Paxton whistleblower defends reporting him to FBI: ‘I was a witness to criminal activity’

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial ended its first week with more digging into why whistleblowers reported their embattled leader to federal law enforcement.

Paxton attorney Mitch Little gave a fiery cross examination of Ryan Vassar, a former deputy attorney general who was the first of the whistleblowers who sued for retaliation to testify. Others who didn’t sue testified earlier in the week.

Little has tried to raise questions about the whistleblowers’ motives and blame news media for Paxton’s troubles.

“A self-licking ice cream cone is when a bunch of employees at the Attorney General’s Office begin to suspect their boss,” Little said Thursday. “They read it in the media. They believe what the media says. They report it to the FBI and then the media reports that you went to the FBI.”

Paxton is accused of misusing his office to benefit Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and political donor, and then retaliating against employees who reported him to the FBI in 2020. Paxton gave Paul special legal attention and help while accepting home renovations and a job for a women with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Little on Thursday pressed Vassar about whether they had evidence that Paxton committed a crime when he and other former deputies went to the FBI.

Vassar said the whistleblowers had “formed a belief in good faith that the attorney general was involved in criminal activity.”

Little countered that they didn’t know Paxton was engaged in illegal activity.

“That’s the point of the good faith belief, is we had no evidence that we could point to, but we had reasonable conclusions that we could draw,” Vassar said.

Little continued to press that they went to the FBI “without any evidence.”

“That’s right, we took no evidence,” Vassar said.

As the back-and-forth continued, Vassar again stressed they had a good faith belief a crime had occurred. He said they went to the FBI as witnesses, not as investigators to collect evidence.

Vassar, who now works as general counsel at the Cicero Institute, clarified his remarks while on the stand Friday. He testified he’d taken evidence as meaning documents, which he hadn’t taken to federal authorities.

“My opinion was that our experiences were evidence, but we did not conduct our own investigation to provide documentary evidence of what we had come to learn,” Vassar said.

He later added, “I believe that I was a witness to criminal activity that had occurred by General Paxton.”

Vassar was also asked whether he wished he’d called Paxton to give him a heads up before going to federal authorities.

“I wouldn’t do anything else differently,” Vassar said.

Much of the questioning centered on an informal opinion issued by the Attorney General’s Office related to foreclosures during the COVID-19 pandemic and the retention of outside counsel to investigate claims by Paul.

Paxton’s attorney asked Vassar about group text messages among the whistleblowers. The messages included a text that called Paxton a “pathological liar” and another where Vassar wrote that employees in the office would “need to start using smaller words in their pleadings.” Vassar said it was a group thread between friends.

At one point during his testimony, Vassar revealed that the office had a “blacklist” of reporters who were handled differently than other reporters.

David Maxwell, the attorney general’s former director of law enforcement, was taking the stand Friday afternoon. He is among the former staff to file the whistleblower lawsuit.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.