AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday he is settling the whistleblower lawsuit filed by four former top officials in his office so he can put it behind him.
Those four men, Mark Penley, James Brickman, David Maxwell, and Ryan Vassar and four other top officials in the Attorney General's office went to the FBI in the fall of 2020, making allegations of bribery and abuse of office against Paxton.
He fired them and called them "rogue employees."
The settlement agreement filed at the Texas Supreme Court Friday shows Paxton is paying the four men $3.3 million.
The agreement says, "Whereas, Attorney General Ken Paxton accepts that plaintiffs acted in a manner that they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as 'rogue employees."
The Attorney General's press release that calls them "rogue employees" will also be removed from the agency's website according to court documents.
David Coale is an attorney in Dallas who's not affiliated with this case. "This involves whistleblower allegations at the upper echelons of Texas state government. These are the people, the closest advisors the State Attorney General had."
In a statement to CBS 11, one of the plaintiffs, Penley, a former Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice said, "I am glad that the OAG has recognized the legitimacy of our claims and the value of the damages we sustained.. As a group, our actions were not motivated by politics in any respect."
Penley's attorney Don Tittle...
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