Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Texas. In August he filed the financial disclosure that federal law requires of Senate candidates. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune checked it against public records.

What they found, published September 4, is that the form appears to break federal ethics law in at least three separate ways.

"It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton's part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings," said Craig Holman of the nonpartisan watchdog group Public Citizen.

Seven houses, no rent

Paxton reported owning seven homes. For each one, on a form that requires real estate income to be listed, he checked the box that says "None (or less than $201)."

All but one of those homes was listed for rent during the periods the form covers. Reporters found recent rental listings for six of them: two houses in Ocala, Florida; a house and a condo in Austin; a house in College Station; and a five-bedroom vacation lodge in Broken Bow, Oklahoma.

Then they went and looked.

A tenant confirmed she lives in one of the Florida houses. A next-door neighbor at the Austin condo complex said Paxton's unit has a renter. The Oklahoma lodge is advertised online as a short-term rental at up to $1,200 a night, with fall bookings filling up.

Three ethics experts told the newsrooms that receiving income and not reporting it violates federal disclosure law.

Four condos at a golf resort, and $1.3 million in loans he did not list

Federal law requires a Senate candidate who is not already in Congress to report every loan over $10,000, except loans on a personal residence.

Paxton bought three condos at the Black Desert Resort in southwest Utah in February. He did not report the mortgages on them, which total $1.3 million. Reporters found the loan documents in county land records.

Each of those mortgages carries an addendum used for rental properties. A New Jersey real estate lawyer, Daniel M. Shlufman, explained what the addendum does: it removes the requirement that the owner live in the unit, and it lets the lender collect rent straight from tenants if the borrower defaults.

Paxton bought a fourth condo at the same resort in 2025 and did disclose that one, along with its $640,000 mortgage.

"It's kind of mind-boggling to think about having four homes at one resort property and imagining those are for personal use," said Cynthia Brown, a senior lawyer at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

A plot of land he valued at $50,000 that his partner says is worth $1 million

Paxton owns a 20 percent stake in 42 acres of undeveloped land in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth. Last year he told the Senate it was worth between $15,001 and $50,000.

Rob Orr, who manages the investment and served with Paxton in the Texas House, told reporters that Paxton's share is worth about $1 million and has been for years.

"It would have been around a million for quite a while, probably the last four or five years," Orr said. "It has increased in value because of zoning and because of time."

The county assesses the land as farmland worth $20,008. Its estimated market value is $2.9 million. Federal disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value. The Senate Ethics Committee lets a filer start from a county assessment, but he has to adjust it up to market when the assessment comes in below.

Paxton did the same thing with the Oklahoma lodge. Last year he valued it at between $100,001 and $250,000, the county's assessment being $176,000. Real estate sites put its market value above $1.5 million.

This year both figures jumped. The lodge and the Johnson County land are each now reported at between $1 million and $5 million.

Nothing was bought. The numbers simply changed.

Revaluation, not acquisition, is why Paxton's reported net worth swung from a range of negative $1.9 million to $11.1 million a year ago, to a range of $1 million to $27 million now.

Margaret Dylus-Yukins of the Campaign Legal Center, who spent six years reviewing executive branch officials' disclosures at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, called the change "very strange," and said her old agency would have asked for a written explanation.

"When you have public officials that appear to be fudging the numbers on their disclosure forms, and the Senate Ethics Committee is letting that slide, then you're not only eroding trust in the committee but the candidate himself."

How a government lawyer bought more than a dozen properties

Paxton's state disclosure for 2001, before he entered the Legislature, listed assets of no more than $170,000. By 2015 his household net worth was $5.4 million, according to records that lawmakers subpoenaed when they impeached him in 2023 on charges he took bribes from an Austin real estate investor. The Senate acquitted him.

Those records show a portfolio built out of a cellphone tower, an HVAC company, a cement supplier and a police body camera manufacturer. When Motorola bought the body camera company in 2019, Paxton netted $2.2 million on his 2019 tax return.

Then he bought six properties in Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Hawaii.

His salary as attorney general through most of this was $153,750.

Some of that portfolio has surfaced here before. We wrote about the cell tower on the campus of a hospital whose board he sat on — his own company got the tower, and it became one of his largest sources of income.

He also began putting many of these properties on his state disclosures only after the Texas Ethics Commission closed a loophole in 2024 that he had been citing to leave them off.

What happens next

Almost certainly nothing.

A candidate or senator who knowingly falsifies a financial disclosure can be fined up to $50,000 or prosecuted for a felony false statement. The Senate Ethics Committee rarely investigates senators and has not formally sanctioned one in 19 years. It did not respond to the newsrooms' requests for comment.

Paxton declined an interview. His campaign spokesperson said he "has had a long and successful career outside of public service" and called the reporting "a bad attempt to manufacture controversy where none exists."

And Paxton does not have to file another federal disclosure before Election Day.

Texas voters get one chance to judge him on the version he already filed. A University of Texas / Texas Politics Project poll released last week found a third of respondents consider him honest and trustworthy. His opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, went into September with a narrow polling lead in a state where Republicans have not lost a statewide race in 32 years. Talarico's own disclosure puts his net worth between $67,000 and $305,000.

What the filings show

Ken Paxton reported seven homes to the Senate and no income from any of them, while six of the seven were listed for rent and tenants were living in at least two. He left $1.3 million in mortgages off the form entirely, and valued a stake in Texas land at up to $50,000 that his own business partner says has been worth about $1 million for years. Three ethics experts say collecting rent and not reporting it is a violation of federal law. He bought more than a dozen properties in five states on a government salary of $153,750, and no federal disclosure of his is due again before voters decide.

Source

Ken Paxton's financial disclosures appear to violate ethics law, by Zach Despart, Kayla Guo and Alexandra Glorioso, The Texas Tribune, co-published with ProPublica, September 4, 2026. Photo collage by ProPublica, source imagery by The Texas Tribune.