From RaTmasTer to kingmaker: How Jonathan Stickland trolled his way to Texas GOP power

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Robert Downen 

The Texas Tribune

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Before his unlikely rise to becoming one of Texas' most influential conservative powerbrokers, Jonathan Stickland was RaTTy — short for “RaTmasTer,” the moniker by which he’d torment his many online friends and enemies.

He was barely a teenager when he first started lurking on fantasy football and online gaming forums, dipping his adolescent toe into the internet’s hate-filled, primordial soup. By the mid-2000s — and after dropping out of high school, briefly following a girlfriend to Illinois and moving back to North Texas to smoke weed and work in pest control — Stickland had gained minor infamy for his vicious insults and provocations.

“The entire scene was pretty toxic back then,” said Adam Whitmer, who started playing Warcraft games with Stickland under the name “MaDrAv” two decades ago. “Racial, homophobic and xenophobic slurs were the insults of the era. However, we tended to either instigate it or take it too far. Our team's reputation was only surpassed by RaTTy's individual reputation.”

Stickland was in his 20s and struggling financially, with a new baby and a young wife. He was a troll. But instead of growing out of it, as many do, Stickland would go on to make a career of it — one that would later put him on the map in Texas politics and eventually help ignite a civil war between the Texas GOP’s far-right and more moderate wings.

Stickland served four antagonizing terms in the Texas House, passing just one bill but garnering constant headlines for his stunts and behavior. His antics only endeared him to Texas’ Tea Party movement and its ultrarich funders, who by then had coalesced around an intense hatred of government and the “gum-it-up-at-all-costs” approach to legislating that Stickland helped normalize among broad swaths of today’s Republican Party.

By the time he announced his retirement from the Legislature in 2019, Stickland was a folk hero among the state’s grassroots conservatives, and quickly parlayed his acclaim into a job leading a prolific political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that has sought to purge the Texas GOP of moderates and push the party toward more hardline anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigration stances.

With Stickland at the helm, Defend Texas Liberty has unapologetically courted controversy, elevating a stable of far-right activists while doling out $3 million to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick before he presided over the impeachment trial of their longtime ally, Attorney General Ken Paxton. In the wake of Paxton’s acquittal, Stickland vowed scorched-earth primary campaigns against House Speaker Dade Phelan and other Republicans, and prepared to cleanse the party of anyone not in lockstep with his hardline, far-right vision.

“You and your band of RINOs are now on notice,” Stickland tweeted at Phelan amid Paxton’s acquittal in September. “You will be held accountable for this entire sham. We will never stop.”

Stickland was still gearing up for retribution three weeks later, when The Texas Tribune reported that he had hosted notorious white supremacist and antisemitic internet provocateur Nick Fuentes at his office for nearly seven hours — a major scandal that rapidly escalated Republican infighting, raised concerns about the party’s proximity to neo-Nazis, led to new revelations about racist trolls in Stickland’s orbit and prompted unsuccessful attempts to drive him from the party.

Four months later, neither Stickland nor his group has explained the meeting with Fuentes. Stickland declined multiple interview requests and did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story.

On the forums that Stickland once trolled, though, the reaction was feigned shock. Whitmer — who’d followed Stickland’s meteoric rise to power — said he was similarly unsurprised where life took his old Warcraft teammate.

“Once I saw how he acted and carried himself, how he spoke, the waves he caused, I knew that was just the adult version of RaTTy,” Whitmer said. “He may have grown up, but he never really changed.”

“I AM A LEGEND”

Stickland was born in Plano in 1983 and raised in the Southern Baptist tradition. At 14, he began visiting online fantasy football boards, quickly adapting to the casual misogyny, homophobia and racism that were often characteristic of early forum culture.

Throughout the 2000s, Stickland was a bombastic and committed member of the forums, using his more than 3,300 posts to troll his detractors and regale his fellow fantasy footballers with demeaning stories about “dumb focking Asians” and “half naked wimmens” with “sensational knockers” or, in one instance, give a play-by-play of his panicked attempt to pass a drug test for a job via an over-the-counter detox drink that gave him a blue tongue and “bunghole in disarray.”

In Warcraft circles, he was a persistent antagonist, said Whitmer, who provided a link to one 2006 outburst in which Stickland appears to tell his “homosexual,” “euro trash” and “terrorist” opponents to slit their wrists before adding his signature sign-off: “I AM A LEGEND.”

“That was Jonathan,” Whitmer said. “Everyone knew that if you played RaTTy, you were in for a barrage of insults.”

Meanwhile, on the fantasy football forums, Stickland continued to provide his online compatriots with mundane life updates that showed a different side of him: That of a new husband and father, struggling to save money for the down payment on a modest home while making two-hour, roundtrip drives between his pest control job and the apartment he shared with his new wife, infant child and dog. It was a rough stretch, but Stickland seemed content.

“I do enjoy it quite a bit,” he said of his job in September 2007, before then advising other fantasy football users on how to combat pest infestations or use fox urine to scare away skunks.

Then, in December 2007, Stickland tumbled down a fateful rabbit hole. “I decided yesterday after some research and watching some clips on YouTube that I am now voting for Ron Paul 08! Just in case anyone gives a shiat,” he wrote about the Republican congressman from Texas who had previously run for president as a Libertarian.

Two days later, Stickland was back to his old habits, bragging about infiltrating an unsuspecting forum of insect hobbyists, where he posted a link to Lemon Party, a graphic porn website that was a favorite of 2000-era internet trolls.

A few weeks later, Stickland returned to the forums to announce that he had given his first political donation — to Paul — and volunteered to canvas for his presidential campaign. Stickland was hooked by Paul’s promises to, in Stickland’s words, “abolish the IRS,” “build a fence and shoot anyone who crosses it,” “end abortion rights'' and “limit government by cutting almost every single board we could name.”

As Paul’s longshot bid faltered in the months after, Stickland grew increasingly angry about the two-party system that he believed existed only to protect establishment politicians and encroach on civil liberties.

“We will not hand you the White House when you attempt to shove ###### down my throat in the form of a John McCain,” he wrote in one heated, February 2008 argument with a fellow fantasy footballer. “Piss off and give me my party back.”

His rage only grew over the next two years, as was clear from his occasional, all-caps rants about government surveillance or his warnings of a coming apocalypse for which Americans must prepare to defend themselves.

Then, in 2011, Stickland attended a town hall in Tarrant County with U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, and, in a move that would change his life, decided to confront the Republican congressman over his recent vote to raise the debt limit. Also in the crowd that day was Julie McCarty, then-leader of Tarrant County’s nascent Tea Party. A few days after, Stickland later recalled, he was eating a midnight bowl of ice cream when he received an email from McCarty, asking if he’d consider running for office.

“My wife was leaning over me and started laughing,” he later told the Austin American-Statesman. “Then she said, ‘Crap, you might be able to do that.’”

Stickland prayed on it, agreed to throw his hat in the ring and started knocking on more than 7,000 doors — losing 50 pounds along the way. Backed by McCarty and other Tea Party-aligned groups, he cruised to victory in the Republican primary and then trounced his opponent, a Libertarian Party candidate, in the 2012 general election for Texas House District 92.

Even he was surprised by his fast rise, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had never imagined “writing bills and amendments and all that stuff,” and was "watching quite a bit of video to see what a state representative actually does.”

He was 29, and headed to Austin with a promise to leave with the chamber’s most conservative voting record.

Bridge builder, bomb thrower

In the first weeks of the 2013 session, Stickland cast himself as a bridge builder, unwavering in his opposition to abortion or government expansion but still committed to bipartisanship. He collaborated with liberal, pro-abortion rights Sen. Wendy Davis on legislation to increase excused absences for schoolchildren with military parents; and in an interview at the time, he said Rep. Mary González — an El Paso Democrat and the House’s first openly-LGBTQ+ woman — was one of his “best friends.”

“I'm trying not to get too wrapped up in some of the political stuff,” Stickland said on his first day as a lawmaker. "Right now, I'm just focused on making a lot of friends, trying not to make any enemies, and talking to people about my legislative agenda and building coalitions."

In a recent interview, González acknowledged she was once friendly with Stickland, and that the two bonded as young newcomers to the statehouse. A decade later, she sees their relationship much differently.

“He capitalized on bipartisanship back then, but now attacks anyone who works towards bipartisanship,” she said.

