Dallas-area lawmaker scolds Texas AG Ken Paxton over $12k of state funds on ‘bogus’ suit over election

AUSTIN — A North Texas lawmaker has scolded state Attorney General Ken Paxton for wasting nearly $12,000 of state funds on a “bogus” lawsuit over the presidential election.

Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, said on Monday that he will continue to investigate Paxton’s unsuccessful bid to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn results in four states that sealed Joe Biden’s win in the presidential race.

Turner, who is trying to obtain Paxton’s correspondence with President Donald Trump’s lawyers such as Rudy Guiliani and Dallas attorney Sidney Powell, sought on Dec. 10 to obtain all public records relating to the Texas attorney general’s highly publicized effort to bolster Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

In his open records request, Turner called it “a nonsensical legal proceeding unrelated to the state you serve” and “a cynical attempt to throw out millions of votes cast by American citizens.”

On Monday, Turner noted that Paxton’s office had just “partially responded,” releasing letters in which he appointed two Washington lawyers as special counsel and invoices by one of them for $11,940.03.

That lawyer, Lawrence J. Joseph, said in an email late Monday that the money strictly covered costs of printing relating to submitting the suit at the Supreme Court.

“The invoices that you reference were for the Supreme Court printer (i.e., third-party disbursements, not payments to me),” Joseph wrote.

He directed queries about Turner’s castigation of the Texas suit as “a shameful episode” to Alejandro Garcia, a Paxton spokesman.

Neither Garcia nor Paxton spokeswoman Kayleigh Date responded immediately to requests for comment.

In his Dec. 7 letters appointing Joseph and Kurt B. Olsen of Washington as special outside counsel to his office, Paxton said it was for “an action seeking to prevent dilution of the electoral-college votes of Texas in the 2020 presidential election and uphold and enforce state and federal election law.”

Paxton told both lawyers they were to work “at no cost to the state.”

On Dec. 11, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Texas lacked standing to challenge election procedures in other states — a blow both for Trump and General Ken Paxton, who co-chaired “Lawyers for Trump” during the campaign and filed the long-shot lawsuit that election law experts viewed as an affront to democracy.

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,” the court wrote in a brief unsigned ruling.

Although the Supreme Court rebuffed Paxton, Turner noted in a written statement on Monday that “taxpayers are on the hook for about $12,000 in printing costs for a bogus lawsuit that was dismissed out of hand.”

“In reality, though, the price paid by Texas and America is far greater,” added Turner, who is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “Ken Paxton’s lawsuit was an assault on our democracy, plain and simple.”

Turner mentioned Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s statement Saturday that he and 10 other GOP senators would object when a joint session of Congress meets on Wednesday to review the Electoral College outcome in the presidential race – usually, a mere formality.

The Cruz-led group of senators is demanding a 10-day delay to allow an emergency “audit” of results in battleground states where Trump disputes the outcome. Such a delay would prolong the process until Jan. 16, just four days before the inauguration.

Also over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Trump spent about an hour trying to persuade the Republican secretary of state in Georgia to invalidate enough Biden votes there to swing the state into Trump’s column.

“There is no limit to Trump’s abuse of power and no depth in the swamp to which he will not sink – and Paxton and Cruz are apparently happy to take the plunge alongside him,” Turner said.