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"“It was not a mutiny”: Senior staff had no choice but to report Ken Paxton to the FBI, whistleblower testifies" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Ryan Bangert did not want to report his boss, Attorney General Ken Paxton, to the FBI.
A bona fide ultraconservative and former Paxton donor, the onetime deputy first assistant attorney general believed in Paxton and the office, calling it a national "beacon" of the conservative legal movement.
But, as Bangert detailed in crisp, riveting testimony during Thursday’s impeachment trial proceedings, he reluctantly concluded that Paxton’s repeated and escalating use of the office to help his friend and political donor Nate Paul left him and other senior staff with no option but to report the behavior to the FBI.
“It was not a mutiny,” he said, rejecting prior characterizations by Paxton’s lawyers that his top staffers were trying to stage a coup in the attorney general’s office.
Instead, Bangert said, he and other whistleblowers concluded that Paxton was misusing the agency’s power to help one private individual, Paul — in violation of the agency’s responsibility to work on the public’s behalf — by instructing top deputies to draft legal opinions that benefited Paul and hiring an outside attorney to investigate his business rivals.
“We were protecting the interests of...
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