AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s pursuit of a private matter affecting a personal friend led to him violating his oath of office, a whistleblower who testified during Paxton's impeachment trial Wednesday said.
On Tuesday, Paxton appeared briefly in the Texas Senate to plead not guilty to the 16 articles of impeachment against him. Senators have been tasked as jurors to decide whether or not Paxton should be permanently removed from office after being suspended without pay in May when the Texas House overwhelmingly voted to impeach the third-term incumbent Republican.
Now, the Senate must decide whether it will follow suit.
Wednesday’s testimony focused heavily on Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate mogul Nate Paul. Several of the articles of impeachment against Paxton are based on allegations he used his office to help Paul, who was being investigated by state and federal law enforcement officials. Paxton also stands accused of accepting bribes from Paul in the form of renovations to his home and a job for a woman with whom the attorney general was having an affair.
Paul was arrested in June by federal law enforcement officials for allegedly lying to financial institutions to secure loans for his businesses.
Taking questions from House impeachment lawyer Rusty Hardin, Jeff Mateer testified about his time at the attorney general's office and what led him to report Paxton to the FBI before resigning.
Mateer served as Paxton’s second in command starting in 2018 as first assistant attorney general. He described himself as a “rule of law kind of guy,” who was a strong supporter of Paxton’s conservative agenda.
Mateer became increasingly concerned with his boss’ leadership during the summer of 2020, when he said that Paxton began pressuring him to have the office intervene in some of Pauls legal troubles.
“One of the jobs of the first assistant attorney general ... was to protect the attorney general and quite frankly, I obviously failed at that," said Mateer. "I came to the conclusion that Mr. Paul enabled Mr. Paxton and despite my efforts and the other deputies' efforts, we could not protect him because he didn't want our protection."
Throughout the summer of 2020, Paxton became more interested in helping Paul with his legal troubles, according to Mateer. Paul, who had his home and businesses raided by the FBI in 2019, made several requests to the attorney general’s office to look into the investigators' warrants, claiming that they had been altered.
In August, Mateer said he was stunned when the attorney general’s office released a legal opinion limiting foreclosure proceedings, citing the state limitations on outdoor gatherings during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Paxton allegedly called on his staff to write the opinion to help stave off the foreclosure of properties Paul owned. The former staffer said the opinion went against everything he and Paxton were trying to do to lift pandemic restrictions in Texas.
"We were at the forefront of having Texas reopen,” Mateer said.
Mateer testified that his concerns about Paxton’s relationship with Paul came to a head in September when the attorney general began looking into hiring an outside lawyer named Brandon Cammack to investigate claims of misconduct from state and federal investigators that executed the search warrants on Paul’s home and businesses. Despite Paxton’s urging of Mateer and other top staffers to sign off on the hiring of Cammack, Mateer refused, believing that Cammack was not qualified and that Paxton should not be so closely involved in the matter.
“I asked him, and it was not the first time, 'Ken, why are we involved in this,'” Mateer said. “It just did not make sense to me. By this time [the office] knew a lot more about Paul, about who he was … and that he was not a good guy.”
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