Attorney General Ken Paxton testified in front of a House Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday to ask lawmakers to budget more money for the attorney general's office, including $3.3 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit four of his former top aides filed against the agency.
Assistant Attorney General Chris Hilton told the subcommittee the agency has spent nearly $600,000 on the whistleblower case — money from the office’s general budget that largely covered payments for private attorneys — and argued that paying the settlement agreement is in the state's financial interest.
“The $3.3 million would essentially be our cost of defense. Even if we were to go to trial, litigate it and completely win on the merits, at the end of the day that money is going to get spent regardless,” Hilton said. “That's if we win at trial. If we lose at trial, the damages exposure would obviously be higher than that. And again, because it is pending litigation, I don't want to get into too many specifics, but I feel comfortable saying that it would be much higher than what we've agreed to enter into here … if we were to litigate and lose.”
Hilton argued the cost to taxpayers could exceed $3.3 million if the lawsuit were to continue, in part because the case is procedurally in the early stages, although “it has been pending for a while.” He said the discovery process has yet to begin and that undertaking is lengthy, intensive and costly.
“It strikes me that we’re kind of between the...
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