As he reached across the aisle, Stickland also quickly showed his conservative bona fides, proving unafraid to critique veteran Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Joe Straus. Stickland proposed legislation to give state tax breaks to “religiously-based businesses,” including Hobby Lobby, that faced fines for not providing contraception to workers under the Affordable Care Act. He joined dozens of GOP lawmakers in demanding that the Boy Scouts of America uphold its ban on gay members. He slammed his fellow Republican lawmakers as hypocrites after they sought a new law that’d allow them, but not everyday citizens, to carry handguns into hospitals, churches and bars. To the applause of civil liberty groups, Stickland successfully pushed for an amendment that tightened law enforcement’s access to private citizens’ emails.

And he hired as his chief of staff Tony McDonald, a recent University of Texas at Austin graduate who’d spent his college career trolling campus liberals with stunts such as an “affirmative action bake sale” that charged white students more for goods. Stickland stuck with McDonald amid criticism for blog posts in which he called for “literacy tests” for Black Obama voters, among other posts that were criticized as racist or homophobic, but described by McDonald as “hilariously awesome conservative things.”

By the end of his first session, Stickland had delivered on his promise to be the chamber’s most conservative member. He’d carved out his reputation as a sterling libertarian, eager to kill anything that didn’t align with the “liberty factory” that he nicknamed his office.

And, perhaps more importantly, he decided he preferred bomb-throwing to bridge-building.

"I didn't come down here to make a ton of friends,” Stickland said as the 2013 session winded down. “I came down here to fight for what I believe in.”

Big money

The next year, Stickland again cruised to reelection despite strong opposition from the state’s largest law enforcement groups, one of which labeled him “one of the worst state representatives in Texas history” over his opposition to a ban on the sale of the hallucinogen salvia, and to a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for an adult to “knowingly cause physical contact with a child that a reasonable person would regard as offensive and sexual in nature.”

He returned to Austin in 2015 ready to outrage and battle. That session, Stickland was the lone vote opposed to a bill that made “revenge porn” a felony. He was removed from a committee meeting and later investigated by the Texas Rangers for listing witnesses who were not in Austin as supporters of his bill to ban red light cameras. When Planned Parenthood supporters rallied at the Capitol and tried to lobby lawmakers against cuts to a program that provided free breast and cervical cancer screenings to low-income women, Stickland hung a sign outside his office that proclaimed him a “FORMER FETUS.” And, to the ire of both sides of the aisle, he used the House floor to grandstand and prod lawmakers, later pushing video clips of those exchanges out to his social media followers.

In 2016, Stickland again won reelection, despite some of his past catching up to him. During the campaign, his opponent, local pastor Scott Fisher, unearthed some of Stickland’s old forum posts — including one in which the 25-year-old Stickland said “rape is non existent in marriage.” Fisher’s campaign also sought to link Stickland’s comments to his votes against expanding the rights of sexual assault survivors, which Stickland called “ludicrous.”

Stickland apologized for the posts, saying he had “been a different person for a very long time” and that it was “difficult to look back at how careless I was on the fantasy forums.”

The scandal did not shake his support among the grassroots and McCarty, who criticized Fisher for “attacking a brother in Christ for his past sins.”

By then, Stickland had already cemented his standing among grassroots conservatives, said Zachary Maxwell, who met Stickland around 2014 while working on the campaign of Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville.

“He was seen as a uniter — somebody who’d been in the trenches for a long time, who knew the ins and outs and could aggregate information and donations,” recalled Maxwell, who later worked for Rep. Mike Lang, the then-leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. “I don’t think all that was true, but he certainly made people believe that.”

One of Stickland’s appeals, Maxwell said, was his mastery of “moneybombs” in which a handful of megadonors would match — or sometimes triple — the amount of money donated by smaller donors in one-day fundraising blitzes. The strategy helped Stickland raise gobs of money while touting himself as a grassroots, small-donor-supported outsider, Maxwell said.

Take, for example, an Oct. 14, 2016, “moneybomb” for Stickland: Ahead of the fundraiser, Stickland promoted the one-day drive by posting videos of him arguing against an ethics reform bill in the House that had been opposed by megadonors and dark money groups during the previous legislative session. After the 24-hour "moneybomb" ended, Stickland touted on Facebook that his campaign had raised $299,000 from 367 donors — no doubt an impressive haul, but less so upon closer examination. Campaign finance disclosures from that day show that roughly two-thirds of the funds came from just five ultrarich businessmen and conservative donors, led by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the two West Texas oil billionaires who now fund Defend Texas Liberty.

Dunn, Wilks and the other three donors were at the time bankrolling a different political action committee, Empower Texans, that by 2015 had emerged as a major force in the Texas Legislature, donating millions of dollars to ultraconservative candidates — including Paxton as he successfully ran for attorney general — and pressing lawmakers to attack House leadership, namely then-Speaker Straus, from the right.

Stickland was Empower Texans' man in the House: During his first two years as a legislator, he received just $3,700 from the group and its funders. That number climbed to nearly $200,000 between 2013 and 2014. And from 2016 through 2018, they gave Stickland more than $850,000 — compared to $508,000 from all other donors combined. By the end of his career, Empower Texans and its main financiers gave Stickland $1.15 million — nearly half of the total contributions he received over his time as a lawmaker.

Maxwell, who later worked for Empower Texans, recalled a shift in Stickland as his ties to the group deepened. Both publicly and behind the scenes, Maxwell said, Stickland became a “total nuisance,” far more concerned with garnering outrage and annoying fellow legislators than he was with helping grassroots conservatives.

“At some point he realized this is a game,” Maxwell said. “He found that there was money in it as long as you keep your head down and beat the drum.”

In 2019, Stickland passed his very first bill — a ban on red light cameras — and soon after announced that he would not seek reelection, saying that he had "determined it is not in the Lord's will."

"Instead," he told supporters in an email, "I intend to dedicate more time to my family, my church, and my business."

Defend Texas Liberty

His retirement from the Legislature came at a pivotal moment for the state’s ultraconservative movement, which by then had been plagued by infighting and minor scandals. In 2019, McCarty was heavily criticized for Facebook posts in which she said she could "certainly understand" the motives of the racist gunman who murdered 22 people at an El Paso Walmart that year. Her group rebranded as the True Texas Project around the same time, and continues to work closely with Stickland.

In 2020, McDonald — the former Stickland chief of staff who went on to work for Empower Texans — was roundly criticized after the accidental release of unedited podcast audio in which he and Empower Texans vice president Cary Cheshire mocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s use of a wheelchair. Both were suspended. Not long after, Empower Texans was officially dissolved and its media website, Texas Scorecard, was spun off into a separate entity.

In March 2020, Defend Texas Liberty was registered with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Since then, Defend Texas Liberty and Stickland have functioned as the north star in a constellation of groups, movements and political offices that have received tens of millions of dollars from Dunn and Wilks, two West Texas oil tycoons who were key funders of Empower Texans. In 2022, Stickland also founded a consulting firm, Pale Horse Strategies, which has since received more than $830,000 from Defend Texas Liberty.

With Stickland at the helm, the state’s far right has vowed scorched-earth campaigns against those in the Texas GOP who they claim are RINOs — including sterling conservatives and one-time allies who’ve publicly defied Defend Texas Liberty, such as Reps. Briscoe Cain and Jeff Leach.

Chief among their enemies has been House Speaker Dade Phelan, who Stickland and his allies have perpetually accused of working with Democrats to hurt fellow Republicans. At the same time that he’s lobbed such accusations, Stickland has done exactly that — repeatedly trying to enlist a 20-year-old abortion rights activist, Olivia Julianna, to “collab” or amplify attacks against Phelan to her more than 1 million followers on various social media platforms.

“Thought we might both be able to appreciate Phelan stinks,” Stickland wrote in a message to Julianna along with a link to a video that claimed the speaker was drunk while presiding over House business in May.

“Get bent,” she replied, according to screenshots of direct messages she provided the Tribune.

Meanwhile, Stickland has continued to place a preeminence on outrage and trolling: He still works closely with McDonald; and gave a bonus to Shelby Griesinger, the current Defend Texas Liberty treasurer who has shared QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories, after some of her social media posts were criticized as racist.

“Anytime progressive leftists are losing their minds I know you’ve done well,” Stickland wrote in an email to Griesinger, a screenshot of which she included on her TikTok. “Keep kicking the hornets next… Your Christmas bonus just got bigger.”

Stickland was similarly pleased after Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, posted a series of openly antisemitic screeds on X in 2022 that ended with him promising to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

“The left is freaking out, will overreact, and make things worse. Thankful for those 'challenging authority,' by asking questions,” Stickland wrote in a post the same day that tagged Ye and Elon Musk, who at the time was being criticized for X's failure to combat skyrocketing antisemitism.

