A lawyer for Ken Paxton’s wealth manager is asking a Collin County court to keep the attorney general’s sworn depositions from a years-old securities fraud dispute under seal, arguing that Democrat James Talarico’s U.S. Senate campaign has no legal standing to seek their release.

State Rep. Mitch Little, a Lewisville Republican who represents Charles Loper III in the case, also contended in a Sept. 21 filing that the court does not have jurisdiction over the campaign’s request and has never classified the deposition transcripts as “court records” subject to public access.

Talarico’s campaign asked the court in August to unseal the depositions, arguing they should never have been hidden and are of public interest, particularly as Paxton campaigns for U.S. Senate. The campaign repeated that argument in a Sept. 23 response to Little, a freshman lawmaker who defended Paxton at his 2023 impeachment trial.

“To keep these documents locked away — or to functionally hide them by delaying a decision on this matter — would make a mockery of the public’s ‘fundamental,’ ‘constitutionally guaranteed’ ‘right of access to judicial proceedings,’” Talarico’s campaign lawyers wrote.

The depositions mark exceedingly rare occasions in which Paxton has been forced to answer questions about his conduct under oath. He has avoided giving sworn testimony through numerous now-resolved legal and ethical scandals.

The background

The Talarico campaign’s original petition targets two depositions Paxton sat for in 2019 and 2022 as part of a legal clash that roped in Paxton, his financial adviser and his former business associates.

In 2015, Paxton was indicted for securities fraud. His former business associates, former state Rep. Byron Cook and Joel Hochberg, accused him of misleading them into investing in a McKinney technology company without disclosing he was making a commission.

The following year, Loper — a North Texas businessman who oversees Paxton’s blind trust — accused an energy company called Unity Resources of defrauding him. In the lawsuit, Loper alleged that Cook and Hochberg, who were investors in Unity, launched a scheme to profit off a Unity investment fund. A month later, as attorney general, Paxton subpoenaed Unity for all documents related to Cook.

In response, Cook and Hochberg accused Loper and Paxton of conspiring to tarnish their reputations because they were set to serve as key witnesses in Paxton’s separate securities fraud case.

Paxton previously served as a lawyer and board member for Unity and invested in the company. In the 2019 deposition, Paxton acknowledged providing records from Unity — his former client — to Little, who represented Loper in the lawsuit against Unity, according to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this year. Doing so may have amounted to a violation of attorney-client privilege, the Journal reported.

The depositions remained hidden while the Collin County district judge presiding over the case, Republican Cynthia Wheless, delayed ruling on whether to seal the case for more than four years. The case was eventually settled in 2023.

Prosecutors dropped the separate securities fraud charges against Paxton before trial in 2024, under a deal that required him to pay restitution and take legal ethics courses.

What Talarico’s campaign says

In their initial filing, lawyers for Talarico’s campaign argued that the depositions were “of immense public importance given Paxton’s candidacy in a sharply competitive election for U.S. Senate.”

“The right of Texans to see these depositions matters more than ever,” the lawyers wrote. “Existing public reporting suggests that Paxton’s testimony raises substantial ethical questions. Texans have the right to know what Paxton said under oath in these proceedings and see the whole story before they go to the polls in November.”

That part of their argument hinged largely on the Journal’s reporting that, in the 2019 deposition, Paxton acknowledged passing along records from a former legal client.

Because public reporting suggests the depositions “directly implicate Paxton’s fitness for office,” Talarico’s campaign lawyers argued, the public should have access to them.

They cited state law that entitles public access to discovery — the evidence and information exchanged before trial, which includes depositions — if the materials are about “matters that have a probable adverse effect upon” either “the administration of public office, or the operation of government.”

What Paxton’s side says

A Paxton campaign spokesperson previously called the Journal’s reporting on Paxton’s 2019 deposition “blatant lies” and a violation of a court order. Little told the Journal there was no conflict of interest and said the records Paxton shared were not privileged.

Little, in his Sept. 21 response to Talarico’s request, contended that the deposition transcripts had been submitted for the court’s private review, “solely for the purposes of obtaining a

ruling on the discoverability of such documents,” and thus fall outside the scope of “court records” that are open to the public.

The court would first need to decide whether the transcripts should be classified as “court records,” he said.

“Because such determination has not been made, the Court cannot grant relief even if jurisdiction exists,” Little wrote, adding that Talarico’s campaign could not “get around this threshold requirement by alleging the public should have access to unfiled documents based on vague public reporting.”

In an August statement, Paxton campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy said Talarico’s effort to unseal the depositions was “nothing more than a desperate attempt to hide his own extremism.”

“James Talarico is once again proving how desperate he is to try and hide his radical record from Texans,” Cercy said. She did not address the substance of the Democrat’s argument in court.