AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
- A Texas prosecutor gave AG Ken Paxton four days to turn over records tied to his January 6 appearance.
- Paxton refused the request and called it “meritless,” the Texas Tribune reported.
- The Travis County DA’s office said Paxton broke the law by not disclosing his travel to the Capitol.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has refused a prosecutor’s demand for information regarding his appearance at Donald Trump’s rally before the January 6 Capitol riot, the Texas Tribune reported.
In a letter to Paxton sent on January 13, Jackie Wood, director of public integrity and complex crimes at the Travis County District Attorney’s Office said the attorney general had broken the law by not sharing records about his rally attendance or by not keeping records of it.
The letter informed Paxton he would face a lawsuit if he didn’t turn over the records of his communications within four days of receipt.
The request came after five of Texas’ biggest newspapers — the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, and the San Antonio Express-News – filed a complaint that Paxton was refusing to share records that should be public.
Paxton said the Travis County district attorney’s request was “meritless.” In a letter sent on Friday, a lawyer for Paxton’s office, Austin Kinghorn, said they had not violated any provision under the state’s open records law.
“Frustrated that they have failed to uncover anything worth reporting following ‘numerous open records requests to AG Paxton office for various documents,’ complainant newspaper editors have sought to leverage your office’s authority to further their fishing expedition, or worse, manufacture a conflict between our respective offices that will give rise to publishable content for the complainants’ media outlets,” Kinghorn wrote about the five newspapers.
Paxton’s refusal to release records tied to his January 6 appearance comes after attorneys general are considering charges for illegitimate electors who falsified documents saying Trump won the majority of voters in states where he lost.
Documents obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight in March 2021 showed Trump supporters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin submitted documents to Congress falsely claiming Trump won the states after the majority of votes actually went to Joe Biden.
The January 6 House select committee is looking deeper into the illegitimate elector scheme and the role Trump and his associates played in it after it was revealed that Rudy Giuliani was tied to the effort.
Both the Texas DA and AG offices did not respond to Insider’s request for comment at the time of publication.
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