Good for them, and good in general.
Still a crook any way you look
A Travis County district court judge on Friday awarded $6.6 million to four former senior aides to Attorney General Ken Paxton who said they were improperly fired after reporting Paxton to the FBI.
Judge Catherine Mauzy stated in her judgment that the plaintiffs — Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — had proven by a “preponderance of the evidence” that Paxton’s office had violated the Texas Whistleblower Act. Each of the four were awarded between $1.1 and $2.1 million for wages lost, compensation for emotional pain, attorney’s fees and various other costs as a result of the trial.
The judgment also said Paxton’s office did not dispute any issue of fact in the case, which stopped the Attorney General’s office from further contesting their liability. Tom Nesbitt, the attorney for Brickman and Maxwell, said in a statement that Paxton “admitted” to breaking the law to avoid being questioned under oath.
“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,” Nesbitt said in the statement.
In a statement to the Tribune from his office, Paxton called the ruling “a ridiculous judgment that is not based on the facts or the law” and pointed blame at former Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who led the Texas House effort to impeach him in 2023. “We will appeal this bogus ruling as we continue to clean up Dade Phelan’s mess,” Paxton said in the statement.
The judgment also ordered that the plaintiffs are entitled to additional attorney’s fees if they successfully defend or prosecute appeals, including up to $20,000 per plaintiff for various stages of review at the Supreme Court of Texas.
Late Friday, Brickman criticized Paxton’s intent to appeal the judgment in a post on X, calling the attorney general “ lawless and shameless” and claiming the judgment came because Paxton was avoiding a deposition.
“Paxton now wants to appeal? He literally already admitted he broke the law to @SupremeCourt_TX and the Travis County District Court — all to stop his own deposition,” Brickman wrote.
See here for the previous update. It took longer for the judgment to be announced than we had been led to believe, but whatever. There’s obviously a ton of backstory to all this, but remember that the reason we were still fighting it out over this settlement was because the original one, for $3.3 million, wasn’t approved by the Lege to be paid for in a separate appropriation because Ken Paxton refused to answer any questions about what happened. His refusal led to the House committee doing their own investigation, which in turn led to the impeachment and all of that mishegoss. Part of that was Paxton declaring that he would no longer contest any of the allegations made against him, again to avoid having to answer questions about the whole affair (and yes, I use that word deliberately), this time in a deposition.
The bottom line is that Paxton on the one hand says “fine, I’ll cop to whatever you guys say” and on the other hand claims they’re lying, all because he does not want to answer any questions about what happened. He’s desperate to avoid answering questions. Whatever happens, from this point forward, this fact should be relentlessly brought up and thrown in his face. Whatever we Democrats can do to get these whistleblowers out there in public saying what a dirtbag sleazeball Ken Paxton is, we have to do it. This is the closest thing to any accountability for his behavior he has faced. We have to ride it all the way.