Abortion Paxton supports bans on access to abortion. He gave his employees a paid vacation day to celebrate the
overturning of Roe v. Wade. Paxton has sought to block rules from the US Health and Human Services Department that would require hospitals to provide abortions to women when the procedure is necessary to save their lives. After Texas judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled that Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus had the
trisomy 18 condition, qualified for an abortion under the medical exemption provision in Texas law, Paxton in December 2023 called the judge an "activist" that was "not medically qualified" to make this ruling, threatened to prosecute doctors if they performed an abortion on Cox, and stated that Texas hospitals that allowed Cox's abortion could "be liable for negligent credentialing" the abortion-performing doctor. Paxton appealed Gamble's ruling to the Texas Supreme Court, arguing that "how long the child is expected to live" was irrelevant to the case, and that Cox had not proven that the pregnancy threatened her life. The Supreme Court paused Gamble's ruling, leading to Cox leaving Texas to obtain an abortion; later the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Cox, stating that even though her pregnancy was "extremely complicated", even "serious" pregnancy difficulties do not meet Texas' medical exemption provision. Judge
James Wesley Hendrix blocked the guidance which was appealed to the supreme court in
Moyle v. United States. Paxton sued to block the 2024 Privacy Rule which prohibits disclosing health information to investigate the act of seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care. Paxton sued a New York doctor for providing "abortion-inducing drugs" to a Texas resident. Paxton joined 14 other AG's "urging Congress to consider taking action preempting
abortion shield laws".
Alleged evasion of service of subpoena In 2022, Paxton was sued by Fund Texas Choice, a non-profit organization aiming to prevent Paxton from prosecuting people who assist Texans to receive out-of-state abortions. In September 2022, a
process server alleged in an affidavit for the court that when he attempted to serve a subpoena to Paxton at his home, he saw Paxton coming to the door but turning back; Paxton's wife answered the door saying Paxton was on the phone, with the process server stating that he had important legal documents for Paxton; Paxton left the house an hour later but ran back into the house when the process server called his name; minutes later Paxton ran out of the house and left in a truck driven by his wife, ignoring the process server stating his intentions. Paxton responded claiming that the process server "yelled unintelligibly, and charged toward me. I perceived this person to be a threat", while further stating that the process server "is lucky this situation did not escalate further or necessitate force".
Affordable Care Act Paxton initiated a lawsuit seeking to have the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) ruled unconstitutional in its entirety.
Animal welfare As Attorney General, Paxton joined an amicus brief at the US Supreme Court opposing
California Proposition 12. Proposition 12 regulates the sale in California of animal products from farms that do not meet particular
animal welfare standards: for example, farms that do not allow
confined animals enough space to turn around, lie down, stand up, and extend their limbs. The amicus brief argued that "California [was attempting] to usurp other States' authority to set their own animal husbandry policies."
Backpage.com On October 6, 2016, Paxton and then
California attorney general Kamala Harris announced that Texas authorities had raided the
Dallas headquarters of
Backpage.com and arrested CEO Carl Ferrer at the
George Bush Intercontinental Airport in
Houston on
felony charges of
pimping, pimping a
minor, and
conspiracy to commit pimping. In a press release, Harris denounced Backpage as "the world's largest online brothel". The California arrest warrant alleged that 99% of Backpage's revenue was directly attributable to
prostitution-related ads and that many of the ads involved victims of
sex trafficking, including children under the age of 18. The State of Texas was also considering a
money laundering charge pending its investigation. Arrest warrants were issued against former Backpage owners and founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin. Lacey and Larkin were charged with conspiracy to commit pimping.
Cannabis Paxton has sued six Texas cities to remove decriminalization measures adopted by citizens in those municipalities.
Capital punishment Paxton has supported executing
Robert Roberson.
