Attorney General’s Office defends Paxton against criminal allegations in detailed report

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Austin, Texas, 21 hours ago Not quite a year ago, a controversy erupted in the Attorney General’s Office (OAG) when seven senior officials raised criminal allegations of abuse of power and corruption against Attorney General Ken Paxton.

All of these assistants were quickly fired or resigned and a few subsequently filed a complaint under the whistleblower law which is still pending in the courts.

But now the OAG under Paxton has released a report of an internal investigation into the matter finding that General Paxton’s former political appointees had no basis for their criminal complaint.

The report leaves many important questions unanswered and unsurprisingly drew criticism from lawyers for whistleblowers, but it also provides a host of new details about the situation that had not been made public before.

In particular, the report highlights the events immediately preceding the prosecution, which met with poor communication and growing tensions within the office.

Two of the new documents included in the 300-plus-page report are what the OAG believes to be the final drafts of the criminal complaint former employees submitted to officials.

The criminal complaint fleshed out the main charges against Paxton that slowly came to light after the news broke last fall, that the Attorney General was improperly using his official capacity for the personal benefit of Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.

According to the whistleblower’s lawsuit, Paxton was particularly interested in a handful of matters typically delegated to others in his office to specifically benefit Paul, such as a request for an open file, involvement in civil litigation and the issuance of an informal legal opinion.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back for former employees was linked to the hiring of Houston attorney Brandon Cammack to work as an outside lawyer on an investigation that had been referred to the OAG by the county attorneys office. by Travis (TCDAO).

The first reference

The OAG report claims that last year Paul contacted Paxton to have the office investigate complaints he had received about the FBI raids on his home and offices in 2019 that he claimed were illegal.

Paxton told him that the TCDAO was the appropriate entity to launch such an investigation and together they arranged a lunch meeting with the office, which the report claims Paxton attended briefly, arriving late and leaving early.

Paul then filed a formal complaint against FBI agents and other government officials involved in the raid, which is another new document included in the report.

The complaint said Paul believed those involved in the raid had falsified government records regarding these search warrants, obtained these search warrants based on false information and inaccurate affidavits, and intentionally mistreated, detained and violated my constitutional rights.

After receiving the complaint, the TCDAO then referred the investigation to the OAG for assistance, saying it needed help with the scope of the project and that other agencies would not be appropriate to refer the matter. investigation since some of their employees were under investigation.

According to the report, two of the future whistleblowers took the initial lead in the referred complaint: David Maxwell and Mark Penley.

But Paxton was apparently skeptical of their actions in connection with the investigation.

Although the referral was received by the OAG on June 17, 2020, the report claims that no official action began on the investigation until a month later.

In the meantime, Paxton has met Penley at least twice, according to notes allegedly from Penley taken on July 6 and 16 which pointed out that Ken just wants the truth.

The report also blames Maxwell for doing what Paxton claims he did in the whistleblower trial – stepping out of the OAG’s normal process to take a special interest in something that is typically delegated to subordinates.

These deviations are extremely unusual [. . .] raising questions as to whether Maxwell’s personal relationships and contacts with any of the subjects under investigation played a role in his actions, the report says.

On August 12, 2020, tensions reached a boiling point during a meeting between the parties involved where the report says Penley began the meeting by notifying Paul that the investigation had been closed, but after some setbacks, he ended the meeting by asking for more documents from Paul. and his attorney Michael Wynne to continue the investigation.

After the meeting, the report claims without providing any citation or evidence that then-first Deputy Attorney General Jeff Mateer, the most senior official to raise allegations against Paxton, personally helped Paxton coordinate the hiring of ‘an outside lawyer to take over the essentially take over the Penley and Maxwell investigation.

Hire Cammack

At least two candidates were interviewed for the position, but ultimately Brandon Cammack was selected and a draft contract sent to him by another of the future whistleblowers, Ryan Vassar, on September 3, 2020.

However, at this point, the contract had not yet been officially approved. When, if anything, it becomes a point of contention between Paxton and his accusers.

The latter argue that it was not valid because it was never signed by all the necessary officials at the OAG, while the new report defending Paxton says he signed it and that it is the only signature necessary.

AG Paxton is legally empowered to authorize and sign external attorney contracts as attorney general. His subordinates do not have the power to cancel contracts signed by him without his approval, he says.

But the report does not specify when precisely the contract was signed, or why Paxton allegedly failed to notify his subordinates of its signing.

Again without providing any evidence, the report claims that AG Paxton met with Brandon Cammack in early September and appointed him as an external advisor.

The first time this signed contract appears to have been received by whistleblowers based on the documentation provided in the report was said to have been after they raised their criminal allegations against Paxton on September 30, 2020.

Cammack emailed an invoice to the OAG for the work he had started in the role that day, but the staff responded by saying they needed a copy of the signed contract in order to pay it. Later that night, Cammack told Vassar that he would send him the signed document the next day.

Even after receiving it, Vassar didn’t believe it was valid, according to an email exchange with Mateers replacement Brent Webster.

I determined that the contract that was emailed to me did not contain a contract number, further indicating that it had not been approved through the agency’s contract approval process Vassar told Webster on October 12, 2020. I have also determined that there is no approved signing authority. Request for signature of the attorneys general on this contract, which is a routine procedure.

Vassar himself had signed his approval of the contract on September 16, 2020, according to the report’s documentation, but others had left it unsigned. Only Penley formally refused to sign the contract into the system, and that was October 1, possibly after the Paxton signed contract aired.

The complaint against Paxton also alleges that on September 28, 2020, he requested information regarding the OAG’s policies and procedures regarding the approval and enforcement of external legal contracts and that he requested OAG staff to prepare a memorandum. documenting its authority to perform such contracts.

But even aside from the question of when Cammacks OAG’s contract could have gone into effect, the new report argues that TCDAO also withheld it to some extent.

Based on emails provided by Cammack, emails from TCDAO, emails located on OAG servers and interviews with TCDAO employees, the evidence establishes that TCDAO made Cammack a prosecutor. special, the report says.

While the report provides ample evidence that Cammack began to correspond and work directly with the TCDAO, it should be noted that the TCDAO also identified Cammack as working with the BVG.

The second referral

One of the main motivations that appear to have sparked senior officials’ criminal complaint against Paxton was when they learned Cammack had started using grand jury summons targeting opponents of Nate Pauls, according to the trial of the whistleblower.

Since the scope of the referred complaint that former employees were aware of was limited to concerns about government employees, whistleblowers found Cammacks’ subpoenas to financial institutions alarming.

But the OAG report indicates that Cammack was acting on something the officials apparently did not know about: a second complaint filed by Paul to the TCDAO that the TCDAO sent directly to Cammack instead of referring to the OAG.

In this complaint, Paul claims that a group of people were buying loans on several of his properties and essentially conspiring to take possession of his properties in order to sell them for a substantial profit.

The TCDAO sent the second referral directly to Cammack on September 23, 2020, which the report said could not be found in any internal OAG database.

After sending the referral, TCDAO quickly began working with Cammack to secure the related subpoenas.

Pursuit in progress

Lack of communication aside, the feud over the whistleblower debacle is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Although the internal report attempts to allay the main concern of the allegations by former employees that Paxton has been and continues to be under the undue influence of Nate Paul, questions remain as to the extent of the relationship. of Paxton with Paul.

The report itself notes that it focuses on events before October 5, 2020 and does not address additional charges in the whistleblower’s trial or in media reports after that date.

An appeals court hearing on the status of plaintiffs in the whistleblower prosecution is currently scheduled for later in September.

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