Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is pretty familiar with Catherine Engelbrecht. He’s been a guest on her podcast, chatting about their shared passion: rooting out voter fraud. They both have gone to great lengths to try to support former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
And when Engelbrecht, founder of the nonprofit True the Vote, has found herself in hot water, Paxton’s office has turned out to be a helpful ally.
Most recently, a state judge sided with Engelbrecht’s argument that it should be Paxton’s office – not a court – that should probe allegations made by a True the Vote donor who says he was swindled out of $2.5 million.
But more than a year after the case was dismissed, Paxton’s office won’t say whether it ever investigated the donor dispute. Last month, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that True the Vote had engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million to Engelbrecht and other insiders, while failing to back up its voter fraud claims.
In the reporting of that story, Paxton’s office withheld financial documents and email communications from Reveal and issued contradictory and inaccurate statements about the nonprofit, which has been a leading voice in driving the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to the core of GOP ideology.
The embattled attorney general this year skated through a contested primary race. But he faces potential disbarment for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is under investigation by the FBI, is getting sued by whistleblowers in his office and awaits trial for a seven-year-old felony indictment for securities fraud. In their lawsuit, former staff members have accused him of using his office to provide legal favors to an ally, saying he appointed a special prosecutor to target adversaries of a donor who was under investigation.
His office advocated on Engelbrecht’s behalf before the Texas Supreme Court in 2016 when she got into legal trouble with her previous nonprofit organization, King Street Patriots, for being overtly political. He appeared on her podcast in July 2020, during which Engelbrecht said she considers Paxton a friend.
“I can’t say thank you enough for the dignity and the respect that you bring to that office,” she said.
“I feel blessed to have this opportunity, especially in a time like this. It’s really a crisis,” Paxton replied.
“God bless you. God bless you, Ken Paxton, God bless you. And thank you for all that you and your team do,” Engelbrecht added.
Months later, the two went to extraordinary lengths to support Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Paxton filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Texas seeking to overturn the election in key states where Trump had lost, a suit that the Supreme Court eventually dismissed because Texas had no legal standing to challenge other states’ results.
Engelbrecht, meanwhile, accepted $2.5 million from a major conservative donor to lead a legal and PR campaign to contest the election results. However, True the Vote quickly dismissed the lawsuits it filed and provided no evidence of voter fraud. The donor, Fred Eshelman, became disillusioned and sued True the Vote in rural Austin County, Texas, in February 2021 for misusing his donation.