Consumer protection According to
ProPublica, "Paxton has used
consumer protection law more than a dozen times to investigate a range of entities for activities like offering shelter to immigrants, providing health care to transgender teens or trying to foster a diverse workplace"
COVID-19 pandemic In 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Paxton threatened to file lawsuits against local governments unless they rescinded stay-at-home orders and rescinded rules regarding the use of face masks to combat the spread of coronavirus. The city of Austin encouraged restaurants to keep logs of contact information, so as to ensure
contact tracing in the event of an outbreak; Paxton described this as "Orwellian". Paxton sued the city of Austin again in December 2020 when the city implemented restrictions preventing indoor dining and drinking on New Years weekend amid surging COVID-19 cases. In March 2021, Paxton filed a lawsuit against Austin as well as Travis County, this time for the city and county continuing their local mask wearing requirements after Governor Abbott had signed an order ending the statewide
mask-wearing mandate.
Gerrymandering Paxton defended Texas in a federal lawsuit involving allegations that Texas's congressional districts were
gerrymandered. In 2017, a
three-judge panel of a U.S. federal court based in
San Antonio ruled that the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature drew congressional-district to discriminate against minority voters, and ordered the redrawing of
Texas's 35th and
27th congressional districts. Paxton appealed the ruling, contending that the previous maps were lawful, and vowed to "aggressively defend the maps on all fronts"; U.S. representative
Lloyd Doggett criticized the appeal as a "desperate, highly questionable Paxton-Abbott maneuver" coming "after yet another ruling against the state of Texas for intentional discrimination". Texas won on appeal when in a 5–4 decision the Supreme Court ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove that state Republicans acted in bad faith and engaged in intentional discrimination with respect to the 27th and 35th congressional districts.
Guaranteed income Paxton sued Harris County to block a
guaranteed income program.
Human trafficking Paxton created a human trafficking unit in the AG office in 2015. In 2019, he convinced Texas lawmakers to more than quadruple the human trafficking unit's annual funding. In 2020 the unit did not secure a single human trafficking conviction and only four in 2021, two of which resulted in deferred adjudications.
Immigration In 2018, Paxton falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants had committed over 600,000 crimes since 2011 in Texas.
PolitiFact said that it had debunked the numbers before, and that the numbers exceed the state's estimates by more than 400%. Paxton argued that the president should not be allowed to "unilaterally rewrite congressional laws and circumvent the people's representatives". In July 2017, Paxton led a group of Republican attorneys general and Idaho governor
Butch Otter in threatening the Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that had been put into place by President
Barack Obama, although never implemented in Texas because of legal action on behalf of the state. The other attorneys general who joined in making the threats to Trump included
Steve Marshall of Alabama,
Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas,
Lawrence Wasden of Idaho,
Derek Schmidt of Kansas,
Jeff Landry of Louisiana,
Doug Peterson of Nebraska,
Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and
Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.
Trump executive orders In 2017, Paxton voiced support for the application of
eminent domain to obtain
right-of-way along the
Rio Grande in Texas for construction of
the border wall advocated by President
Donald Trump as a means to curtail illegal immigration. Paxton said that private landowners must receive a fair price when property is taken for the pending construction. He said that the wall serves "a public purpose providing safety to people not only along the border, but to the entire nation. ... I want people to be treated fairly, so they shouldn't just have their land taken from them," but there must be just compensation. In 2017, Paxton joined thirteen other state attorneys general in filing a
friend-of-the-court briefs in defense of both Trump's
first and
second executive orders on travel and immigration primarily from majority-Muslim countries (informally referred to as the "Muslim ban"). In filings in the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the
U.S. Supreme Court, Paxton argued that the order—which places a 90-day ban on the issuance of visas to travel from six designated majority-Muslim countries, imposes a 120-day halt on the admission of refugees to the U.S., and caps annual refugee admissions to 50,000 people—is constitutionally and legally valid. In May 2017, Paxton filed a preemptive lawsuit designed to ascertain the constitutionality of the new Texas law imposing penalties on
sanctuary cities, known as SB 4, signed into law by Governor
Greg Abbott. The law imposes penalties on local officials who place restrictions on their police forces or other agencies' cooperation with immigration enforcement, and requires county jails to honor requests from
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold detainees suspected of being eligible for deportation. The suit asked the
United States District Court for the Western District of Texas to clarify whether the law is at odds with the
Fourth and
Fourteenth constitutional amendments or is not in conflict with some other federal law. Paxton said that the measure "is constitutional, lawful and a vital step in securing our borders". Among those opposed to the measure are the police chiefs and sheriffs of some of the largest jurisdictions in Texas. Critics call the ban legalization of discrimination against minorities, and suits against the legislation are expected to be filed. Although initially key aspects of the law were enjoined by the court, the
US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld nearly all of it on appeal, except for a provision that interfered with the
First Amendment right to freedom of expression on the subject by local officials. He sued to challenge a requirement that states set goals to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles, and also sued the Biden administration for classifying species as endangered claiming the administration was "Weaponizing Environmental Law". Paxton was also part of a joint lawsuit by 23 states to block the implementation of a methane emissions tax created under the
Inflation Reduction Act.
