Still a crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, have agreed to unseal their divorce case after a group of media organizations requested the records be made public.
According to an order signed by the Paxtons’ lawyers, the couple has agreed that the court can “restore full public access to the case file.” The judge presiding over the case must sign off on the order for it to become official. A hearing is scheduled for Friday morning.
State Sen. Angela Paxton filed for divorce in July alleging adultery. Soon after, she asked for the court record to be sealed. A previous judge handling the case agreed and put all of the records under seal. Ken Paxton supported the decision, saying the press was attempting to unfairly invade his personal life.
Eight media organizations, including The Texas Newsroom, and nonpartisan nonprofit the Campaign for Accountability, filed requests to unseal the records. The media group argued Paxton’s divorce records should be public because he is an elected official running for office who has faced repeated allegations of corruption.
That’s an interesting and unexpected turnaround, since he was defending their secrecy less than a month before. The hearing at which the judge who was supposed to rule on whether the records could stay sealed or not approved the now agreed-upon unsealing didn’t provide any clues about how we got here.
Tyler Bexley, a coalition attorney, said the decision benefits the press and the public, calling it “a victory not only for our media clients and the First Amendment, but also for voters in Texas.”
He said the groups would continue pursuing “the truth for the American people.”
During Friday’s brief court hearing in Collin County, Laura Roach, one of two attorneys representing Ken Paxton, told visiting Judge Robert “Bob” Brotherton Jr. that her client had “no problem unsealing the file and [believed] in complete transparency.”
Neither Ken nor Angela Paxton attended the hearing, which lasted only a few minutes. Roach and Bexley were the only attorneys in attendance. No representatives for Angela Paxton appeared on her behalf.
[…]
The sudden shift in the case came late Thursday, Bexley said, after one of Ken Paxton’s attorneys reached out to inform him the couple was ending its fight to keep the files closed.
The move came just hours before the two sides were set to argue before a judge in Collin County District Court as to whether the records should remain sealed.
“We just got reached out [to] out of the blue,” Bexley said outside the courtroom Friday. “We were notified late yesterday that they had obtained all parties’ consent and were ready to move forward.”
Brotherton signed the agreed order allowing the records to be released at the end of the hearing and the documents were made available to the public less than two hours later.
Bexley said everything in the file will be released except certain personal identifying information such as Social Security numbers and home addresses, which the attorney said is standard.
Hell if I know what happened. We’ll see now, probably in the near future, what all the fuss was about. We must all be prepared to accept that there may well be nothing of real interest in these files, that the Paxtons just didn’t want to release them regardless of their content even if it was totally ordinary. I expect we’ll find out soon. The Trib and the Associated Press have more.
UPDATE: That was quick:
Newly released files in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s divorce lay out a sharper picture of the breakup between Paxton and his wife, Angela, who blames him for the marriage’s collapse and seeks temporary control of key assets and a “disproportionate” share of the couple’s estate.
In the records a judge unsealed Friday, Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate, denied her allegations that he committed adultery and said Angela should “take nothing.”
Newly released files in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s divorce lay out a sharper picture of the breakup between Paxton and his wife, Angela, who blames him for the marriage’s collapse and seeks temporary control of key assets and a “disproportionate” share of the couple’s estate.
In the records a judge unsealed Friday, Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate, denied her allegations that he committed adultery and said Angela should “take nothing.”
[…]
In her motion for a divorce, she said their 38-year marriage had become “insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities.”
She argued that if the couple does not come to an agreement on dividing property, she should get a larger cut of their assets, because Ken Paxton is at fault and earns more.
The senator also asked the court to give her exclusive use of their home, a 2021 Chevy Silverado, electronic devices and more while the divorce case is pending.
She said her husband should be ordered to pay her attorney’s fees, temporary financial support, their mortgage and expenses on their home, taxes and insurance.
In a one-page response, Ken Paxton denied his wife’s allegations and asked that she “take nothing” and that he be “granted all relief.”