Stickland's behavior continued through the end of last year: He and his allies recruited Kyle Rittenhouse, the gunman who fatally shot two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, to work for Pale Horse Strategies; hired two far-right activists with documented histories of antisemitic and white nationalist views; controversially partnered with a shadowy company that pays Gen Z influencers to do undisclosed political marketing; and supported anti-immigration activists who sent fortune cookies to lawmakers amid debate over a bill to ban Chinese dual citizens from owning property in Texas and, in December, sent mailers to voters in Phelan’s district that shamed him for associating with Muslims.

The tactics have consistently been criticized by fellow conservatives, who say that Stickland and his allies care far less about advancing conservative policy than they do creating chaos and bringing in “yes men” such as Bryan Slaton, the former Royse City representative who was removed from the House last year after getting a 19-year-old aide drunk and having sex with her.

“They do not want people that are actually effective,” said Sheena Rodriguez, founder of Alliance for a Safe Texas, which advocates for stronger border security. “The people that they put forward all look the same. They all sound the same. They're all nuts. They're not serious people.”

Rodgriguez first got involved with the state’s grassroots movement around 2020, when she attended a training held by True Texas Project. She eventually spun off her own group and, in late 2021, said she was recruited by Defend Texas Liberty to endorse Don Huffines, the former state senator and businessman who was challenging Abbott in the Republican primary. Rodriguez said she initially planned to endorse Huffines’ hardline anti-immigration campaign, but decided to stay neutral. Not long after, she said, she received a phone call from someone in the Defend Texas Liberty orbit, who told her that she’d been branded as “uncontrollable” by Stickland.

A few months later, she said, she was in the exhibit hall at the Texas GOP convention when she stumbled upon a booth with promotional materials and talking points that were noticeably similar to her group’s. Confused, Rodriguez said she introduced herself to the young, bearded man there, who identified himself as Chris Russo, founder of a new organization called Texans For Strong Borders.

“‘Who is funding this?’” she recalled asking Russo. “He was like, ‘The same people behind” Empower Texans.

Russo did not respond to a request for comment.

"RATMSTR"

On a sunny Friday morning a year and a half after that Texas GOP convention, Russo steered his pickup truck into the parking lot of Pale Horse Strategies’ remote Tarrant County office. His passenger seat was empty; in the back seat, a scandalous passenger: Nick Fuentes.

[Leader of anti-immigration group Texans for Strong Borders also runs anonymous, hate-filled social media accounts]

By then, six years had passed since Fuentes attended the deadly “Unite the Right” rally at which tiki torch-waving neo-Nazis and fascists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and leaving several counterprotesters maimed and bloodied. Soon after, Fuentes dropped out of Boston University to focus full time on his racist YouTube show, intermixing his antisemitic screeds with irony and humor that quickly drew a large following of young, far-right hatemongers united by their disdain for women and Jews.

Mirroring the Defend Texas Liberty playbook, Fuentes soon focused his energy on those within the GOP, hoping to pull the party and mainstream acceptability further to his views by attacking others from the right.

The strategy was “a hostile takeover of the Republican Party,” to quote Laura Loomer, a prominent white nationalist conspiracy theorist and Fuentes collaborator who Stickland praised in December.

When Fuentes arrived in Texas in October, he was greeted by old friends and young followers embedded in the Defend Texas Liberty orbit. Among them: Russo, who ran anonymous, bigoted social media accounts as his group helped push anti-immigration policies that were adopted by Texas lawmakers last year; and Ella Maulding, a die-hard Fuentes fan who'd recently parlayed her far-right online celebrity into a job coordinating social media for Pale Horse clients.

There, at the Pale Horse offices, Maulding stood in the parking lot making videos for Texans For Strong Borders while Rittenhouse and others unloaded furniture from a U-Haul and Fuentes and Russo sat inside. Later in the day, Stickland emerged from the building’s side door and climbed into his truck. His hair was grown long and and beard disheveled — preparation for an upcoming role as the Jewish narrator in a local play depicting the life of Jesus Christ — and Stickland was almost unrecognizable as he steered past a car with a reporter inside.

The truck’s license plate left no doubt who was driving.

“RATMSTR,” it read.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Former Rep. Mayra Flores accused of cribbing others’ pictures of Mexican food as her own cooking

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Robert Downen 

The Texas Tribune

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

In a bizarre micro-scandal that some have dubbed “GrubGate,” a former GOP congresswoman who is running for her old seat in South Texas is being accused of routinely stealing photos of Mexican food from other social media accounts and passing them off as her own cooking.

Earlier this week, Mayra Flores, the first Mexican-born woman to serve in Congress, posted a photo on social media that she described as “gorditas de masa" with the caption, “the Ranch life with family is the best.”

Soon after, a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointed out that that the image was previously posted on a Facebook page, “Visit Guyana,” in March 2022. Others said that the food in the photo was not gorditas de masa. That prompted the conservative website Current Revolt to dig further into Flores’ social media accounts, where they found numerous other posts in which Flores used others’ photos of campfire cooking or homemade tortillas to illustrate her own idyllic life on a ranch.

“As a proud Latina who knows how to cook, homemade Mexican food tastes better from a gas stove,” she wrote alongside one photo of eggs and tortillas on what appears to be a wood-burning stove. The photo was initially posted on Facebook in 2021 by a Spanish-language magazine.

The Tribune separately reviewed Flores’ Instagram and found at least two such instances in the last year, including one post from July in which she shared a photo of meat and tortillas on a grill with the caption, “Joe Biden is not invited to the carne asada” in both English and Spanish. A reverse image search found that the exact photo was posted a year prior by a Facebook page for tourism in Tamaulipas — the state in Mexico where Flores was born.

In another post, she praised the “simple things in life” like a “good breakfast” alongside a photo that was first published two years ago by a Mexican food photographer.

In a text message on Wednesday, Flores said it wasn’t her “intention to mislead.”

“The photo simply reminded me of my upbringing in Mexico and childhood,” she said. “I deleted the tweet to clear up any confusion. I actually spend my Christmas at ranch with my In-Laws. Happy New Year!”

Asked to specify which of the photos she was referring to, Flores suggested that the Tribune focus on “the border crisis.”

She also changed her handle on X amid the criticism and has been blocking people on social media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday who have accused her of falsely passing the photos of cooking off as her own.

“The George Santos of the [Rio Grande Valley],” wrote the campaign for U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, who Flores is currently challenging.

Flores is running to retake the South Texas seat that she initially won in a June 2022 special election. Her win was seen by the GOP as a sign of momentum among heavily Hispanic voters there. But redistricting made the seat more favorable for Democrats in the November election, and Flores lost to Gonzalez.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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How Gov. Greg Abbott lost a yearlong fight to create school vouchers

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By Patrick Svitek, Zach Despart, and Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune

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Sharing the stage at the Brazos Christian School gymnasium in Bryan, Rep. John Raney rose from his seat next to Gov. Greg Abbott during a pro-school voucher rally and lavished praise on the governor’s education agenda.

“Gov. Abbott understands the value of a good education and the importance of giving parents control over their children’s education,” Raney said at the March event, adding that the governor “spent nearly every night” helping his daughter do her homework and that the first lady is a former teacher and principal.

Then, Abbott took to his lectern and reciprocated his admiration for Raney, saying the College Station Republican “represents Brazos County extraordinarily well.”

It seemed like a good sign for Abbott, who was in the midst of barnstorming the state to rally support for school vouchers in Texas. In previous legislative sessions, Raney had signaled in test votes that he was against any measure to use public dollars for students to attend private schools — like the one he was speaking at that night.

But 254 days — and four excruciating special sessions — later, Raney would lead the effort on the House floor to defeat the very proposal that brought the men together that evening. The so-called “Raney amendment” to strike vouchers out of an education omnibus bill in November was the final knell for Abbott’s 18-month crusade for school vouchers.

It also meant that public schools would not receive the $7.6 billion boost that Abbott had made conditional on the approval of vouchers.

The typically cautious governor has poured more political capital into vouchers than anything else in his eight years in office. He campaigned for reelection last year on the proposal, declared it a top legislative priority and played hardball — using teacher raises and public school funding increases as negotiating chips, vetoing bills by the GOP holdouts and threatening primary challenges to get his way.

He picked an ambitious fight, given the House’s historic resistance to school vouchers, but he thought the ground was ripe for a breakthrough.

Yet after a year of negotiations, threats and politicking, Abbott ended 2023 vexed by a bloc of 21 Republican holdouts who prevented a bill from reaching his desk. It wasn’t particularly close for Abbott, despite the fact that he routinely projected false optimism throughout the year.

