Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is calling on his former boss to resign amid allegations of bribery, abuse of office, and other potentially criminal offenses.
Before representing Texas’s 21st Congressional District, Roy was Attorney General Ken Paxton’s first assistant attorney general. But amid a tight reelection campaign against Democratic challenger Wendy Davis, Roy issued a public rebuke of Paxton, saying that Paxton must resign “for the good of the people of Texas.”
“The allegations of bribery, abuse of office, and other charges levied against him by at least 7 senior leaders of the Office of the Attorney General are more than troubling on the merits,” Roy wrote. “But, any grace for him to resolve differences and demonstrate if the allegations are false was eliminated by his choice instead to attack the very people entrusted, by him, to lead the office — some of whom I know well and whose character are beyond reproach.”
“The work of the Office of the Attorney General of Texas is too critical to the state and her people to leave in chaos. … The Attorney General deserves his days in court, but the people of Texas deserve a fully functioning AG’s office,” Roy concluded.
Seven aides in a Thursday letter obtained by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE said that they had “reported to an appropriate law enforcement authority a potential violation of law committed by Warren K. Paxton, Jr. in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas.”
NEW: This is the letter sent by 7 top aides to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleging the state’s top lawyer has committed multiple criminal violations. @statesman @KVUE. pic.twitter.com/1qNv290tJm
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) October 4, 2020
Prosecutors who were already investigating Paxton concerning potential securities fraud charges said they would also investigate the claims. The previous charges accused Paxton of convincing investors to buy tech stocks without disclosing that he would be compensated for the sales, according to the Texas Tribune.
“The complaint filed against General Paxton was done to impede on an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law,” Paxton’s office said in a statement to CNN on Saturday evening.
