AG’s former top cop says he warned Paxton about ‘criminal’ Paul

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s former top cop testified Friday that Paxton repeatedly pressured him to investigate Nate Paul’s “conspiracy theories,” even after law enforcement experts found them to be “ludicrous” and debunked them through forensics and other means. 

David Maxwell, a veteran law enforcement officer who served as the attorney general’s director of law enforcement, said he repeatedly told Paxton that Paul was a criminal — potentially of historic proportions.

“I told him Nate Paul was a criminal,” Maxwell said. “That he was running a Ponzi scheme that would rival Billie Sol Estes,” the infamous Texas conman who was convicted of stealing millions of dollars in federal crop subsidies in the 1960s.

Rather than heed the warnings by Maxwell — who served more than three decades as a Texas Ranger — Paxton threatened to fire him after he said that he would not investigate Paul’s bizarre claims. The threat, Maxwell said, came during a meeting with a “heated” Paul that Paxton attended but requested not be recorded.

“I knew then what his commitment was to Nate Paul and that he was not going to be deterred,” Maxwell said. “He was angry with me because I was not buying into the big conspiracy theory.”

Maxwell was one of the whistleblowers who sued after they were fired by Paxton after reporting him to law enforcement, and said Paxton “ended my career in a very unjust manner.”

“I did nothing wrong by standing up for right,” he added.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.

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This article appears in Sep 6-19, 2023.