When the media reported that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had flown to Utah with his wife in the middle of the state’s power crisis last week, Paxton called it a business trip that had been planned in advance.
Now a group of whistleblowers from his office who sparked an FBI investigation of Paxton are casting doubt on Paxton’s explanation.
In court records filed Friday, the whistleblowers say the attorney general had told a Travis County judge he could not appear at a hearing in their case because he was scheduled to be in Austin on Feb. 18 for a House appropriations committee hearing. The committee later canceled the hearing because of the state’s weather disaster.
Instead, the spokesman for Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said Paxton met with Reyes on the afternoon of Feb. 19 and again on Feb. 21, as first reported by The Dallas Morning News. Paxton has not said when he arrived in Utah; he returned on Feb. 23.
“This begs the question: did Paxton pre-plan his Utah trip with plans to skip his legislative testimony, the hearing before this Court, or both?” the whistleblowers’ attorneys wrote in a filing Friday. “Or was Paxton simply lying to Texans about his trip to Utah having been pre-planned?”
Paxton’s attorney and his office and campaign spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
In the whistleblower suit, four former aides of Paxton claim that he fired them in retaliation for reporting him to law enforcement on allegations that he committed bribery and abuse of office by helping his friend and campaign donor Nate Paul. Paxton has denied those accusations.
In an unrelated case, Paxton has been under criminal indictment since 2015 for felony securities fraud, but the long-delayed case has yet to go to trial. He’s denied wrongdoing in that case as well.
taylor.goldenstein@chron.com
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Did Attorney General Ken Paxton really pre-plan that Utah trip he took as Texas froze? - Houston Chronicle
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