High-Profile Group of Lawyers Seeks to Suspend or Disbar Texas AG Ken Paxton

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A group of Texas lawyers, including four past presidents of the State Bar of Texas, filed a complaint Wednesday asking bar regulators to suspend or disbar Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for actions supporting efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

Asserting Paxton has brought “dishonor” to his fellow Texas lawyers and the legal profession, the group of 16 prominent Texas lawyers and the group Lawyers Defending American Democracy said in the complaint that Paxton has engaged in a pattern of “serious violations” of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.

The group cited the U.S. Supreme Court action Paxton filed in December 2020 seeking to overturn the election results, which the court dismissed for lack of standing. He wanted the court to enjoin four states that went for Democrat Joe Biden from using the results of their elections to appoint electors, and instead to appoint new electors or none at all.

The complaint also alleges Paxton continued after that to engage in “ethical violations” in support of Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, including by urging a crowd of people near the White House on Jan. 6 to march to the U.S. Capital to pressure Congress to change what it was meeting to do, which was to “properly count Electoral College votes and declare the rightful winner.”

The lawyers allege in the complaint that Paxton’s conduct cannot be acceptable from any licensed lawyer in the U.S., let alone the attorney general of a state.

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1. Texas AG Paxton Faces Another Ethics Complaint for Election Lawsuits

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Last Wednesday, a group of four past Texas State Bar presidents, state bar members and Texas legal ethics experts filed an ethics complaint against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) asking the Texas State Bar to permanently suspend or disbar him for ethical misconduct. The complaint asserts that “Attorney General Paxton, the highest law officer of the State of Texas, has brought dishonor to his fellow Texas lawyers and to the legal profession” through his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The state Attorney General is already facing other ethics investigations as well as criminal charges in separate cases.

The 31-page complaint outlines various patterns of ethical misconduct, mainly Paxton’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to overturn the election results of four swing states based on bogus allegations of fraud and unconstitutional actions of state legislatures. While the Supreme Court dismissed the case, finding that Paxton had not justified Texas’ interest in the conduct of other states’ elections, the ethics complaint argues that his lawsuit was frivolous, knowingly false and had no basis in fact. The complaint also highlights the ethical concerns regarding Paxton’s attempts to block certification by urging people to march on the Capitol on January 6. Regarding Paxton’s support of the January 6 insurrection, the complaint argues that “Mr. Paxton’s post-dismissal, unethical conduct was serious in its own right. Demonstrating a pattern of ethical misconduct, it made his prior conduct in the Supreme Court lawsuit even more egregious.”