Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office is withdrawing as counsel for acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s office in a lawsuit, claiming he jeopardized the defense in a case that alleges religious discrimination in the new school voucher program.

In a letter sent to the comptroller’s office on Thursday, Paxton repeatedly admonished Hancock for “political selfishness” amid several accusations he made against the attorney general in a letter sent to Paxton’s office Tuesday. Hancock’s letter, obtained by Texas Bullpen, criticized Paxton’s legal strategy in a case centering on whether Islamic schools can receive funds through the state’s new school voucher program. Paxton claimed Thursday that Hancock’s letter had been leaked to the media, risked waiving attorney-client privilege and included statements not included in sworn declarations to the court in the lawsuit.

After Hancock’s letter was shared online on Tuesday, Paxton unleashed a fiery social media tirade, calling Hancock an “incompetent loser” and “embarrassment” to the position of the state’s chief financial officer. He also called for Gov. Greg Abbott to remove Hancock from office and replace him with the GOP nominee for comptroller, Don Huffines. Abbott did not respond to a request for comment. 

Hancock, a former state senator, was appointed by Abbott in June, after Glenn Hegar left to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. 

Paxton’s beef with Hancock goes back years. Hancock was one of two Republican state senators to vote to impeach Paxton on some of the charges levied by the House in 2023. 

“He failed to take me down during impeachment, and his career is over,” Paxton posted on social media Tuesday night. “It’s time for him to be fired.” 

Hancock, who oversees the voucher program, has pushed to exclude schools with ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, which Abbott has declared a terrorist organization. CAIR has sued, rejecting any ties to terrorist organizations and saying the label is defamatory and false. 

Paxton released a non-binding legal opinion in January saying Hancock has the authority to block certain schools from participating in the program if they are “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries.”

Four Muslim parents and three Islamic private school providers sued over the exclusion in two separate suits, noting that hundreds of non-Islamic schools had been accepted without issue. Paxton’s letter indicated his office would withdraw as counsel from one case with the three schools and three parents as plaintiffs. A federal judge sided with them in an initial ruling, ordering the state to extend the voucher application deadline and consider the schools’ request to join the program.

Hancock said in the letter that Paxton’s office had not made clear to the judge that there were connections between one of the schools, Houston Quran Academy, and the Muslim Brotherhood. 

“The court cannot protect against threats it does not know exist,” Hancock wrote. 

Houston Quran Academy did not respond to a request for comment. 

In his letter on Tuesday, Hancock also broadly criticized Paxton for not using all the tools at his disposal to go after groups he says are affiliated with Muslim terrorist groups. He called for Paxton to sue Houston Quran Academy to revoke their corporate charter, and said Paxton’s office had not yet taken steps to implement a new state law preventing “foreign adversaries” from buying land in Texas. 

“Texas cannot be asleep at the wheel as radical Islam spreads,” Hancock wrote. 

Hancock’s office declined to comment. 

Paxton rejected the claims in his letter on Thursday, arguing he has repeatedly defended Senate Bill 17, a law passed in 2025 that bans people tied to the governments of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran from purchasing land in the state. 

This is the second time in a week that a fellow Republican has questioned Paxton’s legal strategy in high-profile litigation. In a recent legal filing, Abbott noted to the Texas Supreme Court that Paxton had rushed a lawsuit against a Harris County program offering legal aid for undocumented immigrants. 

“This emergency — whether artificial or sincere — predictably compressed review before the Fifteenth Court,” Abbott’s lawyers wrote. “Any shortcomings in the lower court’s decision here can easily be attributed to the challenges posed by expedited review.”

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