker who oversaw the impeachment, Dade Phelan. Trump later focused Phelan in his major for reelection. Phelan narrowly won against a Trump-backed challenger however could not retain enough support among GOP colleagues to run for speaker once more in the subsequent legislative session.
One of the articles of impeachment accused Paxton of bribery as a result of he “benefited from Nate Paul’s employment of a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair.” During the trial, Paxton’s former chief of employees testified that Paxton confessed to an affair in 2018.
Paxton’s attorneys by no means immediately disputed the allegation however downplayed its relevance to the case.
“Imagine if we impeached everybody here in Austin that had had an affair,” Paxton lawyer Tony Buzbee stated throughout the trial. “We’d be impeaching for the next 100 years, wouldn’t we?”
Paxton confronted one other allegation of infidelity when his spouse, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year, citing “biblical grounds.” He generally denied her allegations in court however has principally sidestepped the accusation of infidelity in the marketing campaign.
When Cornyn’s marketing campaign began ramping up assaults over the alleged affair earlier than the first, Paxton responded by releasing an ad the place his daughter testified to his character.