Paxton, who will not have to enter a plea under the terms of the agreement, faced the prospect of decades in prison if he had been convicted of fraud.
Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop the securities fraud charges facing Attorney General Ken Paxton if he performs 100 hours of community service and fulfills other conditions of a pretrial agreement, bringing an abrupt end to the nearly nine-year-old felony case that has loomed over the embattled Republican since his early days in office.
The deal, which landed three weeks before Paxton is set to face trial, also requires him to take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay restitution to those he is accused of defrauding more than a decade ago when he allegedly solicited investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that the firm was paying him to promote its stock. The amount of restitution totals about $271,000, prosecutor Brian Wice said.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
HOUSTON — Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop the securities fraud charges facing Attorney General Ken Paxton if he performs 100 hours of community service and fulfills other conditions of a pretrial agreement, bringing an abrupt end to the nearly nine-year-old felony case that has loomed over the embattled Republican since his early days in office.
The deal is the second major win for Paxton in roughly the last six months, after the Republican-controlled Texas Senate acquitted him last fall of 16 impeachment charges centered on allegations that he accepted bribes and abused the authority of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor.
Two of the charges — first-degree felonies — stemmed from allegations that Paxton persuaded investors, including a then-GOP state lawmaker, to buy at least $100,000 worth of stock in a tech startup, Servergy, without disclosing that he would be compensated for it.
Paxton will have 18 months, the length of the pretrial deal period, to pay restitution to the former lawmaker, Byron Cook, and the estate of Joel Hochberg, a Florida businessman who died last year.
The outcome marks the latest example of Paxton emerging from scandal virtually unscathed, a trend that has baffled and enraged his critics and reinforced his status as a hero of the party’s most conservative flank in Texas and beyond.
Paxton, who spent a largely uneventful decade in the state House, rose to political prominence based in part on his reputation as a stalwart backer of religious liberty who would use the attorney general’s office to wage major legal battles on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights.
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