Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton negotiates settlement with his former deputies over retaliation

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton negotiates settlement with his former deputies over retaliation lawsuit


Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal team is in settlement negotiation talks with three of the four former employees who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against him for firing them after they accused Paxton of criminal acts.

Paxton’s lawyers, in a joint filing last week with attorneys for Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — Paxton’s former deputies — asked the Texas Supreme Court to put the whistleblower case on hold to give the parties time to negotiate a settlement. The lawyers wrote they were “actively engaged in settlement discussions” with mediation set for Wednesday.

Lawyers for a fourth plaintiff, Blake Brickman, opposed the motion in their own filing and urged the court to move forward with its consideration. The news was first reported by The Dallas Morning News.

The high-profile case has been yet another black eye for Paxton, a Republican whose litany of legal troubles have followed him throughout much of his tenure as attorney general and at times alienated him from other GOP state officials. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in August 2015. That case is still pending and Paxton has denied wrongdoing. More recently, Paxton was sued last year by the Texas State Bar for professional misconduct for misrepresenting that he had uncovered new evidence to file a lawsuit to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential elections in four battleground states. Paxton has maintained the suit is politically motivated and denied wrongdoing.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/31/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-settlement-whistleblowers/

I suspect that the settlements will cost several million dollars which will be kept confidential.