Challenge to the Clean Power Plan Paxton has mounted a legal challenge to the
Clean Power Plan, which is President Obama's "state-by-state effort to fight climate change by shifting away from coal power to cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable resources". Paxton has said that the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is trying to "force Texas to change how we regulate energy production" through an "unprecedented expansion of federal authority". He further asserts that the EPA lacks the statutory authority to write the state's policies.
ExxonMobil litigation In 2016, Paxton was one of eleven Republican state attorneys general who sided with ExxonMobil in the company's suit to block a
climate change probe by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Paxton and the other state AGs filed an
amicus curiae brief, contending that
Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey used her office to "tip the scales on a public policy debate, undermine the first Amendment and abuse the office's subpoena power". Healey had launched a probe of
ExxonMobil's historical marketing and sale of fossil fuel products, requiring the company to produce forty years worth of documents regarding fossil fuel products and securities. Healey said the documents would prove that ExxonMobil "knew about the
risks of climate change decades ago and fraudulently concealed that knowledge from the public". The amicus brief supported Exxon Mobil's motion for a preliminary injunction.
Labor lawsuits Paxton sued the Obama administration over a 2016 rule by the
United States Department of Labor which would have made five million additional workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule would have meant workers earning up to an annual salary of $47,500 would become eligible for overtime pay when working more than forty hours per week. Paxton has said the new regulations "may lead to disastrous consequences for our economy". Along with Texas, twenty other states joined the lawsuit. Paxton is involved in a legal challenge to a rule by the
Department of Labor which forces employers to report any "actions, conduct, or communications" undertaken to "affect an employee's decisions regarding his or her representation or collective bargaining rights". Known as the "persuader rule", the new regulation went into effect in April 2016. Opponents of the rule say it will prevent employers from speaking on labor issues or seeking legal counsel. In June 2016, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the rule. Paxton called the injunction "a victory for the preservation of the sanctity of attorney-client confidentiality".
