Ken Paxton's Corruption

Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate from Maine, has received a tremendous amount of negative publicity due to past actions. He has been criticized for old Reddit posts, for a tattoo that is linked to Nazis, for disrespectful treatment of women, and, in one case, potentially violent interactions with a former romantic partner. Platner has said that most of this behavior, which he now rejects himself, occurred when he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his combat service while serving as a Marine. More recently, it was disclosed that Platner sent sexually explicit texts to several women soon after getting married. Clearly, Platner is a candidate with a lot of baggage. His opponents are correct to raise Platner's past as a campaign issue, and reporters are well within their duties to report on such issues. However, the attention given to Platner's checkered past is another reminder that Democrats and Republicans don't exist on a level playing field. Democrats themselves, other voters, and the media seem to hold Democrats and Republicans to much different standards. It is fair to say that, were Platner a Republican with the same background, it would hardly be an issue. The best way to demonstrate this is to simply compare Platner to another Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, the current Republican nominee for Senate from Texas.

For this post, I am going to rely heavily on an article published by The Barbed Wire website, a news-oriented site based in and focused on Texas. Titled, "Ken Paxton Is No Stranger to Controversy. Here’s a Timeline of Nearly 20 Years of Scandals & Headlines," the article catalogs a number of controversies in which Paxton has been involved. I will not have room in this post to include all of them, because there are simply too many.

During his career, Paxton has committed several serious transgressions. But others have been simply ridiculous and show Paxton's extremely base character. For instance, in 2013, Paxton was shown on security video to have stolen a $1,000 Montblanc pen mistakenly left in a metal detector tray by another lawyer at a courthouse. When confronted by a deputy sheriff, Paxton returned the pen. The theft occurred just before Paxton won election to serve as the Attorney General of Texas.

In the summer of 2015, Paxton was indicted on federal charges of defrauding investors. Paxton had encouraged friends to invest in a company without telling them that he would receive a commission. Paxton fraudulently misrepresented himself as an investor. Paxton spent nine years using legal maneuvers to delay his prosecution, being reelected as attorney general twice during that time. In 2024, Paxton agreed to settle the case by paying about $300,000 in restitution and performing community service.

In 2020, attorneys who worked in Paxton's attorney general office reported him to the FBI for bribery and abuse of office. The allegations dealt with Paxton's relationship with a friend and political donor, Nate Paul, a wealth real estate developer. Paul would later say in a deposition that Paxton had asked him to hire a woman with whom Paxton had an affair. Paul was later hit with felony wire fraud charges. The allegations spurred an impeachment trial by Texas's legislature.

Paxton fired the attorneys who had reported him to the FBI, triggering a whistleblower lawsuit against him. Paxton fought the lawsuit, which went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. Paxton eventually agreed to pay the fired employees $3.3 million and issue an apology. This did not immediately settle the lawsuit, however, because the payment was expected to come out of state funds and lawmakers were reluctant to put taxpayers on the hook for Paxton's transgressions. Then, in 2025, another judge ruled against Paxton and ordered a payout of $6.6 million to the fired attorneys. However, the state of Texas still ended up picking up the tab.

After the 2020 election in which Joe Biden defeated cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, Paxton attempted to sue the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin over allegations of election fraud. No evidence of such fraud has ever been presented, and numerous courts have ruled against such allegations. Paxton's case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that he did not have standing in the case. The State Bar of Texas then sued Paxton for professional misconduct and attempted to sanction him for his actions during the election fraud lawsuit. However, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against the Bar.

In 2023, as a result of the FBI investigation into the case involving Nate Paul and the following whistleblower lawsuit, the Texas House of Representatives, dominated by Republicans, issued 20 articles of impeachment against Paxton. The House then voted 121-33 to impeach Paxton. This led to a trial in the Texas Senate, which required two-thirds of senators to vote to remove Paxton from office. However, none of the charges received the necessary number of votes, with only two Republicans voting to convict.

According to The Texas Tribune:

The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s Austin home and helped him carry out ­and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide.

Paxton's wife, Angela Paxton, was a state Senator at the time. As the Tribune reports:

Required to attend but barred from deliberating and voting because of her relationship with the accused, she listened stone-faced during the trial as multiple witnesses testified about the attorney general’s infidelity, exposing as a lie his 2018 declaration to his wife and senior aides that the affair was permanently over.

In July of last year, Angela Paxton, having put up with years of infidelity from her husband, finally had enough. She filed for divorce "on biblical grounds" and said that "in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage." She did not clarify the "biblical grounds" or the "recent discoveries." The divorce trial was supposed to be held this month, but the two reached a settlement last week.

Paxton has apparently engaged in multiple frauds related to properties that he owns. Before their divorce, the Paxtons were claiming three different homes as their primary residence for mortgage purposes. Remember that this is the same allegation for which the Trump administration has attempted to criminally prosecute New York Attorney General Leticia James and to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve board. According to The Barbed Wire:

Paxton was also simultaneously collecting tax breaks on two different homes in 2018, via a homestead exemption that is only meant for a single, primary residence, according to reports from the AP.

Other properties the Paxtons own, including a million-dollar “luxury cabin” in Oklahoma and a home in College Station, have been listed on rental sites, in violation of each residence’s mortgage, according to AP’s investigation.

Yesterday, Dan Cogdell, a lawyer who represented Paxton during his impeachment trial, announced that he is endorsing Paxton's Senate opponent, Democrat James Talarico, claiming that Paxton "has lost sight of his core mission." Last year, Cogdell made the maximum personal contribution legally allowed to Paxton’s Senate campaign. So this conversion appears to be recent.

The New York Times has published multiple news articles and opinion columns about Platner's controversies. The newspaper dispatched two top political reporters to spend at least two months researching Platner's past girlfriends. Therefore, you might expect voluminous accounts of Paxton's moral and legal issues. If so, you would be wrong. The newspaper has given only cursory attention to Paxton and his corruption. Paxton has received brief mentions in running live coverage of elections and a short "5 Things to Know About Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas" article. But nothing like the coverage given to Platner.

However, I am not sure that the New York Times can be faulted. It is the job of a newspaper to report on what is newsworthy. For some time, it has not been newsworthy that Republicans are corrupt cheaters. Indeed, that is exactly the profile of the Republican in the White House. Like Paxton, Trump has engaged in extramarital affairs. Trump even has the same mortgage issue of having multiple primary residences. No wonder that Trump endorsed Paxton before Paxton's primary with Republican Senator John Cornyn. Trump clearly sees himself in Paxton. Corruption and cheating are not a problem for Republican voters.

The problem for Democrats is that their natural instinct to choose the higher ground is becoming self-defeating. Democrats are famously guilty of bringing knives to gunfights. But in the case of Platner, many Democrats prefer not to even show up at the fight. Their attitude seems to be that since their candidate is not perfect, they should simply give up. This does not appear to be the case in Maine, where voters are going to the polls today. We will see how the voting goes, but with little opposition in the Democratic primary, Platner is expected to win big. However, it will be interesting to see the size of any protest vote that might materialize. The more important question is whether Democrats outside Maine will respect the will of Maine voters or will continue to hold Platner to a standard to which Republicans would never consider holding their candidates. Democrats will likely have to choose between self-satisfaction with their own purity or the opportunity for Democrats to take control of the Senate. Ironically, by opposing Platner on moral grounds, they may potentially further empower Paxton by putting him in the majority if he is able to defeat Talarico. That would be an even greater moral travesty.