Ken Paxton, under investigation for possible violation of securities laws, has been indicted by a grand jury.
Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted by a grand jury, KYFO reports. It is unknown what the charges are, but Paxton has been under investigation for possibly violating securities laws. Before he was elected he had already received a $1000 fine and a reprimand last year on related issues.
“The indictments were issued on Tuesday and immediately sealed,” NBC’s Dallas-Ft. Worth affiliate reports, citing sources. Those charges “are set to be unsealed as early as Monday.”
Early last month, NCRM reported that prosecutors were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict Paxton on first-degree felony charges related to violations of federal securities laws. Courthouse News had reported that Special Prosecutor Kent Schaffer said a Texas Rangers investigation found that the admissions Paxton made last year didn’t cover the full range of his activities, and that laws were broken further.
“We believe that there’s sufficient evidence to present to a grand jury,” Schaffer said last month.
Paxton has been in the news recently for a memo he wrote suggesting county clerks might be able to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if it violated their religious beliefs. That led to the filing of an ethics complaint.
He also called the order to repeal Houston’s nondiscrimination ordinance and place it on the November ballot a “victory” for religious liberty.
UPDATE: 3:21 PM EDT –
Via NY Times:
“The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives but before he was elected attorney general in November 2014.”
In the most serious charges — first-degree securities fraud — Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in his hometown, McKinney. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 in Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case.
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