A judge in Texas on Feb. 16 refused the request of state Attorney General Ken Paxton to dismiss the almost 9-year-old felony securities fraud case fraud charges against him.
Harris County District Court Judge Andrea Beall rejected Mr. Paxton’s appeal that he had been denied his right to a speedy trial. The trial is set to start on April 15.
Mr. Paxton, who is serving his third term as Texas’s top lawyer, faces two first-degree felony charges of securities fraud, which, if convicted, each carries five to 99 years in prison, and a third-degree felony charge of failing to register with state securities regulators. He has denied all the charges, calling them “politically motivated.”
The securities fraud indictments were delivered by a Collin County grand jury in August 2015, just months into Mr. Paxton’s first term as attorney general. The case has since been repeatedly delayed as the sides fought over questions such as how much the prosecutors should be paid, which judge should preside, and where the trial should be held.
Other factors that prolonged the delay included the prosecution’s successful motions to move the case from Collin County to Harris County, Hurricane Harvey of 2017, the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently, Mr. Paxton’s impeachment trial in the Texas Senate in September 2023. He was acquitted in the impeachment trial, which was related to different allegations of abuse of office.
This month, the attorney general filed a motion to dismiss his indictments, arguing that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated.
During a court hearing on Feb. 16 in Houston, Mr. Paxton’s defense attorney, Dan Cogdell, blamed prosecutors for putting off the trial for years.
The prosecutors, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, were promised to be paid at a $300-per-hour rate by Collin County—the original venue for the case and Mr. Paxton’s home county—when they started on the case in 2015.
Collin County commissioners agreed to pay the prosecutors a first bill of $242,000 in January 2017 but voted against paying their second bill of $199,000 a year later after the trial moved to Harris County.
Home to Houston, Harris County is the most populous county in Texas and is far less Republican than Collin County, where the Republican attorney general has long lived.
Since then, the fee issue has been tied up in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The prosecutors are still asking the appeals court to force Collin County to pay them at the promised 300-per-hour rate and to prohibit the county from “taking any further action calculated to thwart” payment.
In November 2023, Judge Beall ruled in favor of Mr. Wice and Mr. Schaffer in their payment dispute. The prosecutors included Judge Beall’s ruling in a new filing with the appeals court, blaming Collin County for engaging in an “incessant, transparent, and purely political ploy to derail Ken Paxton’s prosecution by defunding it.”
Mr. Paxton’s lawyers claimed that the prosecutors were trying to further delay the trial.
“Once again, the Special Prosecutors are making clear that their prosecution of Ken Paxton is all about money and not justice,” Mr. Paxton’s legal team said in a statement, saying their client “just wants his day in court.” “Yet, the Special Prosecutors seem content pushing that day further back with its dilatory sideshow of an appeal.”
At the end of the Feb. 16 hearing, Mr. Schaffer announced that he would be stepping down from the case and replaced by Jed Silverman, a Harris County criminal defense attorney.
Mr. Cogdell argued that Mr. Wice had no authority to appoint a replacement for Mr. Schaffer. Judge Beall agreed to take up the issue at another pretrial hearing on March 20.
Speaking to reporters following the hearing, Mr. Cogdell said his client is “ready for trial” and hopeful to be acquitted.
