Ken Paxton’s legal woes are lifting, clearing a path for a likely Senate run

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Attorney General Ken Paxton has spent much of his career, which has taken him to the heights of Republican politics, trailed by a raft of criminal and civil accusations.

But in the final days of the Biden administration, The Associated Press reported Thursday, the Justice Department defused the most serious legal threat he faced — a federal criminal probe into allegations of corruption — by declining to prosecute and effectively ending the investigation.

With the investigation over, Paxton has nearly cleared his crowded slate of career-threatening legal battles, just as he gears up for a likely 2026 primary run against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

“The end of this investigation is both politically and personally a huge boon for Ken Paxton,” said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “Paxton can point to that and say, ‘You see, even under a Democratic administration, they didn’t feel that there was anything there that merited moving forward.’”

The development extends a multi-year string of legal victories vindicating the once-embattled Republican. It underscores Paxton’s durability through all manner of political, personal and legal troubles, and helps burnish his reputation among the right wing of his party as a fighter who, like President Donald Trump, has defied numerous efforts by his detractors to take him down.

“That doesn’t mean that there was never anything there, or that it was entirely politically motivated,” Wilson said. “But it does bolster his claims that, even if there was smoke here, there was definitely no fire.”

Paxton’s attorney Dan Cogdell said he learned of the outcome from the AP because the Justice Department never notified him of its decision not to prosecute. But there was little concern that the case would continue under the Trump administration’s Justice Department, given Paxton’s close alliance with the president.

“The fact that they declined prosecution is not a surprise,” Cogdell said. “I don’t really think they ever had a case to begin with.”

In January, the Texas Supreme Court tossed the State Bar of Texas’ lawsuit against Paxton over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden.

Prosecutors last year dropped felony securities fraud charges against Paxton just three weeks before he was set to face trial, after he agreed to perform 100 hours of community service, take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay $271,000 in restitution to those he was accused of defrauding more than a decade ago. The deal ended a nearly nine-year-old felony case that had dogged Paxton since his early days in office.

And when the state Legislature sought to impeach him for the same allegations of corruption that spurred the federal investigation, the Texas Senate acquitted him of 16 charges of bribery, abuse of office and obstruction that more than 70% of his own party had supported in the House.

Paxton’s last outstanding legal battle is a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him by four of the former senior aides who reported him to the FBI, who allege that he fired them improperly after they spoke out. The Texas Supreme Court said in November that Paxton would not have to sit for a deposition in the lawsuit — another win for the attorney general, who has managed to avoid testifying about the corruption allegations through the civil lawsuit, his impeachment trial and the federal investigation.

On Thursday, Paxton referenced the end of the investigation to take a swing at Cornyn, who has been critical of Paxton’s legal controversies and steadfast in his bid for reelection.

“This former TX Supreme Court Justice and TX Attorney General ignored the rule of law, the Constitution, and innocent until proven guilty while standing with the corrupt Biden DOJ cheering on the bogus witch hunts against both me and President Trump,” Paxton posted on social media in reference to Cornyn, adding, “Care to comment now, John?”

In response to an attempt by Paxton to tag Cornyn as insufficiently conservative and supportive of Trump, Cornyn had said, “Hard to run from prison, Ken.”

The likely match-up could prove to be Cornyn’s toughest primary battle yet as Texas Republican primary voters lurch toward the right and his popularity among GOP voters drops from 2020 highs.

The end of the federal investigation, especially if decided under the Biden administration as the AP reported, helps de-fang the legal and personal controversies trailing Paxton as he looks to challenge Cornyn for Senate, and ties him closer to Trump, who similarly claims to have been unfairly and politically targeted by the justice system, Wilson said.

“It really sets up those parallels to Trump that will play very well among the Republican primary electorate,” Wilson said. “Paxton is a political survivor. People have written his obituary a couple of times, and he has really forged this loyal base among the grassroots activists in the Republican Party.”

Among Republican-identifying voters, according to polling by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Cornyn has a 49% approval rating, compared to Paxton’s 62% approval rating. Texas’ other senator, Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has an approval rating of 78% among Republicans.

“There’s no question that over the last year and a half, he’s had almost an uninterrupted streak of legal successes,” Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist and the former Travis County GOP chair, said of Paxton.

Still, Cornyn, who has trounced past challengers, is a prodigious fundraiser and wields widespread influence as a senior senator. He has also worked to smooth over his relationship with the hard-right in Texas and tout his work in the Senate in support of Trump.

On Thursday, Cornyn declined to comment on Paxton or the Justice Department deciding not to prosecute, saying he was “not going to have any comments about that until he’s an announced candidate. Then I’ll have a lot to say.”

His campaign, meanwhile, sent an endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council that was announced Thursday in response to a request for comment.

Cruz declined to comment.

“Fundamentally, he’s a fighter, and he’s also a risk-taker,” Mackowiak said of how Paxton looked with the end of the federal investigation. “What I think this whole episode taught him is, trust your instincts and never quit. The psychology of that has to be very powerful for him in approaching this race.”

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University, State Bar of Texas and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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