On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that a whistleblower lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton could return to trial in Travis County District Court.
This comes days after four former top deputies of the attorney general’s office, Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, Mark Penley and David Maxwell, filed a supplemental brief requesting that the abatement placed on the case be lifted.
The case, filed in 2020, was paused after a settlement was initially reached. However, the whistleblowers argued for it to be sent back to the court’s active docket after the Texas Legislature failed to approve funding that would have paid $3.3 million to Brickman, Vassar, Penley and Maxwell.
This payment and an apology from Paxton for referring to these former top deputies as “rogue employees” after they reported the attorney general for alleged wrongdoing and misconduct to the FBI were two key conditions of the settlement that the whistleblowers said Paxton failed to provide.
Brickman, the former deputy attorney general for policy and strategy under Paxton, said in a press conference earlier this week that the Texas House could still allow the settlement.
However, he said the whistleblowers had been given “zero indication” that was likely to happen, which prompted the decision to pursue resuming legal action.
Brickman said the “political trial” in the Senate that failed to convict Paxton on 16 of the 20 Articles of Impeachment may be over, but the whistleblowers believe they’ll have a much “fairer chance” with jurors and are ready to be back in “real court.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as needed.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