Raney later said he introduced Abbott at the pro-voucher event because it is customary when the governor visits a lawmaker’s district. But the perceived betrayal by Raney — and other House Republicans who joined with Democrats to kill the education subsidy — has set Abbott on a warpath in the March primary, determined to install more lawmakers who will vote his way.

The Texas Tribune interviewed more than a dozen people, including lawmakers, staffers, lobbyists and others involved in voucher negotiations this year. Almost all of them declined to speak on the record because they were not authorized to discuss the private negotiations or because they feared political consequences.

According to their accounts, Abbott primarily failed because of his refusal to compromise on a universal program, open to every Texas student — instead of a more pared-down program for disadvantaged students. That was a line that the rural GOP holdouts could not be convinced to cross. Abbott also underestimated just how much those opponents considered their voucher opposition as a political article of faith, hardened by years of campaigning on it. And as his negotiating tactics grew more heavy-handed, he ossified some of the intraparty opposition.

"This is an issue, for the people who voted against a voucher, they are going to be against a voucher no matter what you do to it," said Will Holleman, senior director of government relations at Raise Your Hand Texas, a pro-public education advocacy group. These members, Holleman added, have a “muscle memory you’re not going to get away from.”

One House Republican close to the negotiations said Abbott was “a little overly optimistic.”

“A lot of House members — certainly rural Republican House members — would have suggested that he miscalculated,” the member said.

A hopeful spring

Abbott had been something of a fair-weather school voucher proponent before 2022, but as he ran for a third term, he saw the ground shifting. The COVID-19 pandemic had soured parents on public schools, and Republicans nationwide were seizing opportunities to become the party of “parental rights” after decades of Democrats owning education as an issue.

Abbott himself was also eyeing a larger national profile — potentially a 2024 presidential run — and was routinely being compared to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, where school vouchers with universal eligibility became law in March.

In Texas, the Senate, which had passed a voucher bill in 2017, could be relied on to deliver again. But Abbott knew he had his work cut out for him in the House, since a large majority of House Republicans in 2021 opposed vouchers in a symbolic vote. Many of those voucher opponents represented rural districts and were otherwise considered allies whom he had previously endorsed.

Abbott knew he needed to show them that their constituents also wanted vouchers.

“I think he went into this completely eyes wide open, completely aware of the battle,” said Mandy Drogin, a veteran voucher activist who works at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the influential conservative think tank in Austin.

Starting in late January, Abbott and Drogin crisscrossed the state hosting nearly a dozen “Parent Empowerment Nights” at private schools in lawmakers’ backyards, pitching vouchers in the form of education savings accounts for every child in Texas. The state would deposit taxpayer funds in the accounts, and parents could use the money to cover private school costs, including tuition and books.

Drogin was impressed by Abbott’s persistence at the events. At Grace Community School in Tyler, a storm was moving in and they were told they had to end their rally early, Drogin said, but Abbott refused.

“He was not worried about getting home that night,” she said, “and he stayed in that gym and met every single parent to hear their story.”

Abbott invited the anti-voucher Republicans to join him at events in their districts. That put those members in a tough position. Do they attend and be seen as supportive of Abbott’s crusade, or do they snub the governor entirely?

Rep. Hugh Shine, R-Temple, appeared at one of Abbott’s earliest Parent Empowerment Nights, and like Raney, ultimately voted to thwart the governor’s priority.

Back at the Capitol, Abbott met individually with over 50 House Republicans during the regular session and discussed school vouchers. His schedule shows it was a wide range of members, from the pro-voucher faithful to at least 10 of the 21 Republicans who ultimately voted for the voucher-killing amendment, like Raney and Shine.

In those meetings, Abbott made clear how important the issue was to him personally.

Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican who had run for election as an anti-voucher Republican, told Abbott he remained “extremely skeptical” of vouchers in their meeting, even after introducing Abbott at a Parent Empowerment Night in his district. He would later flip in support of vouchers.

The first major gauge of Abbott’s influence arrived in April as the House considered the budget. It had become a biennial tradition for Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, to propose an amendment that prohibited any funding for voucher programs. It was seen as a symbolic vote because the amendment did not make it into the final budget, but this time, it took on new meaning amid Abbott’s push.

Abbott’s chief of staff, Gardner Pate, and legislative affairs director, Shayne Woodard, spent the days before that vote feeling out House Republicans. Abbott himself paid a rare visit to the House floor two days before. If you’re still undecided on the policy, they told members, vote present.

Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, chair of the House Public Education Committee, delivered a similar plea on the floor. The amendment to ban vouchers passed 86-52, with 11 members registered as “present not voting,” including Harris.

Abbott’s staff was pleased. It was progress. In 2021, the amendment passed 115-29, with 49 Republicans voting to ban vouchers in the test vote. This time, only 24 Republicans took that same stand.

Anti-voucher advocates had mixed emotions. They won, but the governor’s lobbying blitz and the shifting numbers suggested the amendment would not be the usual nail in the coffin.

A voucher bill never reached the House floor during the regular session, but in its final weeks there was some hope.

In early May, key negotiators were closing in on a bill that had Abbott’s blessing. Buckley, a convert who opposed vouchers in 2021, tried to call a snap committee meeting to advance legislation, but state Rep. Ernest Bailes, a Republican from Shepherd and outspoken voucher opponent, stood up and rallied the House to deny the panel permission to meet.

The procedural attack worked, and it showed perhaps for the first time that the anti-voucher GOP faction was unafraid to fight back against Abbott.

In response, Buckley devised a scaled-back bill, but Abbott threatened to veto it on the eve of a committee hearing. The problem? It limited eligibility to students with disabilities or those who attended an F-rated campus.

It was far short of the governor’s demand for a universal program, a sticking point that would only intensify in the coming months.

The summer slump

By the end of the regular session, Abbott’s voucher push was overshadowed by the House’s impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton. Vouchers fell to the back burner again as Abbott called a first — and then second — special session to address property tax relief.

From Abbott’s perspective, the voucher battle would resume in late fall.

Abbott continued to remind lawmakers he was serious. As he went on a bill-vetoing spree to try to force a property-tax deal out of the two chambers, he also vetoed at least a dozen bills with the reasoning that they could wait until “after education freedom is passed.”

Anti-voucher Rep. Travis Clardy, R-Nacogdoches, was among those who had a bill vetoed, but he only dug in. He told a Republican group back home that he would continue voting against vouchers, and while he was willing to listen to Abbott’s pitch, he did not take kindly to threats.

Pressure was also increasing on House Speaker Dade Phelan, himself a Republican from a rural district, who had kept his distance from Abbott’s voucher push. Going into 2023, he knew the votes probably were not there, and saw little incentive to take the lead on a proposal that fractured his GOP majority.

That is not to say he was uninterested in ending the yearlong standoff. When he had a rare meeting with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the final days of the regular session, he suggested the Senate add vouchers to a public school funding bill that was still pending in the upper chamber. The Senate obliged, but the bill died in final inter-chamber negotiations.

Phelan tried something new when members were called back for the first special session, appointing a select committee to consider vouchers and other education issues. Its 15 members included some of the most firm opponents of vouchers in either party, leaving the impression that if a proposal could make it through the committee, it could pass the full House.

Asked about the prospects of vouchers in August, Phelan continued to hedge, saying it would come down to “members voting their districts.”

“There’s always hope,” he said, “but no guarantee.”

Vouchers get a vote

During a call with pastors previewing the third special session — when vouchers were set to take the center stage — Abbott shared a glimpse of optimism: "The votes seem to be lining up."

But he also offered a warning for House Republicans: They could choose “the easy way” — getting a bill to his desk — or “the hard way” — facing his wrath in the primaries.

Behind the scenes, Abbott’s office was attempting a reset with the House. Who did they need to negotiate with to get a deal? Phelan’s office pointed them to Buckley and two of the speaker’s lieutenants — Reps. Will Metcalf and Greg Bonnen — plus Rep. Ken King of Canadian.

Metcalf and Bonnen had previously signaled support for vouchers in test votes, but King stood out. About a year earlier, he vowed voucher bills would be “dead on arrival.”

Despite his past rhetoric, King was seen as open to a compromise on vouchers, in exchange for more money for schools. But he eventually voted for the Raney amendment.

Those members relayed their discussions with the governor’s office to another group of House Republicans that included additional holdouts.

Amid the negotiations, Abbott’s office held firm on a few aspects of the proposal. They wanted to cap enrollment in the program based on available funding, not number of students, and they balked at requests to add a sunset, which would have required legislative approval to renew it periodically. Either idea would just mean more high-stakes wrangling with lawmakers in the coming years.