LGBT rights As attorney general, Paxton appointed several social conservatives and prominent opponents of
LGBT rights to positions in his department. In 2016, Paxton led a coalition of thirteen states that sought an injunction to block a guidance letter issued by the Department of Education and Department of Justice that interpreted
Title IX to require public schools to allow
transgender students to use restrooms that accorded with their
gender identity. Paxton submitted court filings alleging the Obama administration had "conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment" In September 2016, Paxton and his wife had dinner with activist
Amber Briggle and her family, including her
trans son. The states dropped the suit after the directive was revoked by President
Donald Trump. On February 18, 2022, Paxton issued a new interpretation of Texas law in a written opinion that characterized
gender-affirming health care (such as hormone treatments and puberty blockers) for transgender youths as child abuse. Established medical practice allows for puberty blockers to be explored after initial signs of puberty, although evidence for their use is still evolving. On February 28, Amber Briggle was notified that the
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had opened an investigation into her family. On March 11, a
Texas District Court issued a temporary
injunction, which temporarily stopped state investigations into families who provide gender-affirming medical care for their children, and scheduled a trial for July 11, 2022. In June 2022, Paxton said he would defend
state laws prohibiting sodomy or consensual same-sex sexual relationships if the Supreme Court precedent invalidating such laws, the
Lawrence v. Texas decision, was overturned. On March 17, 2022, Paxton made a post on Twitter in which he referred to U.S. assistant secretary for health
Rachel Levine – a
trans woman — as a man. Twitter flagged the tweet for violating its conduct rules, but did not remove the post. The following day, Paxton tweeted a statement in which he again referred to Levine as a man, and stated that he was "exploring legal options" against Twitter. During that same month, according to a report by
The Washington Post, Paxton's office requested a list of citizens who had changed their gender on their driver's licenses, circumventing the accepted procedure of contacting DPS' government relations and general counsel's offices by instead directly contacting the driver license division staff. No reason was given for this request. In August, the data was provided to Paxton's office, despite that in November 2022, officials indicated the office had no such information. In December 2023, the Texas attorney general's office was sued by Seattle Children's Hospital for having subpoenaed private medical information about any minors of Texas residence who may have received gender-affirming medical care. The AG's office responded that it was investigating the hospital for
deceptive trade practices. The suit seeks to have the subpoena dismissed and alleges that Paxton overstepped his authority, requested information
protected by federal and state law, violated Washington state's
shield law, and that the subpoena is an effort to chill travel to Washington for medical care. Paxton was reported to have sought medical records of Texas youth from a Georgia clinic. Paxton sued to block
Title IX guidelines which included sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited discrimination in education. Judge
Reed O'Connor blocked the guidance. Paxton sued to block a rule that required states to provide LGBTQ+ affirming placement for foster care youth. Judge
Jeremy Kernodle blocked the rule. he also sued a doctor who provided gender-transitioning treatment under
SB 14. In December 2024, Paxton sued the
NCAA, arguing that allowing
trans women to compete in women's sporting events was "false, deceptive, and misleading" to attendees. Paxton sued the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over guidance providing protections for transgender employees. In 2025, Judge
Matthew Kacsmaryk struck down the guidance. In October 2025, following the
assassination of Charlie Kirk, Paxton's office put out an official statement in which he was quoted saying "Corrupted ideologies like transgenderism and Antifa are a cancer on our culture and have unleashed their deranged and drugged-up foot soldiers on the American people" and went on to say that he would be having law enforcement pursue and infiltrate "these leftist terror cells".
Volkswagen, Apple, and MoneyGram lawsuits In 2012, Paxton was part of a lawsuit by 33 state attorneys general against
Apple, charging the company with violating antitrust laws by conspiring with publishers to artificially raise the prices of
electronic books. Apple was ordered to pay $400 million to U.S. consumers who paid artificially inflated prices for e-books, and $20 million to the states in reimbursement for legal costs. In 2016,
Volkswagen settled a lawsuit brought by 44 states against to the company for
using software that allowed its vehicles to circumvent emissions limits. Texas's share of the settlement was $50 million. Paxton is part of a 21-state lawsuit against the state of
Delaware, alleging that
MoneyGram gave uncashed checks to the state of Delaware instead of the state where the money order or travelers check was bought. The case,
Delaware v. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,
went directly to the U.S. Supreme Court because it was a dispute among states.
Lawsuit over homestead tax exemptions In 2015, the
Texas State Legislature passed a law implementing property tax reductions by increasing the homestead exemption to $25,000 and prohibiting localities from reducing or repealing any local option homestead exemption already on the books. After this law was passed, 21 school districts reduced or eliminated their local optional homestead exemptions. In 2016, Paxton intervened in a lawsuit challenging the practice of school districts reducing or repealing their local optional homestead exemptions.
