His Own Party Impeached Him. Texas Republicans Just Made Ken Paxton Their Senate Nominee.

A felony indictment, an FBI complaint from his own staff, a court judgment for retaliation, and now a seat one election from the U.S. Senate. Here is the record. Here are the details.

Executive Summary

Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, is now the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, and his record should stop you cold. He spent close to a decade under a three count felony indictment for securities fraud, accused of steering people into a company that was paying him without telling them. He escaped that case in 2024 through a deal with no trial and no admission of guilt. In 2020, eight of his own senior deputies, conservatives he picked himself, reported him to the FBI, accusing him of bending the power of his office to serve a wealthy developer and campaign donor named Nate Paul. The Texas House, controlled by his own party, impeached him in 2023 on charges of bribery and abuse of office. The Republican Senate acquitted him. A Texas court later ruled that his office broke the Texas Whistleblower Act by retaliating against the deputies who turned him in, a finding his own lawyers did not contest, leaving Texas taxpayers facing a 6.6 million dollar bill. In 2025, journalists found he and his wife had claimed three separate homes as their primary residence on mortgage papers, conduct experts called a potential state and federal crime.

Paxton admitted to an extramarital affair with a former Texas Senate aide, and that affair sat at the heart of the corruption case, because the donor at the center of it put the woman on his payroll after Paxton recommended the hire. His own wife of 38 years, a sitting state senator, filed for divorce in 2025 and named adultery as the grounds in a sworn court document. The last thing this country needs is another MAGA Republican in Washington, openly displaying the same absence of character, morals, and ethics already on daily display from the convicted felon sitting in the Oval Office. In November, Texas voters get the final word.

Hey Texas, What The Hell Are You Thinking?

Think about the one job in your state where the person holding it has to obey the law more strictly than anyone else. The chief law enforcement officer. The person who, in your name, decides which criminals to charge and which ones to let walk.

Now think about handing that job to someone who spent the better part of a decade under felony indictment.

On Tuesday night, the voters of Texas did exactly that. They chose Ken Paxton, the sitting Texas Attorney General, as their Republican nominee for the United States Senate. He defeated an incumbent who had held the seat for more than twenty years. He won by more than twenty points. One week before the vote, the President of the United States endorsed him and called Paxton a true MAGA warrior.

You deserve to know who Texas just elevated, because the story of Ken Paxton is the story of what happens to a country when accountability stops meaning anything. Stay with me. By the end of this you will understand his record, why the record did not sink him, and what all of it asks of you before November.

A Record You Would not Believe If It Were Fiction

Start in 2015. A grand jury in Paxton’s own home county indicted him on three felony counts. Two of them were first degree securities fraud, the most serious version, the kind that puts people in prison for decades. Prosecutors said he talked people into investing in a tech company, pocketed a fee for steering them there, and never told them he was being paid.

He pleaded not guilty. Then the case sat. It sat for nine years. It sat through two of his reelection campaigns. Texas voters returned Ken Paxton to office twice during the years he stood accused of three felonies.

In 2024, weeks before a jury would finally hear the evidence, his lawyers and the prosecutors reached a deal. He did community service. He completed fifteen hours of legal ethics courses. He paid restitution to the people prosecutors accused him of cheating. The charges went away. He never stood trial. He never admitted a thing.

Sit with the shape of that. The chief law enforcement officer of Texas closed a three count felony fraud case with community service and an ethics class. No jury ever heard a word of it.

His Own Lawyers Turned Him Into The FBI

The fraud indictment was the smaller storm.

In the fall of 2020, eight of the most senior lawyers and officials inside Paxton’s own office did something extraordinary. They went to the FBI and reported their own boss. They were the deputies he picked himself, conservatives who ran the agency at his side.

They told federal agents Ken Paxton was using his office to serve a wealthy real estate developer named Nate Paul, a friend and campaign donor. Paul employed the woman Paxton was having an affair with. Paul was tied to renovation work on one of Paxton’s homes. The whistleblowers described their own Attorney General bending the law enforcement power of the state of Texas to rescue one rich friend from his legal troubles.

The FBI investigated. The Justice Department investigated. The federal investigators in Texas who first handled the case reportedly believed they had enough evidence to indict him. In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Justice Department in Washington closed the case with no charges. The public learned this months later, because no one announced it.¹

Nate Paul, the developer at the center of it, pleaded guilty to his own federal crimes.

His Own Republican Party Put Him On Trial

Here is the part people forget. The reckoning came from his own side.

When the fired whistleblowers sued him, Paxton tried to make the lawsuit disappear with a three point three million dollar settlement, then asked the Texas Legislature to stick taxpayers with the tab. Republican lawmakers refused to write the check. They opened their own investigation into their own Attorney General. What they found alarmed them into action.

In May 2023, the Texas House of Representatives, run by Republicans, voted to impeach Ken Paxton. The vote was a landslide. One hundred twenty one members voted yes. He became one of only three officials in Texas history to be impeached, and the impeachment suspended him from office that same day.

The case moved to the Texas Senate for trial. Republicans control that chamber too. Paxton’s own wife held a Senate seat, and the rules barred her from voting on her husband. After two weeks of testimony from his former deputies, the Senate voted to acquit him on all sixteen articles it took to a vote. Only two Republican senators voted to convict. Ken Paxton walked back into his office and picked up where he left off.

One Big Court Ruling

Across all those years and investigations, one fact deserves your full attention. A court did finally rule on Ken Paxton’s conduct.

The whistleblowers kept their lawsuit alive. As it moved toward the day Paxton would have to testify under oath, his side stopped fighting. In 2025, a Texas judge entered judgment against the Attorney General’s office for six point six million dollars. The judge found the office had broken the Texas Whistleblower Act by punishing employees for reporting their boss in good faith. Paxton’s office did not contest the facts. It did not contest the damages.

