Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office is refusing to release his communications from his time in Washington, D.C., leading up to the Capitol riot.
Several Texas news organizations have requested copies of Paxton’s communications as the Texas Public Information Act guarantees the public’s right to those government records, even if they were stored on personal devices, but his office has refused thus far, according to several outlets.
Paxton spoke at the Jan. 6 Save America rally, the event then-President Donald Trump also spoke at, before thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and engaged in a violent clash with law enforcement officers. The riot interrupted Congress’s attempt to certify the election win of President Joe Biden.
“What we have in President Trump is a fighter,” Paxton said during his speech. “And I think that’s why we’re all here. We will not quit fighting. We’re Texans. We’re Americans, and the fight will go on.”
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The outlets are looking to acquire Paxton’s communications to uncover his real-time reaction to the subsequent riot, who booked him to speak at the rally, and who paid for his trip there.
They discovered that Paxton’s office, which is supposed to enforce the state’s open records laws, has no policy governing the release of work-related messages stored on Paxton’s personal devices. It is unclear whether the office reviews Paxton’s email accounts and phones to look for requested records or whether the attorney general himself determines what to turn over without any outside checks.
Last week, the FBI said it had apprehended more than 300 people in connection to the riot, 65 of whom were charged for assaulting officers.
Two of the outlets attempting to obtain Paxton’s correspondences, the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News, have requested all of Paxton’s messages between Jan. 5, the day before the riot, and Jan. 11.
Lauren Downey, a public information coordinator at the Office of the Attorney General, said the records are confidential under attorney-client communications.
The open records division, which Downey went to regarding the request, has 45 business days to issue a ruling about whether the messages should be released to the public. The decision is still pending.
Other outlets working to obtain his messages are the Austin American-Statesman, the San Antonio Express-News, ProPublica, and the Texas Tribune.
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During the period after Biden was projected as the winner but before the inauguration, Paxton filed a lawsuit contending that a handful of battleground states that went for Biden made unconstitutional changes to the ways their states vote. The suit, which the Supreme Court decided not to hear, even though more than 100 Republicans and a dozen states filed amicus briefs, aimed at getting the highest court to rule that states can send electors to vote for Trump regardless of the actual outcome.
