Texas State Bar Complaint Against Paxton Moves Forward

A Texas State Bar complaint that alleges Attorney General Ken Paxton committed professional misconduct is moving forward.

The complaint was filed in July 2021 by the nonprofit Lawyers Defending American Democracy and 16 Texas lawyers, including four former presidents of the State Bar, as reported by The Houston Chronicle.

The complainants allege Paxton’s December 2020 suit, seeking to overturn the presidential election results, was frivolous, knowingly false, and deceitful. The suit will be heard by either a district court judge or an administrative panel, depending on what the Attorney General decides. 

Paxton, in a statement, declared he was not surprised, saying the Texas State Bar spends all its “time and money on anti-conservative causes,” since it is composed of “liberal lawyers and activists strategically drawn from deep-blue Travis County.”

He also accused the organization of having “intentionally waited” for the complaint to come out in the middle of an election.

After not meeting the 50 percent-plus-one thresholds required to avoid a runoff, Paxton will be facing Land Commissioner George P. Bush. 

“Bottom line: this is just a bid to manipulate elections,” Paxton said in his statement Tuesday. “But I’m not worried. I take their partisan attacks as a mark that I’m doing the right thing.”

Jim Harrington, one of the Texas lawyers who joined the complaint and a retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, rejected that the complaint was guided by political bias.

“That’s the way he always is. Anyone who disagrees with him is on some sort of political witch hunt,” he said. In just the last 10 months, Paxton has had three complaints filed against him.

Of the other two, one was filed by a Democratic Party activist who makes similar allegations about his Supreme Court suit. And just last month another suit followed,
claiming Paxton pressured appellate court judges to rule in his favor on a major case involving election fraud.