Attorney General Ken Paxton and four of his former top deputies who said he improperly fired them after they accused him of crimes have reached a tentative agreement to end a whistleblower lawsuit that would pay those employees $3.3 million.
In a filing on Friday, attorneys for Paxton and the whistleblowers asked the Texas Supreme Court to further defer consideration of the whistleblower case until the two sides can finalize the tentative agreement. Once the deal is finalized and payment by the attorney general’s office is approved, the two sides will move to end the case, the filing said.
In a joint statement attorneys for three of the whistleblowers — Blake Brickman, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — said: “Our clients are honorable men who have spent more than two years fighting for what is right. We believe the terms of the settlement speak for themselves.”
Don Tittle, a lawyer for the other whistleblower Mark Penley, said in a statement that the case was really important for “how government should function and what we expect out of our public officials.”
“We think this settlement goes a long way toward restoring the good reputations of the men who brought this suit against the attorney general’s office. They should never have been fired in the first place. [T]his settlement confirms that in a big way,” Tittle said.
Paxton, a Republican who won a third four-year term in November, said in a statement that he agreed to the settlement to save taxpayer money and start his...
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