As talks continued, Abbott kept up his statewide tour, telling parents in San Antonio that "too many" House Republicans were claiming they were not hearing from their voters about the issue.

Rep. Glenn Rogers, R-Graford, was firmly opposed throughout the year but nonetheless asked his staff to analyze constituent correspondence during the third and fourth special sessions. Eighty-eight percent were against vouchers, he said.

Abbott, meanwhile, was exuding increasing confidence that a deal was nigh. Three days into the third special session, he declared at a pro-voucher conference in Austin that the House was “on the 1-yard-line.” But when Buckley filed his legislation a week later, Abbott rejected it, saying it was inconsistent with their negotiations. Abbott called Phelan and told him as much in a blunt call.

The negotiators went back to the drawing board and came up with a proposal Abbott could support. It paired vouchers with even more money for public schools.

But there was a problem. Abbott had pledged to consider items like teacher bonuses only after the Legislature approved vouchers. School funding and raises were not included on the special session call so legislators were prohibited from considering them.

Then, as the end of the third special session was nearing, Abbott curiously declared victory, issuing a statement saying he had “reached an agreement” with Phelan on school choice for Texas families. The statement surprised Phelan, who considered the only deal to be to expand the call, according to a source familiar with his thinking. He knew it was the only way for vouchers to have even a fighting chance at that point.

The issue was left dangling as the third session ended.

By the start of the fourth special session, House leadership knew it needed to get a bill to the floor, no matter its chances. It would be a tough vote for some members, but the alternative was endless special sessions — potentially closer to the primary — and the House was already struggling to maintain quorum.

Buckley introduced a voucher bill paired with bonuses for teachers and increased per-student spending on public schools, a $7.6 billion sweetener intended to entice the holdouts. It was sent to the House select committee, which held a hearing and voted it out along party lines, including with anti-voucher Republicans voting for it.

For the first time in recent history, a voucher bill was headed to the House floor.

It was not long after the committee vote that any momentum was dampened. The anti-voucher Republicans had only voted for it in committee because they wanted to get it to the floor, and they knew there would be an amendment to remove the voucher program.

Abbott promised to veto the bill and keep calling special sessions if that happened. But after months of roller coaster negotiations and increasing political threats, the anti-voucher Republicans were ready to call his bluff.

By this point, some involved in the debate questioned whether Abbott still believed he could get a bill to his desk — or if he was just looking for a floor vote that could crystallize battle lines for the primary. The day before the bill was set to reach the floor, Abbott’s top political adviser, Dave Carney, sent out a playful tweet asking if others had noticed that the “quality of new candidates in TX [is] higher then normal?”

To carry the voucher-killing amendment, GOP holdouts settled on Raney, who had already announced he was not seeking reelection. Knowing he had to give his fellow Republicans a case they could make to primary voters, he told them he believed in his heart that “using taxpayer dollars to fund an entitlement program is not conservative.”

The amendment passed 84-63, with 21 Republicans in favor — almost the same bloc of opposition that existed earlier in the year (75 votes was the threshold for passage).

The House went into recess and dozens of members piled into the back hall to debate their next steps. Should they still pass the bill without the voucher program? Billions of dollars in public education funding were still at stake, after all. After a somewhat chaotic debate, they decided not to, realizing that sending Abbott a bill he had already threatened to veto would only inflame the situation further.

About an hour after the House adjourned that day, Abbott gathered in his office with roughly a dozen pro-voucher House Republicans, including members of House leadership. The mood was somber, and a frustrated Abbott wanted to know what the game plan was. Buckley and others in attendance promised to work around the clock to salvage the bill in the coming days.

But what was clear to most everyone in the room was that the 21 holdouts were not moving. It was time to go home and let primary voters weigh in.

Abbott’s dealbreaker

The ending was somewhat surprising to voucher supporters. Some expected the House to pass the bill with vouchers stripped out, sending it to the Senate, which would have added it back in. Then both chambers would have hashed out a final compromise which may have included some version of vouchers.

“What we had been told was that, look, ‘These guys need to show that they're fighting,’” said Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands.

But for the rural Republicans at the frontlines of the voucher battle, Abbott’s insistence on universal eligibility doomed the effort from the start.

“It was just a bridge too far,” said one House Republican close to the negotiations.

Abbott had repeatedly said in public that he wanted to give “every parent” the opportunity to find the best education for their child. Some Republicans thought it was just a bargaining position.

They were wrong. Abbott and other school choice advocates considered the concept of “parental rights” to be absolute — subject to “no imaginary boundary,” as Drogin put it in an interview.

Furthermore, they were confident they could successfully push for it in this political environment. That was crystallized during one committee hearing when Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, asked Scott Jensen, a national pro-voucher lobbyist, if he could support a program whose eligibility was limited to “only poor kids.”

“We used to, in states all across the country, when that was the best we could do for kids in the state,” Jensen replied. “But now we have found there is building public support all across the country for these programs to be broad-based.”

When it came to the politics of vouchers, the holdouts also had a lot to think about. Many of them previously campaigned against vouchers — proudly so in some cases — and it was hard to consider reversing themselves.

Abbott’s campaign commissioned polling in 21 Republican districts and presented it to members, trying to emphasize how popular the policy was back home. Abbott himself constantly cited how nearly 90% of primary voters statewide approved a pro-voucher ballot proposition in 2022.

Holdouts were skeptical of the polling language and found their personal experience with constituents more convincing.

Abbott got at least one House Republican to square his past opposition with the new political landscape. Harris, the Palestine Republican, acknowledged in a statement after the Raney amendment vote that he was first elected in 2018 as “the anti-voucher candidate.” But he ultimately became moved by the stories he heard in the House Public Education Committee of parents desperate for new schooling options for their kids.

“For those who say that you cannot support both public education and school choice, we will have to agree to disagree,” Harris wrote. “I hope you will continue to vote for me, but if you don’t, that’s OK.”

Despite such conversions, voucher opponents never felt a sea change between the regular session and the final vote. But they knew Abbott was pulling out all the stops, so they remained vigilant.

Every Democrat present eventually voted for the Raney amendment, but that was not always guaranteed.

Rumors were spreading that Abbott was courting several Democrats — perhaps as a negotiating tactic to build pressure on GOP holdouts — and the House Democratic Caucus was especially watchful of at least a couple of its members. Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins of San Antonio, the founder of a San Antonio charter school, had publicly urged fellow Democrats to be open to compromise if vouchers were inevitable.

The Democratic caucus chair, Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, had tapped two colleagues from Austin, Reps. Gina Hinojosa — his former rival for caucus chair — and James Talarico, to help lead their voucher opposition.

The caucus went all-out to consistently message against vouchers, but when it came time for the Raney amendment, they laid low. In a memo the day before the vote, caucus leaders asked members to “allow our Republican colleagues to conduct this debate amongst themselves.”

The rural Republicans were staring down a tough vote, the caucus reasoned, and the best path to defeating vouchers was avoiding the appearance of a Democratic-led fight.

Primary season

While Abbott has held open the possibility he could call a fifth special session to push through vouchers, he has more recently turned his attention to replacing the holdouts. As of Thursday, he had endorsed six primary challengers to House Republicans who voted for the voucher-killing amendment.

Abbott has zeroed in on the voucher issue so much that he is backing primary challengers who have politically opposed him in the past. For example, he has backed Rogers’ opponent, Mike Olcott, who donated nearly $30,000 to multiple Abbott primary challengers in 2022.

“I’ve supported the governor on every single legislative priority … except this one,” Rogers said. “He’s always supported me until this came along, and all of a sudden he’s supporting somebody who is an enemy. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Abbott faces several political headwinds. House Republicans are mindful that the last time he significantly meddled in their primaries in 2018, only one out of the three Abbott-backed challengers prevailed. And this time, he has to contend with sometimes dueling endorsements from Paxton, who cares much more about unseating the Republicans who voted to impeach him.

“I am just gonna say it,” Michelle Smith, Paxton’s longtime political aide, posted recently on social media. “I support school choice, but in this primary season, the only issue for me, is did you vote to illegally impeach [Paxton]?”

Republicans involved in the primaries acknowledge that vouchers may poll well but say the support lacks intensity. A poll released Tuesday by the University of Texas at Austin found Republicans overwhelmingly supported voucher programs but ranked “border security” or “immigration” as the top issues facing Texas by a wide margin.

But Abbott and his allies believe they are in a new political moment — and holdouts are whistling past the graveyard. They have looked to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who helped unseat several anti-voucher Republicans last year to make way for the state’s new voucher program.

As for Raney, Abbott will not get a chance to unseat the retiring lawmaker. But he has already endorsed the GOP frontrunner to replace Raney, Paul Dyson, saying he is confident Dyson will “expand school choice for all Texas families once and for all.”

