AG Ken Paxton denies violating open records law in newspapers' request for Jan. 6 communication - Yahoo News
Attorney General Ken Paxton denied Friday that he violated the state’s open records law, rejecting allegations by a Travis County prosecutor that his office should release communications from the week of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Paxton had given a speech at a pro-Trump rally just hours before the violence erupted in Washington, but his office hasn’t released messages to Texas media outlets that sought the records under the Texas Public Information Act.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza’s office launched an investigation after top editors at several of the state’s largest newspapers wrote a joint complaint about Paxton’s denials of their information requests. Those papers are the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.
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The district attorney’s office warned Paxton last week that it would file suit if his office did not fix violations of the open records law within four days. In a letter to the Travis County district attorney’s public integrity unit, Paxton’s office called the claims “meritless” and said there was “no violation to cure.”
“Frustrated that they have failed to uncover anything worth reporting following ‘numerous records requests to AG Paxton(’s) 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,” wrote Paxton’s general counsel, Austin Kinghorn.
The attorney general’s office provided a copy of the letter to the Texas Tribune. Paxton’s office did not return a request for comment from the newspapers, nor did it provide a copy of the letter.
Garza is a Democrat. Paxton is a Republican running for re-election this year. He is currently facing the fiercest scrutiny of his decades-long political career, with several GOP challengers, three state criminal indictments, allegations of an extramarital affair and a pending FBI bribery investigation.
source: https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/ag-ken-paxton-denies-violating-004239986.html
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