Still a crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.
Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.
Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.
He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.
The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.
“It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton’s part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the nonpartisan good-government group Public Citizen.
If Paxton wins, an incomplete picture of his finances could prevent watchdogs from evaluating his conflicts of interest as a senator, Holman and others said.
The apparent omissions are part of a pattern for Paxton. Over three terms as attorney general, he has withheld financial information that could explain how he became a multimillionaire and had the resources to purchase more than a dozen properties in five states. He began including many of these on his state disclosures only after the Texas Ethics Commission closed a loophole in 2024 that Paxton had cited to leave them off. Most were acquired while Paxton earned a government salary of $153,750.
In the new federal disclosure, filed in August after Paxton received a three-month extension, he reported a net worth between $1 million and $27 million. That is a significantly higher range than the negative $1.9 million to $11.1 million net worth he reported a year ago, before he had secured the Republican nomination but after he had declared his candidacy for federal office.
The spike was driven not by Paxton’s acquisition of more assets but because the reported value on several of his properties soared.
Paxton’s report omitted listing as assets seven properties worth about $5.2 million collectively, including the Utah condos for which he did not disclose mortgages. He co-owns all of his known real estate holdings with his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, property records show. The eight he reported are held by their blind trust, which is managed by a family friend.
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Before being elected to the state Legislature in 2002, Paxton worked at a law firm in the Dallas area and was a corporate attorney for JCPenney. His state financial disclosure for 2001 listed assets totaling no more than $170,000, a ProPublica and Tribune analysis found.
By 2015, his household net worth had grown to $5.4 million, according to financial records lawmakers subpoenaed in 2023 after impeaching Paxton on charges that he took bribes in exchange for helping an Austin real estate investor.
Read the rest, there’s a lot more. We’ve discussed the mysteries of Ken Paxton’s sudden wealth before. He’s largely managed to keep his secrets, but it’s hard to come up with an explanation for them that isn’t sketchy at the very least. Maybe someday we’ll find out. I’d love for an empowered IRS to audit the hell out of him, but there’s enough here for a real investigation regardless. We just need to have an investigator that actually wants to enforce the law at the helm. Electing James Talarico to the Senate would be a good first step towards that.
Re: “He co-owns all of his known real estate holdings with his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton …”
Well, so all these assets would have to be allocated in the property-division section in the final divorce decree, normally preceded by a sworn inventory and appraisal detailing all assets submitted by each party. To the extent there are separately-owned properties/assets, they would have to be characterized as such. The decree would (or at least should) provide a comprehensive financial picture.
Perhaps that’s the reason the divorce is not yet final. It could even be mutual.
If Ken Paxton loses the Senate race, there won’t be as much interest in the enrichment issue. If he wins, the complete financial condition data would come too late to make any difference in the outcome.
Which is not to rule out the possibility that full disclosure will be avoided in the divorce decree. Undisclosed or accidentally omitted assets could be divided or awarded to one party in a post-divorce proceeding.