Second Amendment lawsuits In 2016, three
University of Texas at Austin professors sued in an effort to ban concealed handguns from campus, blocking the state's
campus carry law. Paxton called the lawsuit "frivolous" and moved to dismiss. The federal district court dismissed the suit in 2017, and the dismissal was upheld by a three-judge panel of the
5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. In 2016, Paxton sued the
City of Austin to allow license holders to openly carry handguns in
Austin City Hall. Paxton prevailed, and the court decided not only that the city of Austin must allow such carry, but also ordered it to pay a fine to the state for each day it prevented investigators from the attorney general's office from carrying their firearms.
Voting rights In March 2017, Paxton told
The Washington Times that he was convinced that voter fraud exists in Texas, and claimed that local election officials in Texas were not on the lookout for fraud. According to a July 11, 2021, article in
The New York Times, even though voter fraud is "very rare in the United States"—most cases are minor errors on the part of a voter—Paxton "made it a mission" as attorney general to file voter-fraud charge. According to a July 9, 2021, article in
The Guardian, "[F]ew prosecutors have pursued election-related crimes more than Paxton." By February 2017—as part of his "crusade" against voter fraud—Paxton sought to investigate 2016 Texas voting records—such as access to individual voting history and application materials for voter registrations—to uncover potential voter fraud, for example, voting by non-citizens or in the name of the deceased. In February 2017, officials in
Bexar County said there have been no major cases of voter fraud in
San Antonio. The
Associated Press reported that hundreds of people were allowed to bypass the state's voter ID laws and improperly cast ballots by submitting an
affidavit instead of presenting a photo ID, even though they possessed a valid ID. The top election official in Bexar County estimates that 'a large chunk' of the nearly six hundred
affidavits submitted should have been declined, and the voter should have been required to cast a
provisional ballot. Of the roughly 13,500 affidavits from the largest Texas counties that AP analyzed, they found at least 500 instances of improper voting. However,
Fort Bend County's top elections official said that these cases are not voter fraud, noting that only those who were registered to vote qualified for an affidavit, and that "poll workers were trained to 'err on the side of letting people use the affidavit instead of denying them the chance to vote.'" In 2017, the
San Antonio Express-News criticized the state's voter identification law, which Paxton seeks to have reinstated after it was struck down by
United States District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of
Corpus Christi, who found the measure to be a violation of the
Voting Rights Act, and found that it was passed with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. Paxton's office appealed the decision. Appeals continue in the case. By May 2017, the Office of the AG's "efforts to enact and enforce the strictest voter ID law in the nation were so plagued by delays, revisions, court interventions and inadequate education that the casting of ballots in the 2016 election was inevitably troubled".
Prioritizing voter-fraud prosecutions Of the voter fraud cases that Paxton's office chose to pursue, 72% were people of color. Among them was Hervis Rogers, a Black man working two jobs who had been waiting six hours in a line at Houston's
Texas Southern University in
Harris County, Texas, to vote in the March 2020 Democratic presidential primary election, and had been praised for his tenacity in exercising his right to vote. In Texas, it is a second-degree
felony for a person on parole or probation to knowingly vote. Rogers had served a nine-year prison sentence for a
burglary conviction in 1995; he was released on parole in 2004, and his parole ended in June 2020. Hervis was not charged in Harris County (which is
majority-minority), but rather was charged in the adjacent
Montgomery County, where only 4% of the population is Black. Few Texans charged by Paxton's office served time for voter fraud. An analysis by
KXAN found that 24 of 138 people convicted of voter fraud in Texas between 2004 and September 2020 spent time in jail. Paxton acknowledged that a few defendants served prison time but defended his approach as a way to "send a message".
