AUSTIN — Whistleblower text messages deriding agency leadership as “lazy” and stupid took center stage at the end of the first week of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment trial.
Under aggressive questioning from defense attorney Mitch Little, ex-agency general counsel Ryan Vassar acknowledged that a group of whistleblowers wisecracked about their boss in the days after reporting Paxton to the FBI for alleged corruption.
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Little, reading the texts aloud, sought to paint the group as insubordinate employees who reveled in the tumultuous aftermath of their report. Vassar said the texts were meant as jokes among colleagues.
“The man is a pathological liar,” James “Blake” Brickman, then a deputy attorney general, wrote in a text thread in the month after the report, according to Little.
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Brickman was referring to Paxton’s urging that the agency halt foreclosure sales during COVID-19, a decision the attorney general said would help home and business owners. It’s unclear if he was referring to Paxton or someone else.
“All about the people,” ex-Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice Mark Penley quipped back in the texts. David Maxwell, who’d served as the agency’s head of law enforcement at the agency, responded, “All about himself.”
In later texts, the group derided the agency’s new...
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