Texas Attorney General Paxton to Escape Trial in Securities Fraud Case

An agreement was reached Tuesday with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that dismisses securities fraud charges he has been facing for almost a decade, The Texas Tribune reported.

Prosecutors announced that under the 18-month pre-trial deal, three felony counts against Paxton would be dropped in exchange for him paying almost $300,000 in restitution to victims and completing 100 hours of community service, as well as 15 hours of legal ethics education.

The agreement comes just three weeks before Paxton was scheduled to face trial for allegedly soliciting investors in a McKinney, Texas, technology company without disclosing the firm was paying him to promote its stock.

Paxton, who will not have to enter a plea under terms of the deal, faced possibly decades in prison if he was convicted of fraud, according to the Tribune.

His attorney, Dan Cogdell, said prosecutors “approached us” and Paxton was “happy to agree to the terms of the dismissal.”

Cogdell added, however, “let me be clear, at no time was he going to enter any plea bargain agreement or admit to conduct that simply did not occur. There is no admission of any wrongdoing on Ken’s part in the agreement because there was no wrongdoing on his part.”

Paxton said he and his family are “relieved to finally have a resolution” to a matter that has caused them “ongoing stress” for the past decade.

Prosecutor Brian Wice said he had been “besieged by a torrent of phone calls” from those expressing “their monumental displeasure with the fact that these cases are being resolved with a pretrial intervention.”

Wice stressed that it was more important to get justice for Paxton’s victims than to continue to seek prison time for the attorney general, which he said should only be a priority if the defendant poses a threat to public safety.

The agreement is the second significant victory for Paxton recently, after the GOP-controlled Texas Senate acquitted him last fall of 16 impeachment charges based on allegations that he accepted bribes and abused the authority of his office to help a friend and campaign donor.

However, his agency still faces a lawsuit brought by four former top deputies who said he improperly dismissed them from their jobs in 2020 for reporting him to the FBI.