Disclosure: Raise Your Hand Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Ken Paxton and aides ordered to answer questions under oath in whistleblower case

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Patrick Svitek 

The Texas Tribune

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A Travis County district judge has ordered Attorney General Ken Paxton and three top aides to sit for depositions in the 3-year-old whistleblower lawsuit against him.

At a hearing Wednesday in Austin, Judge Jan Soifer granted the whistleblowers’ motion to compel the depositions of Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxton’s longtime political aide.

Paxton himself was coincidentally served earlier in the day at a restaurant in Austin, according to a whistleblower lawyer, Tom Nesbitt.

“In this case, I believe the plaintiffs have shown good cause that these four people have unique and superior knowledge of discoverable information,” Soifer said from the bench, adding that the four people were “not just figureheads” but people who knew about issues “at the heart” of the case.

The whistleblowers asked the court last month to force Paxton and his aides to sit for depositions. They said their filing was a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General.

It remains to be seen if Paxton’s side will further fight the depositions. His office’s attorney, Bill Helfand, declined to comment to reporters as he left the courthouse.

“They lost badly,” Nesbitt told reporters after the hearing. “I don’t put anything past Ken Paxton. There’s no limit to the amount of taxpayer money he will spend to hide from accountability, so I’m sure they’ll try some kind of appeal.”

The whistleblowers are four former top deputies — Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell and Mark Penley — who sued Paxton in 2020, arguing he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI. They alleged he was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul.

They came close to settling with Paxton for $3.3 million in February, but the Texas House balked at using taxpayer dollars for the figure and decided to investigate the underlying claims. That triggered Paxton’s impeachment by the House in May. The Senate acquitted him after a trial in September.

The whistleblowers sought to restart their lawsuit after the impeachment verdict, and the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for them to do so. But Paxton’s office quickly fought the revived lawsuit in Travis County, suing the whistleblowers in neighboring Burnet County to block it.

Paxton’s lawyers lost in Burnet County and have since abandoned that lawsuit.

Soifer ruled against Paxton’s side earlier in the hearing, rejecting their motion to enforce the tentative settlement agreement. It had been their latest effort to effectively shut down the case in Travis County by arguing it was already settled.

They have made that argument despite the Legislature still not approving the $3.3 million, one of the provisions of the agreement.

“It says [it] in plain English,” Soifer said.

When it came to the depositions, Nesbitt argued Paxton’s testimony was especially relevant. His office has publicly said Paxton is the “decision-maker” for the hiring and firing of employees.

“Ken Paxton made these decisions,” Nesbitt said, telling Soifer that it is virtually unheard of for someone to argue in an employment case that the “decision-maker … somehow doesn’t have special knowledge, doesn’t have unique knowledge.”

Helfand argued the four people were protected by the apex doctrine, a legal doctrine that seeks to protect high-level executives from overzealous litigants. Helfand told Soifer she should order the whistleblowers to seek depositions from other people first, and if those do not yield the information they want, they could then address the question of deposing Paxton and the three aides.

Helfand appeared to anticipate an unfavorable ruling and proactively asked Soifer that if she were to order the depositions, they should be “severely limited” in time and scope. He also said he would want to depose the plaintiffs first because they carry the burden of proof in the case.

Soifer appeared to reject both requests in her ruling, saying she would allow the depositions by the whistleblowers first and was “not inclined to put any limitations on these depositions.”

The timing of the depositions remains to be seen. After the ruling, Helfand asked the judge if the depositions could wait until after the third week of January, citing personal scheduling conflicts. Nesbitt said their side was OK with that.

As for Paxton's deposition, Nesbitt said it was a coincidence that he was served on the same day of the hearing.

"We’ve been trying to find him for a long time," Nesbitt said. I mean, the dude hides. ... And so we finally found him. We got a tip that he was going to be at a restaurant at a particular time."

Nesbitt did not name the restaurant where Paxton was served. He said Paxton was having "some kind of little holiday lunch" when it happened.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Ken Paxton and aides ordered to answer questions under oath in whistleblower case

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Patrick Svitek 

The Texas Tribune

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

A Travis County district judge has ordered Attorney General Ken Paxton and three top aides to sit for depositions in the 3-year-old whistleblower lawsuit against him.

At a hearing Wednesday in Austin, Judge Jan Soifer granted the whistleblowers’ motion to compel the depositions of Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxton’s longtime political aide.

Paxton himself was coincidentally served earlier in the day at a restaurant in Austin, according to a whistleblower lawyer, Tom Nesbitt.

“In this case, I believe the plaintiffs have shown good cause that these four people have unique and superior knowledge of discoverable information,” Soifer said from the bench, adding that the four people were “not just figureheads” but people who knew about issues “at the heart” of the case.

The whistleblowers asked the court last month to force Paxton and his aides to sit for depositions. They said their filing was a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General.

It remains to be seen if Paxton’s side will further fight the depositions. His office’s attorney, Bill Helfand, declined to comment to reporters as he left the courthouse.

“They lost badly,” Nesbitt told reporters after the hearing. “I don’t put anything past Ken Paxton. There’s no limit to the amount of taxpayer money he will spend to hide from accountability, so I’m sure they’ll try some kind of appeal.”

The whistleblowers are four former top deputies — Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell and Mark Penley — who sued Paxton in 2020, arguing he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI. They alleged he was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul.

They came close to settling with Paxton for $3.3 million in February, but the Texas House balked at using taxpayer dollars for the figure and decided to investigate the underlying claims. That triggered Paxton’s impeachment by the House in May. The Senate acquitted him after a trial in September.

The whistleblowers sought to restart their lawsuit after the impeachment verdict, and the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for them to do so. But Paxton’s office quickly fought the revived lawsuit in Travis County, suing the whistleblowers in neighboring Burnet County to block it.

Paxton’s lawyers lost in Burnet County and have since abandoned that lawsuit.

Soifer ruled against Paxton’s side earlier in the hearing, rejecting their motion to enforce the tentative settlement agreement. It had been their latest effort to effectively shut down the case in Travis County by arguing it was already settled.

They have made that argument despite the Legislature still not approving the $3.3 million, one of the provisions of the agreement.

“It says [it] in plain English,” Soifer said.

When it came to the depositions, Nesbitt argued Paxton’s testimony was especially relevant. His office has publicly said Paxton is the “decision-maker” for the hiring and firing of employees.

“Ken Paxton made these decisions,” Nesbitt said, telling Soifer that it is virtually unheard of for someone to argue in an employment case that the “decision-maker … somehow doesn’t have special knowledge, doesn’t have unique knowledge.”

Helfand argued the four people were protected by the apex doctrine, a legal doctrine that seeks to protect high-level executives from overzealous litigants. Helfand told Soifer she should order the whistleblowers to seek depositions from other people first, and if those do not yield the information they want, they could then address the question of deposing Paxton and the three aides.

Helfand appeared to anticipate an unfavorable ruling and proactively asked Soifer that if she were to order the depositions, they should be “severely limited” in time and scope. He also said he would want to depose the plaintiffs first because they carry the burden of proof in the case.

Soifer appeared to reject both requests in her ruling, saying she would allow the depositions by the whistleblowers first and was “not inclined to put any limitations on these depositions.”

The timing of the depositions remains to be seen. After the ruling, Helfand asked the judge if the depositions could wait until after the third week of January, citing personal scheduling conflicts. Nesbitt said their side was OK with that.

As for Paxton's deposition, Nesbitt said it was a coincidence that he was served on the same day of the hearing.

"We’ve been trying to find him for a long time," Nesbitt said. I mean, the dude hides. ... And so we finally found him. We got a tip that he was going to be at a restaurant at a particular time."

Nesbitt did not name the restaurant where Paxton was served. He said Paxton was having "some kind of little holiday lunch" when it happened.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Robert Downen 

The Texas Tribune

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban. In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept.

In rejecting the proposed ban, the executive committee's majority delivered a serious blow to a faction of members that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed or associated with outspoken white supremacists and extremists.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements.

Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly 7 hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who've tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland's current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.

In response to the scandal — as well as subsequent reporting from the Tribune that detailed other links between Defend Texas Liberty and white supremacists — nearly half of the Texas GOP’s executive committee had called for the party to cut ties with Defend Texas Liberty and its auxiliary groups until Stickland was removed from any position of power, and a full explanation for the Fuentes meeting was given.

