In the days leading up to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged his followers on social media to “stand with President Trump” and “#StopTheSteal.”
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, he tweeted that “a lot of voters, as well as myself, believe something went wrong in this election.” And after the attack unfolded, he tweeted that he didn’t believe violence is the answer but was “sorely disappointed today in the certification of the election.” He made those claims even after Trump’s own U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr declared there had been no widespread vote fraud that could have affected the results of the presidential election.
Paxton, who is seeking his third term as attorney general, isn’t a run-of-the-mill election denier, casually casting false doubt on election security. He’s a loyal Trump ally, who tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in four states where President Joe Biden had won the election. The court rejected the suit within days, and Paxton was subsequently sued by the Texas state bar for professional misconduct related to the effort. Paxton’s attempt to dismiss the case is pending. He called the case against him a political attack.
That Paxton is so close to securing his reelection this November as the state’s chief legal officer is raising alarms from election experts about the impact he could have on future close elections, particularly if Trump runs for president again in 2024. The attorney general in Texas does not administer elections, but the office is in charge of defending and enforcing the state’s election laws and of bringing lawsuits, such as ones that allege voter fraud.
“Paxton took among the most extreme positions of anyone in 2020 filing a brief that did not get traction at the Supreme Court that was advancing a radical theory that would have disenfranchised voters in numerous other states,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, which aims to ensure free and fair elections. “Unless he is actually put on trial and convicted or removed or loses his election, we can expect to see more of the same in 2024.”
Paxton is facing years-old securities fraud charges in Texas courts and is the subject of an FBI investigation after eight of his former top deputies accused him of abuse of office for doing political favors for a donor. He has denied all wrongdoing. But he remains the frontrunner, based on polls and fundraising, in the attorney general race against Democrat Rochelle Garza, a Brownsville attorney.