Ken Paxton has been Texas Attorney General since 2015. In that time he has been indicted, impeached, investigated by his own senior staff, and sued repeatedly. He has almost never had to answer a question about any of it under oath.

There are two known exceptions. Both are sealed.

On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, the campaign of Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico said it would ask a Collin County court to unseal them, as the Texas Tribune's Kayla Guo reported.

What the depositions are from

The case is a tangle, so here it is in order.

In 2016, North Texas businessman Charles Loper III — the man who oversees Paxton's blind trust — sued an energy company called Unity Resources and two of its investors, Byron Cook and Joel Hochberg. Loper accused them of defrauding him, in part through a scheme to profit off a Unity investment fund.

Cook and Hochberg fired back with an accusation of their own: that Loper and Paxton were conspiring to smear them because they were set to be key witnesses in a separate criminal securities fraud case against Paxton.

Paxton is not a bystander in the Unity story. He had served as a lawyer and a board member for Unity, and he invested in it.

In that separate criminal case, Cook and Hochberg accused Paxton of steering them into investing in a McKinney technology company without telling them he was collecting a commission from the firm. He was indicted in 2015. Prosecutors dropped the charges before trial in 2024, under a deal that required him to pay restitution and take legal ethics courses.

Paxton sat for depositions in the Loper case in 2019 and 2022. As the Tribune put it, these "mark exceedingly rare occasions of Paxton being forced to answer questions about his conduct under oath."

What one of them appears to show

The transcripts have never been made public. But the Wall Street Journal reported on the 2019 deposition earlier this year, and what it described is why this filing exists.

According to the Journal's account, Paxton acknowledged in that deposition that he had provided records from Unity — his former client — to his own lawyer, Mitch Little, who was at the time representing Loper in the suit against Unity.

Paxton's former client's records, handed to the lawyer suing his former client.

Little is now a Republican state lawmaker from Lewisville. He also represented Paxton at his 2023 impeachment trial on bribery and abuse of office charges, where the Republican-controlled state Senate acquitted him.

Both men dispute the framing. Paxton campaign spokesperson Nick Maddux called the Journal's reporting "blatant lies" and a violation of a court order. Little told the Journal there was no conflict of interest and that the records Paxton shared were not privileged.

Why they've stayed sealed

Not because a court weighed the public interest and decided against it.

The Collin County district judge presiding over the case, Republican Cynthia Wheless, put the matter on ice for more than four years. The case settled in 2023. The transcripts never came out.

What Talarico's lawyers are arguing

From a draft of the filing:

"The right of Texans to see these depositions matters more than ever. Existing public reporting suggests that Paxton's testimony raises substantial ethical questions. Texans have the right to know what Paxton said under oath in these proceedings and see the whole story before they go to the polls in November."

They argue the issue is "of immense public importance given Paxton's candidacy in a sharply competitive election for U.S. Senate," and that the reporting indicates the transcripts "directly implicate Paxton's fitness for office."

The legal hook is a Texas law entitling the public to access discovery — the evidence exchanged before trial, depositions included — when it concerns matters with "a probable adverse effect upon" either "the administration of public office, or the operation of government."

This is a campaign filing by an opponent, and it should be read as one. But the underlying question isn't partisan: a man who wants to be a United States senator has answered questions under oath on two known occasions in ten years, and Texans aren't allowed to see either answer.

The pattern

Avoiding sworn testimony is not incidental to Paxton's career. It is close to the method.

Texas Republicans nominated him anyway. When they did, we walked through the record they signed off on — the indictment, the impeachment, the whistleblower suit brought by his own top deputies. His own office has offered a man who admitted molesting a boy a one-day jail sentence while he campaigned against local prosecutors as soft on crime. And after the primary, Republican mega-donors were reluctant enough about his scandals that he was scrambling to win them back.

Every one of those stories ends the same way: the record is public, the testimony isn't.

What the records show

Ken Paxton sat for depositions in 2019 and 2022 in a securities fraud dispute involving a company he had served as lawyer, board member and investor — two of the only times in a decade of indictment, impeachment and investigation that he has answered questions under oath. The Wall Street Journal reported the 2019 transcript shows he gave a former client's records to his own attorney, who was suing that client; Paxton's campaign called that report "blatant lies." The judge sat on the case for more than four years and it settled in 2023 with the transcripts sealed. On August 26, 2026, his Senate opponent's campaign said it would ask a Collin County court to open them before Texans vote in November.

Source

Talarico campaign will ask court to unseal Paxton depositions — Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune, August 26, 2026.