The proposed demands were significantly watered down ahead of the party’s quarterly meeting this weekend. Rather than calling for a break from Defend Texas Liberty, the faction proposed general language that would have barred associations with individuals or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”

But even that general statement was too much for the majority of the executive committee. In at-times tense debate on Saturday, members argued that words like “tolerate” or “antisemitism” were too vague or subjective. The ban, some argued, was akin to “Marxist” and “leftist” tactics, and would create guilt by association that could be problematic for the party, its leaders and candidates.

“It could put you on a slippery slope,” said committee member Dan Tully.

Rinaldi abstained from voting on the ban, but briefly argued that antisemitism is not a serious problem on the right before questioning what it would mean to "tolerate" those who espouse it. "I don't see any antisemitic, pro-Nazi or Holocaust denial movement on the right that has any significant traction whatsoever," he said.

Supporters of the ban disagreed. They noted that the language was already a compromise, didn’t specifically name any group or individual and would lend credence to resolutions in which the Texas GOP has generally condemned antisemitism and restated its support for Israel.

“To take it out sends a very disturbing message,” said Rolando Garcia, a Houston-based committee member who drafted the language. “We’re not specifying any individual or association. This is simply a statement of principle.”

Other committee members questioned how their colleagues could find words like “antisemitism” too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents.

“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote.

House Speaker Dade Phelan similarly condemned the vote Saturday evening, calling it “despicable.”

The Texas GOP executive committee “can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phelan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There is a moral, anti-Semitic rot festering within the fringes of BOTH parties that must be stopped.”

For two months, Phelan and his staff have routinely and publicly sparred with some in the party – namely Rinaldi, a longtime political foe – over how to address the Fuentes scandal and extremism more broadly. After the Tribune first reported on the Fuentes meeting, Phelan called on fellow Republicans to redirect money from Defend Texas Liberty to pro-Israel charities, a request that quickly drew the ire of Patrick and others who accused Phelan of politicizing antisemitism and demanded he resign.

After subsequent reporting by the Tribune on Defend Texas Liberty's ties to white supremacists and other extreme figures, Patrick said he was "appalled" and that antisemitism is "not welcome in our party." He then announced that the he had invested the $3 million he recently received from Defend Texas Liberty in Israeli bonds.

Patrick reiterated that stance late Saturday night, calling the executive committee's vote "totally unacceptable" and saying that he is "confident" the board will reconsider the ban at its February meeting.

"This language should have been adopted – because I know that is our position as a Party," Patrick wrote on X. "I, and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Texas, do not tolerate antisemites, and those who deny the Holocaust, praise Hitler or the Nazi regime."

Saturday’s vote is the latest sign of major disunity among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with simmering tensions between its far-right and more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wings. Defend Texas Liberty and its billionaire backers have been key players in that fight, funding primary challenges to incumbent Republicans who they deem insufficiently conservative, and bankrolling a sprawling network of institutions, media websites and political groups that they’ve used to incrementally pull Texas further to the right.

The party’s internecine conflict has exploded into all-out war since the impeachment and acquittal of Paxton, a crucial Defend Texas Liberty ally whose political life has been subsidized by the PAC’s billionaire funders.

After Paxton’s acquittal, Defend Texas Liberty vowed scorched-earth campaigns against those who supported the attorney general’s removal, and promised massive spending ahead of next year’s primary elections. (Before the Saturday vote, executive committee members separately approved a censure of outgoing Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, over his lead role in the investigation and impeachment of Paxton.)

News of the Fuentes meeting has only complicated Defend Texas Liberty's retribution plans, as infighting intensifies and some Republicans question whether the group and its billionaire funders should have so much sway over the state party.

Meanwhile, Defend Texas Liberty's allies and beneficiaries have tried to downplay the scandals and discredit the Tribune's reporting, claiming the Fuentes meeting was a one-off mistake or attacking critics as RINOs, in bed with Democrats to suppress true conservatives.

Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Defend Texas Liberty-backed Reps. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, and Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, briefly spoke to the executive committee.

The day prior, Sen. Bob Hall — an Edgewood Republican who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Liberty — was also at the Austin hotel where executive committee members were meeting, and in a speech condemned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy photographs” and “narratives.”

“If you want to pass a resolution, I would make it positive,” Hall said to executive committee members on Friday. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reiterated that stance in an interview with the Tribune, calling the Fuentes meeting a “mistake” but claiming that there was “no evidence” that Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty are antisemitic. “I've had meetings with transgenders, gays and lesbians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a transgender, gay or a lesbian?”

Asked if he was comparing gay people to white supremacists or Hitler admirers like Fuentes, Hall responded: “I’m talking about people who are political hot potatoes.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Whistleblowers ask judge to order Ken Paxton, aides to sit for depositions

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Patrick Svitek 

The Texas Tribune

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Lawyers for the Ken Paxton whistleblowers are moving forward with their lawsuit in Travis County after another judge cleared the way, asking the Austin-based court to force the attorney general and his top aides to sit for depositions.

The whistleblower lawyers filed a motion Tuesday to compel the depositions, calling it a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General.

“OAG’s effort to resist these straightforward depositions is nothing more than a continuation of OAG’s cynical effort to deny Plaintiffs their right to access to the justice system,” the whistleblower lawyers wrote.

The whistleblower lawyers specifically want to take depositions from Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxton’s longtime political aide. The lawyers proposed a schedule where Paxton is deposed Dec. 12, Webster on Dec. 14, Henneke on Dec. 18 and Smith on Dec. 20.

A lawyer for Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The whistleblower lawyers filed the motion a week after a district court judge in Burnet County gave the green light for the Travis County lawsuit to continue. Lawyers for Paxton’s office had sued the whistleblowers in nearby Burnet County to try to stop their lawsuit in Travis County, arguing they were breaking the terms of a tentative settlement agreement they struck in February. While the Burnet County judge, Evan Stubbs, first agreed to temporarily halt the Travis County case, he sided with the whistleblowers at the Nov. 14 hearing and allowed the case to proceed again.

The whistleblowers — Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell and Mark Penley — sued Paxton in 2020, arguing he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI. They alleged he was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul.

The whistleblowers almost settled with Paxton for $3.3 million in February, but the Texas House balked at using taxpayer dollars for it and decided to investigate the underlying claims. That led to Paxton’s impeachment in the House in May.

The Travis County lawsuit came back to life in September after the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial, which centered on similar claims of corruption by former top deputies in his office. After the acquittal, the whistleblowers asked the Texas Supreme Court to reinstate the case and it did, sending it back to Travis County for trial.

Shortly after the whistleblowers sought to restart work on the case in Travis County — giving notice they planned to take depositions of Paxton and the three aides — Paxton’s office filed suit in Burnet County.

In their latest filing, the whistleblowers’ lawyers say the Burnet County lawsuit was just the latest delay tactic by Paxton’s side in the 3-year-old case. The lawyers asked the Travis County court to compel the depositions so that the whistleblowers “may at long last pursue justice.”

If the whistleblowers’ motion is granted, it would be the first time Paxton would be required to answer questions under oath related to the allegations of bribery and corruption made against him. Paxton did not take the stand in his Senate trial in September.

While the Burnet County judge, Stubbs, allowed the Travis County case to restart last week, the more recent lawsuit in his court remains pending. Stubbs set a Dec. 14 hearing on a motion by the whistleblowers to change the venue to Travis County.

With the Travis County case revived, the whistleblowers have also asked for the court to assign it to a single judge. Their lawyers made the request in a filing last week, citing the “unusual characteristics” and “high-profile facts” involved.

Paxton's side has not made any recent filings in the Travis County case other than to submit a copy of the tentative settlement agreement. Lawyers for Paxton's office have been arguing that the case is already effectively resolved and that any further litigation goes against that.

The whistleblower lawyers made clear to the Travis County court in a second filing Tuesday that they strongly disagree. They noted the settlement depends on a number of things that still have not happened, including legislative approval of the $3.3 million.

"This case is not settled," the filing said, "and as the third anniversary of its filing has recently passed, the time has come to prepare the case for trial."

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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TX appeals court weighing whether state bar can discipline Ken Paxton for challenging 2020 election

Posted on by Texas Tribune

Texas appeals court weighing whether state bar can discipline Ken Paxton for challenging 2020 presidential election

By Joshua Fechter

The Texas Tribune

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Whether the Texas State Bar can take away Attorney General Ken Paxton's law license could hinge on whether appellate justices believe the organization is trying to control what lawsuits he files on the state's behalf — or whether the group has the jurisdiction to punish him for pushing false theories in a lawsuit over the 2020 presidential election.

