Nate Paul serves his contempt sentence

Noted for the record, and for a couple of newsy bits at the end.

Austin real estate investor Nate Paul reported to Travis County jail on Thursday night for a 10-day sentence for contempt of court, avoiding a possible media frenzy by showing up earlier than his 10 a.m. Friday deadline.

If Paul had refused to show up, a Travis County judge had authorized law enforcement to apprehend him.

The developer was at the center of the 2023 impeachment case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was accused of abusing the office to help Paul fight legal battles. Paxton denied wrongdoing and the state Senate acquitted the Republican attorney general, but a federal investigation into the allegations was still underway as recently as August, according to Bloomberg.

Travis County state district Judge Jan Soifer, a Democrat, first found Paul in contempt of court in March 2023 after he made false statements in a civil case before her. Since then, Paul has so far appealed the charge unsuccessfully to every state appellate court, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. That includes a habeas corpus case that is still pending in which he argues his due process rights were violated because he did not receive a sentencing hearing, though U.S. District Judge David Ezra had already denied Paul’s motions twice within the last week.

[…]

Paxton and Paul are reportedly still facing an FBI investigation that was launched in late 2020 after eight of Paxton’s top aides accused their boss of abusing the power of his office and taking bribes from Paul, a friend and campaign donor. Bloomberg reported that a grand jury was meeting in August to hear testimony. No charges have been filed. It’s unclear what will happen to the federal probe after President-elect Donald Trump, a longtime Paxton ally, takes office.

Paxton continues to face a whistleblower case filed by his former aides. He has said he is no longer contesting the facts of the suit so it should be brought to a close. But the whistleblowers say the case should still move forward and accuse Paxton of trying to avoid deposition. On Friday, they filed a motion to expedite before the Texas Supreme Court, lamenting that it has been four years without any discovery because of  Paxton’s appeals.

Paul is separately set to go to trial in February on federal charges of wire fraud and lying to mortgage lending businesses and credit unions.

See here for the previous update, which was in March and which serves as another reminder of the glacial pace in some of these cases. Delay sure can be a good strategy if you have the means for it.

I think it’s very clear what will happen to the federal probe of Ken Paxton on January 20 of next year, and we would be kidding ourselves to think otherwise. What could happen before then is either for charges to be brought if that’s a viable thing, or for a report to be issued outlining the case and the evidence if it’s not. That would normally be very unusual, but if the reason why a case isn’t brought is because of lack of time and/or interference or other exogenous obstacles, I think it’s very much in the public’s interest to hear about it. Failing all of that, I’ll settle for a good tell-all interview/article/book/podcast done by and with the people who worked on that case. The only unacceptable outcome is for this to vanish entirely into the ether.

(You might be thinking “Aren’t you assuming that there was a case to be brought against Ken Paxton?”, and my answer to that is yes, I sure am. But you know what, if a reasonable professional prosecutor would have declined to pursue a case for lack of evidence or sufficient exculpatory evidence, then let us know about that, too. I’d rather know the truth, even a truth I don’t like, than to be forever left in the dark.)

Beyond that, there’s still the State Bar case against Paxton, and that whistleblower lawsuit. I wish those guys all the best. I also hope that no matter how their case concludes, they understand the need for them to join the fight to keep Ken Paxton from being elected to anything in 2026. If they don’t, they truly are chumps.

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