That…seems to be it. I have no idea why they fought to keep this a secret, or why they suddenly decided to stop fighting. But at least now we know what they were fighting about, which is to say basically nothing.
This is not a successful treasure hunt, but – excuse the vernacular – a shit show.
A clearer picture? – Duh. Angela’s divorce petition was obtained and publicized online before the sealing order, so there is nothing new there. Ditto for the general denial answer by Ken Paxton. There is nothing remarkable about either. It’s verbiage from a document assembly system.
General denial is the way you answer a lawsuit in Texas state courts, and “take nothing” is the general-purpose request in the defendant’s “prayer” unless you filed a counterclaim, in which case you have to set forth what you want. Not here. The absence of a counterclaim may be noteworthy against the backdrop of divorce litigation generally, but it’s old news as well.
As Kuff suspects, there is nothing out of the ordinary here. Much fuss over not much. Sure, Angela Paxton is trying to monetize her husband’s alleged sexual interactions with a third party (or several), but we already knew that too. As a matter of public policy, the Texas Family Code allows for that by way of disprop. split of community property based on adultery. Though it’s not at all clear what’ s biblical about it. Like many other financially successful soon-to-be ex husbands, Ken Paxton is just being taken to the cleaners. The more dirt, the more thorough the cleaning promises to be. But the leveraging of the dirty laundry doesn’t have to take place in the open. That’s what mediation and out-of-court negotiating is for.
As for the remainder of the treasure trough of secret documents, the vast majority aren’t even filings by the parties. About 15 items relate to the appeal of “Member of the Public” to the Dallas Court of Appeal and the Texas Supreme Court, including duplicates of what is already posted on the appellate docket sheets for De Mino v. Paxton (No. 05-25-00981-CV in the Dallas COA and 25-0975 in SCOTX).
In the way of juicy details, there is nothing there. As of now, this is a bummer. There are only the two pleadings (original petition by Angela and general-denial answer by Ken), a Rule 11 agreement on mediation and money for the attorneys), and a joint opposition to the judge actually having to supply reasons (findings of facts and conclusions of law) for sealing the file in the first place, which also relates to the appeal. No rich pickings.
The media completely missed what should be the story and the focus of public scrutiny: The petty corruption at the retail level. How the rules are bent and circumvented by family law attorneys for the benefit of well-heeled clients.
NO AGREED SEALING ORDERS
According to the published policy of the 468th District Court (and others in the same county), parties can’t just agree among themselves to seal their divorce file. Here is what it says:
“Restrictions on Sealing Cases. Parties may not agree to seal cases. Sealing requires Court approval after an evidentiary hearing. Cases will not be sealed before final trial. If you are requesting to seal a case, please contact the court coordinator at 468@co.collin.tx.us to schedule the hearing, which will be held after the final judgment is signed. *Adoptions are an exception.*”
That’s the rule for the plebes, but not for the Paxtons.
After the first judge (Jill Renfro Willis) recused herself, the Paxton attorneys went to the regional administrative judge (Ray Wheless), and got their agreed order sealing the file in violation of the rules and policies that apply to everybody else.
It just goes to show that the rule of law is an illusion.
To be sure, the sealing order has now been set aside, but what did it take: A coalition of numerous media organizations with the ability to pay thousands of dollars to several attorneys to “correct” an abuse of judicial power that should never have happened in the first place.
We now know for sure that the Regional Administrative Judge is responsible because his signature is on the sealing order, along with the signatures of both parties’ attorneys.
Ray Wheeless is a former Collin District Court Judge who should have known better. His signature also appears on a local policy document that expressly says that rule 76a (the sealing rule) must be followed or else a sealing order is VOID. See here:
https://topics.txcourts.gov/LocalRulesPublic/PreviewAttachment/551
Inter alia, rule 76a requires public notice of hearing, evidence, and findings of good cause for sealing.
The scandal-hungry media totally missed it.
And since Regional Admin Judge Ray Wheless is an Abbott-appointee, there is – under the prevailing regime – no realistic recourse. Both the Dallas Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court are GOP-controlled.