Opposition to absentee voting expansion In May 2020, Paxton opposed an expansion of absentee voting to voters who lack immunity to
COVID-19. A state district judge ruled that such voters could apply for absentee ballots under a statutory provision that accommodates disabled individuals. During the 2020 election season, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, Paxton sued
Harris County Clerk
Chris Hollins, seeking to block him from sending applications for absentee ballots to the county's 2.4 million registered voters accompanied by instructions regarding eligibility as clarified by the Texas Supreme Court. Paxton lost in the trial court and in the intermediate court of appeals, but the Texas Supreme Court reversed and directed the trial court to enter an injunction against Hollins. The mail-vote promotion was part and parcel of Harris County's package of innovative measures to reduce the COVID-19 infection risk of in-person voting while maximizing opportunities for all voters to participate under pandemic conditions. The
Republican Party of Texas opposed the expansion of voting by mail and other accommodations, and filed its own legal actions seeking to stop Hollins through the court system.
Challenge to 2020 presidential election results Paxton's office spent more than 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud after the 2020 election, finding only 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms out of nearly 17 million registered voters. On December 8, 2020, Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed President-elect
Joe Biden the victor over President Donald Trump, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had
already been rejected in other courts. There is no evidence of widespread illegal voting in the election. Paxton's lawsuit included claims that had been tried unsuccessfully in other courts and shown to be false. Officials from the four states described Paxton's lawsuit as recycling false and disproven claims of irregularity. Trump and seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed motions to support the case, the merits of which were sharply criticized by legal experts and politicians. Election law expert
Rick Hasen described the lawsuit as "the dumbest case I've ever seen filed on an emergency basis at the Supreme Court". Republican Senator
Ben Sasse opined that the situation of Paxton initiating the lawsuit "looks like a fella begging for a
pardon filed a
PR stunt", in reference to Paxton's own legal issues (
securities fraud charges and
abuse of office allegations). Paxton has called the pardon speculation "an absurdly laughable conspiracy theory" and said the lawsuit is about election integrity. Later it was revealed that the failed suit had been drafted by Lawyers for Trump, a group connected to the Trump campaign. Several other state attorneys general turned down the offer to file the suit.
Solicitor General of Texas Kyle D. Hawkins, who would ordinarily represent the state in cases before the Supreme Court, refused to let his name be attached to the suit. The Texas attorney general hired
Lawrence J. Joseph of Lawyers for Trump as special counsel for filing the suit. After the failure of his lawsuit, Paxton traveled to Washington to speak at a political rally for President Trump on January 6, 2021. In his speech, Paxton told the crowd "we will not quit fighting". Immediately following, the crowd of Trump supporters left the rally and
stormed the United States Capitol building in a riot that led to the death of five people, including a
police officer. In reaction to the violence and loss of life, Paxton falsely claimed that the rioters were liberal activists posing as Trump supporters. He was the only state attorney general to not condemn the insurrection. In early 2021, Paxton's office refused to provide his work emails and text messages he sent or received while in Washington on January 6, after several Texas news organizations requested them in accordance with the state's open records law. In January 2022, the
Travis County district attorney gave Paxton four days to comply or face a lawsuit. In October 2021, Paxton falsely claimed that Biden "overthrew" Trump in the 2020 election.
2025 redistricing Paxton sued
Beto O'Rourke for fundraising
walkouts of the 2025 redistricting.
Raids on civil rights groups In 2024, a unit created by Paxton raided the offices of Latino voting activists, seizing cellphones, computers and documents as part of a voter fraud inquiry. The
League of United Latin American Citizens, known as LULAC, described the raids as an attempt to suppress Latino voters.
Religion in schools Paxton "has often criticized what he calls anti-Christian discrimination in Texas schools". In 2015, Paxton opposed an atheist group's legal action seeking a halt to the reading of religious prayers before school board meetings.
Islam In early 2017 Paxton objected to a Texas school's use of an empty classroom to allow its Muslim students to pray, issuing a press release that claimed that "the high school's prayer room is ... apparently excluding students of other faiths." School officials said that Paxton had never asked them about this assertion, and that the room was a spare room used by faculty and non-Muslim students as well as for multiple activities, from grading papers to Buddhist meditation. The
Frisco Independent School District superintendent, in a letter sent in response to Paxton, called his press release "a publicity stunt by the [Office of Attorney General] to politicize a nonissue".
