Justice Department investigators have launched a corruption investigation against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C. take over a corruption investigation into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio was denied participation in the investigation.

The prosecutor’s office said that since October 2020, the US Attorney’s Office has been investigating allegations that Paxton abused his position.

Washington investigators will now look into allegations by Paxton’s former deputies that the attorney general took bribes for a political donor who also hired a woman Paxton allegedly had an extramarital affair with. The breaking news comes less than a week after Paxton agreed to apologize and pay $3.3 million in taxpayer money to settle a whistleblower lawsuit with four employees who accused him of the crimes. The settlement still needs court and legislature approval.

State Attorneys Brian Weiss and Kent Shaffer, who are pursuing a separate securities fraud case against Paxton, said in a statement that they were notified Thursday that the Western District of Texas Attorney’s Office had reckoned with the Justice Department. The investigation will now be handled by the Justice Department’s Division of Public Integrity, which is pursuing allegations of misconduct against local, state, and federal elected officials. Weiss and Shaffer referred all other matters to the Justice Department.

The Associated Press, which first reported it, said the move was dictated by Paxton’s defense. One of Paxton’s lawyers, Dan Cogdell, told The Associated Press that he wanted the case not to fall into the hands of the Western District Attorney’s office because they had an “obvious conflict” but he had not been notified of the move. Cogdell did not immediately respond to The Texas Tribune’s request for comment.

The announcement is the first public indication since Paxton’s decision to settle the whistleblower’s lawsuit that the investigation is ongoing. It is not yet clear if Paxton will be charged. He denied wrongdoing.

In October 2020, eight former senior MPs accused Paxton of bribery and malpractice after they allege he provided a political favor for real estate developer Nate Paul, a friend and donor who contributed $25,000 to Paxton’s 2018 campaign. All eight of these employees have either been fired or retired.

Among the issues Paxton was involved in, staff said, was the appointment — over the objections of the Attorney General — of a special counsel to investigate whether FBI agents and federal prosecutors had illegally searched Paul’s home in 2019. These agents and lawyers were supposed to have been part of the Western District, which was excluded from the case, according to the Associated Press.

“Mr. Paxton will have to come to the Texas home,” Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, told CBS DFW. “He will have to appear before the appropriations committee and prove to that committee why this is the right use of taxpayer dollars, and then he will have to sell them to 76 members of the Texas House. work, not mine.

Justice Department officials were aware of the match within weeks of reporting to federal authorities, but allowed the Texas-based prosecutor’s office to proceed with the case. The team was led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Blackwell, a career U.S. attorney who previously won a money laundering and fraud case against former state senator Carlos Uresti, a Democrat from San Antonio.

Former top deputies also allege that Paxton pushed the Attorney General’s Office into a real estate deal involving one of Paul’s companies and an Austin charity, and that Paul helped Paxton renovate his multi-million dollar home. Paul denied wrongdoing.

Paxton was hit Wednesday night in his whistleblowing lawsuit when Speaker of the House Dade Phelan said he did not support using public funds to pay for the Attorney General’s settlement and did not expect the House to budget for money to do so.

This article first appeared in the Texas Tribune.

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