What to know about Ken Paxton and his scandal-ridden tenure as Texas attorney general

Texas Republican voters overwhelming backed Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, in Tuesday’s primary runoff, setting him up to face Democratic nominee James Talarico in a fight for the US Senate this November.

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The conservative has served at the state level for over three decadesand is a close ally of President Trump, who endorsed Paxton over the incumbent and veteran GOP Senator John Cornyn. But his years in public office have been marked by several scandals.

Paxton has faced criminal charges, been accused of using his political office to benefit a donor, and embroiled in a messy, public divorce— baggage that provideseasy ammo for Democrats hoping to flip Cornyn’s seat in their bid to retake the Senate.

Here’s a breakdown of the controversies surrounding Paxton.

In 2015, just a few months into Paxton’s tenure as Texas attorney general, a grand jury indicted him on felony charges of duping investors in a tech company. Paxton pleaded not guilty to the charges, which accused him of recruiting more than $840,000 from investors while not disclosing that the startup was paying him to do so.

Paxton’s attorneys attacked the criminal charges asa political smear campaign, and the case ultimately ended in a pretrial agreement in 2024. Paxton was ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution and complete 100 hours of community service and 15 hours of legal ethics education.

Regulators at the US Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil lawsuit against Paxton in 2017 in connection to the fraud accusations, but that suit was dismissed by a federal judge.

In September 2020, seven top employees in Paxton’s office reported him to federal investigators, alleging he had abused his position as Texas attorney general to assist an Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who also donated to his campaign.

Some of those employees resigned, but four of those who were fired filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Paxton in November 2020, a few days after Trump lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

That lawsuit unleashed a slew of newaccusations against Paxton, including that he routinely used burner phones and was benefiting from Paul employing a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

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A judge awarded more than $6 million combined to the four whistleblowers last April, finding they acted “in good faith” when they reported Paxton. The Associated Press reported that same month that the Justice Department, during the final weeks of the Biden administration, had quietly decided to not prosecute Paxton.

Paxton became one of Trump’s top allies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when Trump maintained, without evidence, that his election loss to Biden was fraudulent.

In December 2020, Paxton sued several battleground states alleging election fraud, which was thrown out by the US Supreme Court. The State Bar of Texas later sued Paxton in 2022, accusing him of making false statements and sought to sanction him as an attorney.

The bar association eventually dropped its efforts to discipline Paxton in January 2025, after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that one of Paxton’s former top deputies couldn’t be sanctioned over similar accusations tied to the fallout from the 2020 election.

Paxton was impeached in the Republican-led Texas State House in May 2023 on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust. Impeachment claims focused on accusations laid out in the whistleblower lawsuit, and led to a two week trial in the Texas State Senate. Paxton was ultimately acquitted by state senators in September that same year.

Paxton’s Senate trial, however, further laid out details of his alleged affair. According to investigators, Paxton had an affair with a state Senate aide that ended in 2019 after his wife, Texas State Senator Angela Paxton, learned of it. The affair restarted in 2020.

Angela Paxton sat in on the impeachment trial of her husband but was not permitted to vote or participate in any deliberations. In July 2025, she posted to her X account that she had filed for divorce from Ken Paxton after 38 years of marriage “on biblical grounds.”

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Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.