Ken Paxton agrees to community service, paying restitution to avoid trial in securities fraud case

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 142 points – Ken Paxton agrees to community service, paying restitution to avoid trial in securities fraud case
texastribune.org

Paxton, who will not have to enter a plea under the terms of the agreement, faced the prospect of decades in prison if he had been convicted of fraud.

Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop the securities fraud charges facing Attorney General Ken Paxton if he performs 100 hours of community service and fulfills other conditions of a pretrial agreement, bringing an abrupt end to the nearly nine-year-old felony case that has loomed over the embattled Republican since his early days in office.

The deal, which landed three weeks before Paxton is set to face trial, also requires him to take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay restitution to those he is accused of defrauding more than a decade ago when he allegedly solicited investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that the firm was paying him to promote its stock. The amount of restitution totals about $271,000, prosecutor Brian Wice said.

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Alright. So... The officials involved in that decision need to be investigated...

White collar crime... won't get better until consequences actually matter

Here’s what the prosecutor had to say:

Wice said he had been “besieged by a torrent of phone calls” from people who have “expressed their monumental displeasure with the fact that these cases are being resolved with a pretrial intervention.” Touting the restitution Paxton now owes to his alleged victims, Wice said it was more important to secure justice for them than to pursue prison time for Paxton, which he said should only be a priority if the defendant poses a threat to public safety.

“I appreciate your concern,” Wice said of those criticizing the outcome. “With all due respect, your truth is not the truth. You know one half of 1 percent of what [fellow prosecutor] Mr. [Jed] Silverman and I know about the facts of these cases. And the fact that all of these people have registered their monumental displeasure with what happened in these cases, I submit, probably should have been directed at the ballot box.”

I’m not sure I understand his angle here. Is 271k of restitution more important than holding Texas’ top law enforcement official responsible for crimes he’s charged with?

Prosecutor said it's not their responsibility to ensure he faces consequences for crimes committed.

Wice said it was more important to secure justice for them protect his relationship with his corrupt boss than to pursue prison time for Paxton

Fixed it for him

I didn’t go down the road of finding his political donations, but I think that would be a very interesting data point.

"Ooops the law accidentally applied to a republican, let me fix that real quick"

Seriously why do we still follow laws? I say break every one you can get away with at this point.

Seriously why do we still follow laws? I say break every one you can get away with at this point.

That's part of the problem, though: regular people don't get away with shit, even when they're not guilty.

Federal prosecutors have an average conviction rate of over 90% even with the rich and powerful getting away with everything. There's no way that over 90% of everyone federally prosecuted are guilty.

The poor, which are the vast majority of defendants, can't afford an attorney and public defenders offices are ridiculously understaffed and underfunded to the point that they sometimes have only a few minutes TOTAL to get in, tell someone innocent to take a deal that will ruin their life and go on to the next victim of what is grotesquely referred to as the "justice" system by some.

Oh, excellent! A slap on the wrist is sure to make him change his ways, and turn him into a cautionary tale for others!

Having a person like that as attorney general is just a travesty beyond belief.

This is BS. These types of agreements destroy accountability.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

HOUSTON — Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop the securities fraud charges facing Attorney General Ken Paxton if he performs 100 hours of community service and fulfills other conditions of a pretrial agreement, bringing an abrupt end to the nearly nine-year-old felony case that has loomed over the embattled Republican since his early days in office.

The deal is the second major win for Paxton in roughly the last six months, after the Republican-controlled Texas Senate acquitted him last fall of 16 impeachment charges centered on allegations that he accepted bribes and abused the authority of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor.

Two of the charges — first-degree felonies — stemmed from allegations that Paxton persuaded investors, including a then-GOP state lawmaker, to buy at least $100,000 worth of stock in a tech startup, Servergy, without disclosing that he would be compensated for it.

Paxton will have 18 months, the length of the pretrial deal period, to pay restitution to the former lawmaker, Byron Cook, and the estate of Joel Hochberg, a Florida businessman who died last year.

The outcome marks the latest example of Paxton emerging from scandal virtually unscathed, a trend that has baffled and enraged his critics and reinforced his status as a hero of the party's most conservative flank in Texas and beyond.

Paxton, who spent a largely uneventful decade in the state House, rose to political prominence based in part on his reputation as a stalwart backer of religious liberty who would use the attorney general's office to wage major legal battles on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights.

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