Ken Paxton Busted for Coveting His Neighbor’s Ass?*
It took Angela Paxton only 38 years to discover something about her husband that crossed her sacred line-in-the-sand. Probably one of those “thou shalt nots.” Maybe more than one.
The Texas legislature passed a law mandating that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed in every public-school classroom beginning the 2025–2026 school year. If only that law had been in place when Texas State Senator Angela Paxton’s husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), was a little boy, maybe he wouldn’t have been so prone to bear false witness. Maybe he wouldn’t have unjustly relieved others of their Mammon. Maybe he wouldn’t have provided unhallowed favors in exchange for filthy lucre. Maybe he wouldn’t have coveted his neighbor’s handmaiden. And maybe he wouldn’t have transgressed the Seventh Commandment with her.
What does any of this have to do with the 2026 election? Key Texas seats are in play. Trump, “terrified of a repeat of the 2018 midterms that opened the door to two impeachments against him, has zeroed in on even more extreme gerrymandering to limit Democrats’ midterms gains. . . . Trump has reportedly been leaning on [Texas Governor] Abbott to rejigger the state’s 38 congressional districts to help protect the slim Republican majority in the House ahead of the 2026 midterms.” Greg Abbott is making a mockery of the Voting Rights Act (Hayes Brown, MSNBC, July 11, 2025).
Trump and his party likewise do not want to lose any seats in the Senate currently held by the GOP. In his fourth term, Texas U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R) is up for reelection in 2026. Ken Paxton, Texas’ Attorney General (R), plans to primary him from the right, and it’s looking more and more like he has just the qualifications Texas voters are looking for.[i]
Paxton, a manifestly dishonest, thoroughly corrupt, inhumane Christian nationalist who is closely allied with Trump, is polling significantly better than Cornyn. (I’m not criticizing Texas any more than I would my own state which elected Mike Lee.) Texas State Senator Angela Paxton (R), wife of the Texas attorney general for the past 38 years, recently discovered something about her husband that is anathema to her religious beliefs — whatever they are. She filed for divorce, citing the Bible as grounds. How will her exodus from the marriage impact the 2026 election? See What’s Going On With Ken Paxton’s Divorce? (Olivia Craighead, The Cut, New York Magazine, July 11, 2025).
It only improves Paxton’s chances in the primary, in my view. Other than Trump himself, Paxton may be the most Trump-like candidate to throw his hat into any political ring. Paxton is the perpetually indicted, unfaithful, and, after yet another corruption scandal, recently impeached chief law enforcement officer for the State of Texas. We know impeachment proceedings, at least of late, are largely political theatre that do little, if anything, to advance the public interest and have no bearing on whether the underlying conduct is criminal. In Paxton’s case, as in Trump’s, it appears to have been.
The articles of impeachment against Paxton alleged he accepted bribes, disregarded official duties, and misapplied public resources to help a friend and political donor. It gets better.
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick — who isn’t up for reelection until 2026 — received $3 million in campaign support from a pro-Paxton political action committee campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment. Patrick presided over the impeachment trial and the Texas senate predictably acquitted Paxton.
The articles of impeachment were based primarily on allegations lodged with state and federal investigators by whistleblowers who worked with Paxton. Four of Paxton’s top deputies sued him for retaliation in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act after he fired them.
The whistleblowers alleged that Paxton engaged “in a series of ‘intense and bizarre’ actions” to help a political donor and friend — Austin-based real estate developer Nate Paul. Paxton helped him obtain protected documents from state and federal investigations into Paul’s businesses. Paxton also, allegedly, directed his office to intervene in a lawsuit between Paul and a charity, and pushed through a legal opinion to help Paul avoid foreclosure on certain properties, among other official misdeeds, according to the complaint.
In exchange for Paxton’s assistance, “Paul paid for all or part of a major renovation of a home Paxton owns in Austin. Paul also helped Paxton keep an extramarital affair quiet by employing the woman Paxton had been seeing, the lawsuit said, adding that the attorney general may also have been motivated by a $25,000 contribution Paul made to Paxton’s campaign in 2018.”
Does anyone seriously question that if Paxton’s mistress became pregnant, he would provide her an all-expense paid trip to a state where reproductive healthcare, including abortions, remains legal? Could that be what anti-abortion advocate Angela Paxton discovered?
It’s not like she didn’t know about the affair or his mistress, having sat through her husband’s impeachment trial as a Texas state senator. In fact, she was such a devoted wife and public servant — and beneficiary of his alleged high crimes and misdemeanors — she refused to recuse herself from the senate trial. She was instrumental in helping her husband evade service. How Angela Paxton Could Help Decide the Fate of Her Embattled Husband, Ken (J. David Goodman, The New York Times, May 31, 2023). The Texas Senate ultimately barred her from voting on her husband’s impeachment.