Texas v. Garland In 2023, Paxton sued the federal government in
Texas v. Garland, asserting that
$1.7 trillion federal spending law passed by Congress for fiscal year 2023 is invalid because of the lack of a physical quorum in the
U.S. House of Representatives at the time of the bill's passage. Paxton argued that the House's decision in 2020 to allow the use of
proxy voting during the
COVID-19 pandemic was unconstitutional. A similar lawsuit,
McCarthy v. Pelosi, had already been rejected by the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision. In March 2023, the Texas House General Investigating Committee began to investigate Paxton. The committee in May 2023 stated that "Paxton's own request for taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct" triggered the
investigation for
impeachment. A spokeswoman for
Texas House speaker Dade Phelan concurred, stating in May 2023 that it was due to Paxton demanding taxpayer funds for the settlement "without providing sufficient information or evidence in support of his request". Later that day, the House General Investigating Committee revealed to the public its months-long investigation of Paxton, and also subpoenaed Paxton and his office. The following day, investigators testified to their conclusions regarding Paxton to the General Investigating Committee, alleging that he had committed various crimes, including felonies, while in office. Paxton dismissed the investigators, claiming it was conducted by "highly partisan
Democrat lawyers"; the investigative team had in fact served as prosecutors for both Republican and Democratic administrations, and collectively, had contributed "several times more money to Republicans than to Democrats" over the preceding ten years.
Impeachment and suspension from office On May 25, 2023, the Republican-led House General Investigating Committee unanimously recommended that Paxton be impeached. The committee filed twenty articles of impeachment, with the committee's investigation producing the following allegations: • Paxton ignored his official duty to protect charities when he directed his office to interfere in the Mitte Foundation charity's lawsuit against
Nate Paul, a political donor to Paxton. • Paxton abused his official power to issue written legal opinions when he directed his office to write an opinion to prevent Paul's properties from being sold in foreclosure, and also had his office reverse their legal conclusions, in an attempt to benefit Paul. To cover up his direction, Paxton arranged for a Senate committee chairperson to seek the above opinion. • Paxton abused his official power by directing his office to violate the law regarding two public information requests, one of which concerned Department of Public Safety records for a criminal investigation of Paul. • Paxton abused his official power to improperly obtain private information in an attempt to release it for Paul's benefit. • Paxton abused his official power by hiring a special prosecutor, Brandon Cammack, to investigate a "baseless complaint" made by Paul; Cammack would issue over 30 grand jury subpoenas to benefit Paul. • Paxton ignored his official duty by improperly firing whistleblowers in his office who had in "good faith" alleged to authorities that Paxton had broken the law; Paxton also privately and publicly tried to tarnish the whistleblowers' reputations and harm their chances of future employment. • Paxton wrongly used public resources by having his office conduct a "sham investigation" into the whistleblowers' allegations, and having his office create a report "containing false or misleading statements in Paxton's defense". • Paxton abused his official power in his attempt to settle the whistleblowers' lawsuit, which "delayed the discovery of facts and testimony at trial, to Paxton's advantage", preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton. • Paxton accepted a bribe by Paul's employment of a woman "with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair", and in return Paxton used his office to help Paul. • Paxton accepted a bribe by having Paul (a real estate developer) renovate Paxton's home, and in return Paxton used his office to help Paul. • Paxton obstructed justice by delaying his trial for federal securities fraud after being indicted in 2015, preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton. • Paxton obstructed justice by benefiting from a lawsuit filed by his political donor, Jeff Blackard, that caused problems in paying the prosecutors working on Paxton's securities fraud case, delaying the trial and discovery of evidence, preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton. • Paxton made false statements to the State Securities Board regarding his illegal failure to register with them. • Paxton did not accurately reveal his financial interests to the Texas Ethics Commission, violating law. • Paxton made or directed for multiple false or misleading statements to be published in his office's report responding to the whistleblower