Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's financials appear to have omitted a major property asset that could be costing him a lot of money.
According to Politico's Daniel Lippman, Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate against Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico, "has repeatedly left a plot of land in Maui off his financial disclosures, but the land, controlled by a trust, owes several thousand dollars of property taxes on it with penalty fees and interest now due too, per a county record I saw."
It's yet another piece of a puzzle in which Paxton appears to own vast numbers of properties; a prior New York Times estimate suggested he has 15 properties worth a total of $9 million, and some experts have questioned whether he properly filed tax and mortgage paperwork on all of them.
Talarico has hammered him over the issue, which he has struggled to defend in interviews. But it's far from the only scandal that has been dragging Paxton down in what has rapidly become a marquee midterm race.
Paxton's legal troubles date back to just months after he first took office in 2015, when a Collin County grand jury indicted him on felony securities fraud charges, accusing him of recruiting investors without disclosing he was earning a commission on their business. The case dragged on for nearly a decade before Paxton reached a pretrial diversion deal in early 2024.
His most serious political crisis came in 2023, when the Texas House voted 121-23 to impeach him for bribery, abuse of office, and obstruction of justice, though the state Senate later acquitted him and Paxton successfully backed primary challenges against many Republicans who impeached him. The charges stemmed from a 2020 whistleblower complaint filed by top deputies who went to the FBI accusing Paxton of misusing his office to benefit Austin real estate donor Nate Paul, then under federal investigation, allegedly in exchange for help with a home renovation.
Paxton fired or forced out several whistleblowers, four of whom successfully sued him under the Texas Whistleblower Act and won a $6.6 million judgment.
His personal life also became entangled in scandal: the impeachment proceedings included allegations of an extramarital affair, and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce in 2025, with related court records unsealed in late 2025 following media lawsuits.
