In a stunning decision announced just weeks before he was scheduled to face a jury, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has reached a deal with prosecutors to have the felony securities fraud charges against him dropped and his trial canceled.
The terms of the deal were announced on Tuesday morning during a court hearing in Houston. Paxton must complete 100 hours of community service, take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay around $300,000 in restitution to his accusers.
If he fulfills the terms, his charges will be dismissed. If not, a new trial date will be set and Paxton will face a jury.
Paxton is not admitting guilt by agreeing to the deal. He said just one word in court Tuesday: "Yes," an acknowledgement that he was aware of and agreed to the terms.
The announcement marks a major win for Paxton, 61. He can now put behind him the legal cloud that has darkened the entirety of his tenure as attorney general.
Indicted just months after he took office in 2015, Paxton was accused of failing to tell investors in a McKinney technology firm that he had a financial interest in the company before getting them to buy in. He also did not register with the state before soliciting clients for a friend’s investment firm, for which he paid a fine in 2014. Paxton was charged with one third-degree and two first-degree felonies.
This deal keeps him in office — and out of state prison. If Paxton had been tried and convicted, he would have faced decades behind bars and tens of thousands of dollars in fines, as well as removal from his job as the state’s top lawyer.
The announcement Tuesday, made less than a month before the April 15 trial, also raises questions about why the prosecutors continued to pursue the case for so long only to make a deal.
Now, after nearly nine years, the saga comes to a close without a trial. It ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
That the case took this long to reach a trial date is unusual. Some delays were due to acts of God, others manmade, from hurricanes to a protracted fight over the prosecutors’ pay rate.
The case the prosecutors adamantly pursued against Paxton shook up political and legal circles in Texas, making ripples far beyond its limited scope. It spun off local fights and federal suits. It even ushered in new state laws.
Paxton weathered a half dozen other scandals while this case was playing out. So far, he’s beaten them all. The most serious — allegations of official corruption that resulted in his impeachment last year — ended in his acquittal.
Despite his legal troubles, or perhaps in part because of them, Paxton has remained popular with Texas voters. Maintaining his innocence in the face of what he’s called partisan attacks, he has instead focused on pursuing an agenda that is unabashedly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant rights.
In November 2022, he won re-election to a third term by a nearly 10-point margin.
Putting his securities fraud case behind him is likely to further embolden Paxton. A close ally of Donald Trump, Paxton could use the win as a stringboard to higher state or federal office.
But Paxton hasn’t completely cleared his legal troubles. He is still under FBI investigation for the same corruption allegations that led to his impeachment, and he is being sued for wrongful termination by the ex-staff members who first raised these accusations.
Paxton also faces a lawsuit filed by a disciplinary committee of the State Bar of Texas for his role in challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.
This is a breaking news story. It will be updated with more details.
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