allegations. • Paxton conspired or tried to conspire with other people for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment. • Paxton abused his official power by having his office act to benefit him or other people. • Paxton ignored his duty and violated the Texas Constitution, his oaths of office, statutes and public policy for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment. • Paxton was unfit for holding office for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment. • Paxton abused or neglected his official power to prevent lawful governance and obstruct justice, bringing his office into "scandal and disrepute" for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment. Paxton became only the third official and the second statewide officeholder in Texas history to be impeached, after Governor
James E. Ferguson in 1917 and a
district judge in 1975. Upon being impeached, Paxton was automatically suspended from office pending a trial in the Texas Senate. Paxton's top aide, first assistant attorney general
Brent Webster, became the acting attorney general, until Governor Abbott appointed
John B. Scott as interim attorney general three days later. Paxton was not paid his salary during his suspension. called on his supporters to peacefully march on the state Capitol in protest; and declared that "the
RINOs in the Texas Legislature are now on the same side as Joe Biden," characterizing the impeachment proceedings as an attempt to "sabotage [Texas'] legal challenges to Biden's extremist agenda". During the legislative session on impeachment, Texas representative
Charlie Geren, a Republican on the General Investigating Committee who is also speaker pro tempore, said, "several members of this House, while on the floor of this House doing the state's business, received telephone calls from Paxton personally, threatening them with political consequences in our next election." Paxton's impeachment highlighted increasing rifts within the
Texas Republican Party, which has dominated Texas politics for years. Republican hard-liners rallied behind Paxton after his impeachment. Trump said he would fight fellow Republicans who supported Paxton's ouster. Other Republicans who rallied in support of Paxton included Trump's key allies, such as son
Donald Trump Jr. and former aide
Stephen Miller;
Impeachment trial After the impeachment, the Texas House of Representatives appointed twelve representatives (seven Republicans and five Democrats) to serve as
impeachment managers (analogous to prosecutors) at the
impeachment trial in the thirty-one-member
State Senate. Of the dozen selected, eleven have law degrees. The group of impeachment managers was led by Republican representative
Andrew Murr as chair and Democratic representative
Ann Johnson as vice chair). Paxton's main defense lawyer is
Tony Buzbee. The Senate appointed a committee to recommend rules and procedures for the impeachment trial to the full Senate, and the committee reported on June 20. One of the senators was Paxton's wife,
Angela Paxton. The two spouses have been involved in each other's political campaigns and careers. Angela Paxton did not say whether she would recuse herself, but the Senate voted on June 21, 2023, to bar her from voting in her husband's impeachment trial. However, Angela Paxton was still required to attend the trial; and because conviction and removal from office require a two-thirds vote, her presence made it more difficult to remove her husband. In June 2023, a few months before the trial, the pro-Paxton "Defend Texas Liberty" gave a $1-million contribution and a $2-million loan to Patrick's campaign (Patrick is not up for reelection until 2026). A few days before the trial began, Patrick selected
Lana Myers, a retired
Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas judge, to serve as his legal counsel during the trial. At least two Republican senators had conflicts of interest or financial connections with Paxton. Hughes was on list of witnesses whom the prosecutors intend to call to testify during the impeachment trial. The impeachment trial began on September 5, 2023, in the Texas Senate, in which there were 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. On the first day of the trial, Paxton entered a plea of not guilty, and both sides delivered opening statements. The Senate voted down, 24–6, Paxton's motion to dismiss all the charges; other motions to dismiss individual counts were also rejected. The acquittal cleared the path for Paxton to resume his duties as attorney general.
Swatting incident On January 1, 2024, Paxton and his wife,
Angela Paxton, said their home had been subject to a prank police report—a crime known as
swatting—while they were not home. Police confirmed they had been called. The Paxtons also said their home address had been improperly released (
doxxed). The incident occurred during the
2023 swatting of American politicians when public servants and politicians around the United States were reporting swatting incidents. ==Legal issues==