Paxton entered a contingent settlement with the whistleblowers for a $3.3 million payout which the Texas legislature had not approved. Legislators had little appetite for using taxpayer money to fund Paxton’s misdeeds. The whistleblower lawsuit against Paxton was briefly paused during the impeachment then went back on track, and the whistleblowers moved the court to compel Paxton and his aides to sit for depositions. Is there any doubt that if Paxton was forced to testify he would invoke his right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer the key questions?
Earlier this year, a judge awarded $6.6 million to the four former senior aides whom Paxton had fired in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act after reporting the AG to the FBI, according to the judge. Attorneys for the whistleblowers issued a joint statement: “To avoid answering questions under oath about his corruption, Ken Paxton surrendered to the whistleblowers in the trial court and consented to judgment.” “It should shock all Texans that their chief law enforcement officer, Ken Paxton, admitted to violating the law, but that is exactly what happened in this case.” Paxton blamed the former speaker of the Texas House “who led the effort to impeach him.”
“We will appeal this bogus ruling,” Paxton said. On July 3, 2025, Paxton dropped the appeal with the expectation that the Texas legislature will appropriate the funds to pay the $6.6 million judgment against Paxton for his adjudicated violations of the law.
Felony securities fraud charges referenced in Paxton’s articles of impeachment were pending since 2015, shortly after he took office as Texas attorney general. Those charges also went away. See Ken Paxton agrees to community service, paying restitution to avoid trial in securities fraud case (Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune, March 26, 2026). The charges arose from work in 2011 in which he allegedly solicited investors in a company without disclosing information the investors should have known before he separated them from their money. The articles of impeachment accused Paxton of “obstruction of justice by acting to delay the criminal cases with legal challenges and because a Paxton donor pursued legal action that limited pay to prosecutors in the case, causing further delays ‘to Paxton’s advantage.’”
Paxton was also under intense scrutiny by the Texas Bar Association for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as the conduct underlying the impeachment proceedings. After the 2020 presidential election in which his candidate lost — and not by a close margin in the popular or the electoral vote — and scores of failed lawsuits in state and federal courts, Paxton, out of fealty to Trump and personal ambition, and in an egregious betrayal of public trust, the rule of law, and oaths of office, filed a bogus complaint in the United States Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election. The complaint advanced the Big Lie, made material misrepresentations of fact, withheld information from the High Court, sought to mislead the High Court, and otherwise lacked a factual or legal basis.
Paxton’s winning streak continued:
“The Texas Supreme Court on Friday [January 17, 2025] dismissed the State Bar of Texas’ lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, extending a cascade of legal and political wins for the once-embattled Republican leader. . . .
“The state bar had sought to sanction Paxton, which could have carried a punishment ranging from a private reprimand to disbarment. Lawyers from the bar — which regulates law licenses in Texas — have argued that Paxton, in falsely claiming to have uncovered major evidence of election wrongdoing, forced the battleground states “to expend time, money, and resources to respond to the misrepresentations and false statements.
“The dismissal ends a case that dates back to May 2022. It is Paxton’s second personal legal victory within the last year: In March, prosecutors dropped long-running felony securities fraud charges against Paxton under an agreement that required the attorney general to perform 100 hours of community service and take 15 hours of legal ethics courses. Paxton also agreed to pay around $271,000 in restitution to those he was accused of defrauding more than a decade ago when he allegedly solicited investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that the firm was paying him to promote its stock. [Paxton did not have to admit wrongdoing.]
“And while Paxton has remained under federal investigation for the same corruption allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, that investigation is now in the hands of a Justice Department run by the administration of Paxton’s stalwart political ally, President Donald Trump. The newly inaugurated president has nominated one of Paxton’s former top aides, Aaron Reitz, to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy.”
Texas Supreme Court dismisses state bar’s lawsuit against Ken Paxton for challenging 2020 presidential election (Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune, Jan. 23, 2025, Updated: Feb. 14, 2025) (emphasis added).
It’s hard to imagine a more suitable, or worthy, candidate to challenge Senator Cornyn from the right. While not a perfect clone of Trump, he’s close enough.
Oh, and the Democrats would rather run against Paxton than Cornyn in the general election.
Who will Trump endorse?
*My brother the talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner His second novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel twice and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece.
[i] Paxton’s extensive history of corruption, inhumanity, bigotry, lawlessness, and infidelity is no secret. He’s a right-wing conservative who embraces and exudes white Christian nationalist ideology. He of course opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, federal supremacy, federal regulations, environmental cleanup efforts, climate change investigations of oil companies, labor rights, LGTBQ+ rights, gun safety legislation, redrawing gerrymandered districts, common sense voting rights, and what he characterized as “anti-Christian discrimination in Texas schools,” while objecting to Muslim students’ use of an empty school room for multiple activities. I have spilled no shortage of ink on Paxton. Texas A.G. Ken Paxton Now Leads The Pack As Most Cruel and Inhumane (December 10, 2023); Ken Paxton Takes His Texas Size Brand of Hate and Christian Nationalism On the Road (February 25, 2024); Courts Are onto Texas AG Ken Paxton’s ‘Radical Anti-Free Speech’ Agenda (April 14, 2024).