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On a late-September Wednesday in 2020, several of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s highest-ranking deputies walked into the FBI’s Austin office to make an explosive accusation: Their boss, one of the state’s most influential Republicans, appeared to be dirty.
Paxton, they said, had personally directed his powerful agency to take unusual and probably illegal actions to help a friend and campaign donor, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, who was under federal investigation for fraud.
Paxton’s interest in Paul’s plight was bizarre, obsessive and so far beyond normal operations at the attorney general’s office that the agency’s top officials struggled to convey their concerns during the hourslong meeting with two FBI agents.
In addition to obstruction of justice, harassment and abuse of office, they added, Paxton had apparently accepted bribes from Paul.
Back in the office the next day, seven of the agency’s top-ranking officials sent Paxton a text message saying they had reported him to the authorities and asking him to meet them in an eighth-floor conference room in two hours “to discuss this matter.”
Paxton did not respond.
It was Oct. 1, 2020. By mid-November, three of the officials had resigned, and the other four had been fired. An eighth official, David Maxwell, who ran the law enforcement division, was on vacation and unavailable to meet with...
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