Lawyers for Paxton argued before a three-justice panel of the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals on Wednesday that the bar overstepped its bounds when it sued the attorney general last year for professional misconduct. A disciplinary committee for the State Bar of Texas, the organization that regulates law licenses in this state, alleged the attorney general made “dishonest” representations in a widely condemned lawsuit — quickly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court — that tried to throw out election results from former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in four battleground states.

Paxton’s lawyers argue that, by suing him, the bar is “attempting to control the Attorney General's decision going forward about what types of lawsuits to file, and what kinds of legal theories to pursue,” Lanora C. Pettit, principal deputy solicitor general, told justices Wednesday.

That argument drew skepticism from Justice Erin Nowell.

“That’s a big leap,” Nowell said.

Paxton’s unsuccessful attempt to intervene in four other states’ elections leaned heavily on discredited claims of election fraud in those swing states.

The Texas bar has argued its conduct rules for lawyers apply to Paxton, too.

“The underlying attorney discipline case here is about ethics,” Michael Graham, an attorney representing the state bar, told justices. “The substantive questions at the heart of that attorney discipline case, like any other, have nothing to do with politics or anything else. They have everything to do with whether an attorney is engaged in professional misconduct and, if so, what's the appropriate disciplinary sanction for that misconduct?”

A Collin County judge hasn’t ruled on the merits of the case but sided with the bar earlier this year when he ruled the group has the ability to sue — a decision Paxton quickly appealed. The appeals court is weighing whether to reverse the lower court's ruling, but did not rule Wednesday.

The bar’s actions raise questions about whether any elected official who is also a lawyer could have their law license threatened if a member of the public doesn’t agree with them, Justice Emily Miskel said — with which Graham disagreed.

“General Paxton, for instance, has been Attorney General for almost a decade now, and to my knowledge, there's not a raft of complaints or attorney disciplinary actions against him for filing suits,” Graham said.

But there might be if the bar is successful, Miskel said.

“If it's effective, then everybody should (file a grievance against) any elected official who happens to be a lawyer because it's a great way to get a second bite at the apple of a policy decision you don't like,” Miskel said.

That may be the case, Graham said, but such a complaint would still have to pass muster with the bar.

If the bar prevails, Paxton could face punishment anywhere from a reprimand to full disbarment and the loss of his law license.

The bar’s attempt to discipline Paxton is among several legal battles he’s waging. The Texas Senate acquitted Paxton in September on 16 articles of impeachment alleging bribery and corruption. But Paxton is expected to go to trial in April on state securities fraud charges eight years after he was first indicted on those charges.

He also faces a federal investigation into claims by former top staffers that he abused his office to help Austin real estate magnate Nate Paul, a friend and donor — claims that formed the basis of impeachment allegations against the attorney general. And on Tuesday, a Burnet County judge said those former employees’ lawsuit against the attorney general could proceed.

Disclosure: The State Bar of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The businessman at the center of Ken Paxton’s impeachment charged with new federal crimes

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Zach Despart 

The Texas Tribune

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Nate Paul, the Austin real estate investor whose relationship with Attorney General Ken Paxton was central to his September impeachment trial, was charged with new crimes by federal prosecutors on Wednesday.

The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas filed an amended indictment charging Paul, 36, with four counts of wire fraud related to allegations that he lied to business partners who invested in real estate with his company, World Class Holdings, and its affiliates.

They are in addition to the eight felony counts prosecutors filed in June, which allege that Paul provided false information to financial institutions in order to obtain loans to purchase properties.

Paul’s attorney, David Gerger, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Paul’s trial is scheduled for July of 2024.

Neither of the indictments mention Paxton, who was acquitted by the Texas Senate of 16 articles of impeachment in September.

Paul and Paxton met sometime before 2020, though the origins of their friendship remain unclear. Seven former senior aides to Paxton reported the attorney general to the FBI in September 2020, concerned that his friendship with Paul included corruption and bribery.

They alleged that Paxton abused his office by helping Paul investigate and harass business rivals, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and procure confidential records on the police investigating him.

During this time, Paul’s business empire — which he once told a reporter was worth $1 billion — was faltering. In 2020 alone, 18 of Paul’s properties filed for bankruptcy.

The claims of the whistleblowers, who either quit within weeks of their report or were fired by Paxton, became the basis of the Texas House’s vote in May to impeach Paxton. The House members leading investigation argued that in return for those favors, Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s home and helped him pursue and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate staffer.

During the impeachment trial, whistleblowers testified they believed Paul to be a criminal and were concerned that Paxton was essentially turning the keys of the office over to him.

In the new filing, prosecutors said Paul repeatedly misled partners about how he was using partnership funds, a deception furthered by overstating the balances of partnership accounts.

“During his career in commercial real estate, Paul has repeatedly engaged in deception to persuade individuals and organizations to entrust money to him, and he has used the money to enrich himself and expand the commercial real estate businesses that he controls,” the indictment states.

The indictment lists six businesses as victims; three in Texas and one each in Florida, Colorado and North Carolina. The government is seeking to seize $172 million and any properties connected to Paul’s alleged criminal conduct.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Attorney General Ken Paxton’s long-delayed securities fraud trial set

Posted on by Texas Tribune

By Patrick Svitek 

The Texas Tribune

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s long-delayed trial on securities fraud charges has been set for April 15.

State District Judge Andrea Beall scheduled the trial during a hearing Monday morning in Houston. Paxton attended the hearing but did not speak at it.

Paxton was indicted on the charges over eight years ago, months into his first term as the state’s top law enforcement official. The charges stem from accusations that in 2011 he tried to solicit investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that it was paying him to promote its stock. Paxton has pleaded not guilty.

The trial is a reminder that Paxton's legal problems persist even after the Texas Senate acquitted him last month in an impeachment trial on unrelated allegations. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick presided over that trial and has faced intense criticism for taking $3 million from a pro-Paxton group in the lead-up to the trial.

"Unlike the impeachment, this is going to be a fair trial," special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told reporters after the hearing. "This judge is not corrupt. This judge is not on the take."

The hearing was brief and did not settle one lingering pretrial issue: how much the special prosecutors should get paid. The judge also scheduled a February pretrial conference.

Paxton's lawyer Philip Hilder told reporters his side was "gratified" with the trial date and criticized the special prosecutors for their focus on their pay.

"It's show-me-the-money," Hilder said. "It's all about the money to them."

The prosecutors say they have not been paid since January 2016. A Paxton supporter filed a lawsuit challenging their fee schedule in the early months of the case, and both sides have been wrangling over the issue ever since.

The trial has been delayed for years over a number of pretrial disputes, including the prosecutors' pay and the venue. The case began in Paxton’s native Collin County but was moved to more neutral territory in Harris County at the prosecution’s urging.

Paxton faces two counts of securities fraud, a first-degree felony with a punishment of up to 99 years in prison. Paxton also faces one count of failing to register with state securities regulators, a third-degree felony with a maximum of 10 years in prison.

The impeachment trial centered on different allegations of bribery and malfeasance made by former top deputies in his office. When the House impeached Paxton in May, it included multiple articles of impeachment related to the securities case, but the Senate set those aside for the trial and dismissed them afterward.

While the prosecutors emphasized they expect a fairer trial than the one the Senate conducted, Hilder declined to draw any comparisons. The impeachment trial "was unrelated to what we're defending against," Hilder said.

The impeachment articles focused on allegations that Paxton misused his office to help his friend investigate claims that he was being targeted by federal and local law enforcement, in exchange for favors that included giving a job to a woman with whom he was having an affair.

While the Senate's acquittal was a political triumph for the third-term Republican, Paxton still has significant legal issues. In addition to the securities fraud case, he faces a federal investigation into the claims by his former top staffers, who allege he abused his office to help a friend and donor, Nate Paul.

In the securities fraud case, the prosecutors' pay may be the last major pending issue before the trial. In 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals struck down the fee agreement, arguing that it fell outside legal limits for what such attorneys may be paid. The court ordered a previous Harris County judge overseeing the case to come up with a new payment schedule, but that never happened and the prosecutors have continued to go unpaid.

During the hearing Monday, Paxton lawyer Bill Mateja sought to propose an order addressing the pay issue from his side's perspective. But Beall repeatedly said she would decide on her own.

The judge did not indicate when she would make a ruling on the pay, according to one of the prosecutors, Brian Wice.

Wice said Paxton's lawyers are so focused on their pay because they have known "the only way to derail this prosecution was to defund it." Wice said he is owed "a lot" and Schaffer estimated he has "500 unpaid hours" dating back to 2016.

The prosecutors have previously raised the possibility they could withdraw from the case if they are not paid. Asked about that Monday, Schaffer said "we have to see what happens," while Wice promised he is "not going anywhere."

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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