Read that again. A court of law found the Texas Attorney General’s office retaliated against its own people for telling the truth about the man in charge. Paxton appealed the judgment. Then he dropped the appeal. The judgment is final. If the Legislature agrees to fund it, the people of Texas pay that bill themselves.

Three Houses, Cheating And The Divorce

The pattern kept going.

In the summer of 2025, journalists digging through public records found Ken Paxton and his wife had signed mortgage papers claiming three separate houses, each one, as their primary residence. Claiming a home as your primary residence earns you a better interest rate. Doing it honestly means choosing one home. Legal experts who reviewed the filings said knowingly making false statements on mortgage documents is a crime under state and federal law.

No one has charged him. Pay close attention to the reason. One of the agencies in Texas responsible for chasing mortgage fraud is the office of the Attorney General. The office Ken Paxton runs.

That same summer, his wife of thirty eight years, herself a sitting Texas state senator, filed for divorce. In her court filing she named the grounds in a single word. Adultery.

Ken Paxton has admitted to an extramarital affair. The reporting names the woman as Laura Olson, a former Texas Senate aide, and places the start around 2018. This affair did more than break a private vow. It fed the corruption case. Nate Paul, the wealthy developer and campaign donor at the center of the FBI complaint, put Olson on his payroll, and Paul said in a deposition that Paxton recommended the hire. Sit with that. The attorney general carried on an affair, then steered the woman into a job with the donor he was already accused of protecting with the power of his office. Olson was reportedly married at the time, which means a married attorney general and a married Senate aide built their relationship as he bent state power toward her new employer. When the Texas House impeached Paxton in 2023, House managers subpoenaed Olson to testify under oath. She came to the Capitol with her attorney, left without a word, and the public never heard her account.

The bill for that secrecy came due in 2025. In July, Angela Paxton, his wife of 38 years and a sitting Texas state senator, filed for divorce in a Collin County courthouse. Her filing named the grounds in plain language. Adultery. In her public statement she cited biblical grounds and recent discoveries she did not spell out. Court records showed the couple had stopped living together more than a year earlier, around June 1, 2024. They raised four children together, and she ended the marriage in a sworn document accusing her own husband of cheating. Two months later, in September 2025, the Daily Mail reported a separate relationship between Paxton and a Louisiana author. That account comes from a tabloid, Paxton has not addressed it, and mainstream outlets have not confirmed it, so treat it as an unconfirmed claim. The confirmed facts are damning enough. A married attorney general carried on an affair tangled into a bribery investigation, and his own wife took him to court and named adultery as the reason their marriage ended.

So What Gives? How Does This Happen?

Human psychology holds the answer. Start with the way your own mind handles repetition. A scandal hits you once and it shocks you. The same kind of scandal hits you again and again for a decade, and your brain quietly stops sounding the alarm. Your mind files the newest story next to the old ones and moves on. Outrage runs on a battery, and repetition drains it. Ken Paxton has survived this long in part because the sheer length of his record made every new chapter feel routine. Kind of reminds me of all the allegations and litigation we’ve been put through involving his buddy, the guy sitting in the Oval Office.

Now add party identity. For millions of voters, the team has become deeper than any single fact. Once a politician wears the right jersey, his supporters feel an attack on him as an attack on themselves. Evidence bounces off. The lawyer in me has watched this happen in courtrooms and at kitchen tables for forty years. Facts alone do not move people who feel their identity is under siege.

Now add the permission that flows down from the top. One week before Texans voted, the Trump endorsed Ken Paxton and called him a warrior. Sit with the message inside that endorsement. The most influential figure in American politics looked at the felony indictment, the FBI referral filed by Paxton’s own staff, the impeachment, and the court judgment, and he told millions of people none of it counts against him. Donald Trump sits at the center of this. Day after day in his second term, he teaches an entire political party one lesson. Consequences are for other people. Loyalty covers everything. Corruption becomes a business model.

This is the damage that really gets under my skin.Ken Paxton is the predictable product of this system. It produced him. It rewarded him.

What We Can Do Before November

Here is the good news, and it is real.

Ken Paxton is not a senator. Not yet. Tuesday handed him a nomination, nothing more. In November, the people of Texas decide whether the record you just read belongs in the United States Senate. He has a Democratic opponent who’s name is James Talarico. The seat is open. Your voice, and the voices of everyone you reach, still decide this.

So do something with what you now know.

Refuse the numbness. The strongest weapon against a politician who feeds on scandal fatigue is a citizen who keeps paying attention anyway. When you feel your own outrage battery running low, name the feeling for what it is, and charge it back up.

If you live in Texas or have family and friends in live in the Lone Star State, talk to people. Use the facts, calmly and plainly. Tell the voters in your life about the eight deputies who walked into an FBI office. Tell them about the impeachment Republicans themselves delivered. Tell the young people in your life that a record like this once ended careers, and it ends them now only if you and they insist.

And vote. Every single time. In the loud races at the top of the ballot and the quiet local races at the bottom.

Your kids and your grandkids will inherit the standard you accept right now. They will live inside the country you choose to defend. A democracy fades slowly, one shrug at a time, as good people decide the latest outrage is too much trouble to fight.

Do not shrug. Share this with someone who needs to read it. Drop a comment and tell me what you are watching unfold in your own community. Carry this into November as if your country depends on it, because it does.

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

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1. A declination is not an exoneration. It means prosecutors chose not to bring charges. It does not mean a court examined the conduct and cleared him. That distinction matters, and it is one of the reasons I framed this piece as Paxton’s escape from accountability rather than proven innocence.