Texas will pay $6.6 million to four former top deputies to Attorney General Ken Paxton who say they were fired after reporting their boss to the FBI. This yearslong legal saga reached its conclusion on Wednesday, when Paxton dropped his appeal of the April judgment.
The Legislature will still have to appropriate the funds to pay the judgment, either during the upcoming special session or during the next regular session. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement the judgment will accrue $1.2 million in interest if it goes unpaid until 2027.
“To avoid answering questions under oath about his corruption, Ken Paxton surrendered to the whistleblowers in the trial court and consented to judgment,” TJ Turner and Tom Nesbitt, lawyers for two of the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement. “But he appealed the judgment anyway, preventing the legislature from funding it during the recent session.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the agency said Paxton “closed the case,” but reiterated his position that it was a “bogus judgement in support of baseless claims by rogue employees.”
Paxton is currently running for U.S. Senate, challenging incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary.
The case originated in 2020, when eight top employees at the Office of the Attorney General went to the FBI to report allegations of corruption by Paxton. They accused Paxton of abusing his office to do favors for Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, including hiring an outside lawyer to...
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