Ken Paxton’s controversies take center stage in his Texas Senate matchup with James Talarico

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — Ken Paxton weathered a long list of scandals in the years leading up to his decisive victory Tuesday in the Republican primary runoff for Senate in Texas.

Through criminal charges and allegations of infidelity, the Texas attorney general has remained a force in state politics and maintained a close relationship with President Donald Trump, who gave him a crucial endorsement a week before his hard-fought runoff against Sen. John Cornyn.

Paxton has often dismissed the allegations against him as politically motivated, and many of his supporters have been willing to overlook them because they like how aggressively he pushes a conservative agenda as attorney general.

The controversies are set to factor heavily into the general election. The Democratic nominee, James Talarico, responded to Paxton’s emergence as the GOP standard-bearer by labeling him “The Most Corrupt Politician in America.” The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement that Paxton is “so corrupt that even his own party tried to remove him from office,” a reference to his 2023 impeachment by the state House.

Meanwhile, Republicans have signaled they hope to keep the focus on Talarico and hound him on culture war issues. In his victory speech, Paxton said Talarico is the “most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.”

Here’s a recap of Paxton’s controversies:

Securities fraud charges

Several months after taking office as attorney general in 2015, Paxton was indicted on felony securities fraud charges in Texas and was accused of misleading investors in a company years earlier. He would have faced decades in prison if convicted.

The case dragged on for nearly nine years, ending in a pretrial agreement in March 2024 that required him to complete community service and pay restitution. Paxton did not have to enter a plea under the deal.

Along the way, Paxton also faced a civil case based on similar allegations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That case did not last nearly as long, and a judge threw it out in 2016.

Whistleblower lawsuit

In 2020, a group of top Paxton deputies reported him to the FBI, voicing concern that he was abusing his office to help an Austin real estate investor and political donor, Nate Paul. Some of the Paxton employees resigned, but four were fired and later sued Paxton under the Texas Whistleblower Act.

Paxton fought bitterly with the former aides in court and in public, branding them as “rogue” and disgruntled.

In 2025, a Travis County district court judge agreed the former aides were improperly fired and awarded them $6.6 million. Paxton appealed against the judgment but dropped his appeal a few months later, after announcing his Senate campaign.

While the FBI investigated the whistleblower claims against Paxton, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Paxton in the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s term, according to the Associated Press.

Impeachment in Texas legislature

The claims by the whistleblowers were central to the Texas House’s decision to impeach Paxton in 2023. The vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan and posed a dire threat to Paxton’s political career because the state Senate could remove him from office by convicting him.

But after a two-week trial, the Senate acquitted him of all 16 articles of impeachment accusing him of corruption and bribery. Only two members of the GOP majority voted in favor of convicting him of any of the articles.

Trump openly pressured senators to let Paxton off the hook and repeatedly attacked the Republican House speaker who oversaw the impeachment, Dade Phelan. Trump later targeted Phelan in his primary for reelection. Phelan narrowly won against a Trump-backed challenger but could not retain enough support among GOP colleagues to run for speaker again in the next legislative session.

Allegations of infidelity

One of the articles of impeachment accused Paxton of bribery because he “benefited from Nate Paul’s employment of a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair.” During the trial, Paxton’s former chief of staff testified that Paxton confessed to an affair in 2018.

Paxton’s lawyers never directly disputed the allegation but downplayed its relevance to the case.

“Imagine if we impeached everybody here in Austin that had had an affair,” Paxton lawyer Tony Buzbee said during the trial. “We’d be impeaching for the next 100 years, wouldn’t we?”

Paxton faced another allegation of infidelity when his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year, citing “biblical grounds.” He generally denied her allegations in court but has mostly sidestepped the accusation of infidelity in the campaign.

When Cornyn’s campaign started ramping up attacks over the alleged affair before the primary, Paxton responded by releasing an ad where his daughter testified to his character.

The-CNN-Wire
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