Judge sets Paxton deposition in whistleblower lawsuit for Feb. 1

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A Travis County judge issued an order Friday for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sit for a deposition on Feb. 1 in the lawsuit brought by four of his former employees. However, some of those plaintiffs and their attorneys expect Paxton to appeal.

Judge Jan Soifer said Paxton will have to appear for and answer questions in an oral deposition at an Austin law firm on that day starting at 9 a.m. She said she reached this decision because his office failed to negotiate with the plaintiffs' attorneys over times to schedule the deposition.

The order also set dates for three of Paxton's top employees: Feb. 2 for First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster; Feb. 7 for Chief of Staff Lesley French Henneke; and Feb. 9 for senior advisor Michelle Smith.

KXAN never received any responses after reaching out twice Friday seeking comment from the Office of the Attorney General about the judge's latest order. This story will be updated once anything is shared.

This all comes a day after Paxton's attorneys submitted a filing that they said aims to end the lawsuit the former employees brought against his office. It also follows the Texas Supreme Court denying Paxton’s request to block his deposition in the lawsuit from his former top-ranking deputies, who allege Paxton wrongfully terminated them after reporting him for alleged corruption to federal authorities.

Attorney TJ Turner, who represents whistleblower David Maxwell, shared his reaction Friday to this filing, calling it a "stunt" intended to block the deposition from happening.

"I think the last thing Ken Paxton wants to do is put a hand on his Bible and tell the truth, and he's going to avoid that at all costs," Turner said. "So I think there will be another legal maneuver, and we'll wait and see what that is.

In their filing, Paxton's attorneys emphasized his belief that he did nothing wrong, noting the Texas Senate acquitted him at his impeachment trial last year. They also argue what the former employees claims' include are not protected by the state's whistleblower protection law.

However, in the same document, they said Paxton's office "hereby elects not to contest any issue of fact in this case" and "elects not to dispute the Plaintiffs' lawsuit."

That latter argument especially shocked Blake Brickman, a former deputy attorney general who's now suing Paxton. He said he saw what Paxton wrote in the filing as "total vindication."

"This is a total 180 that Ken Paxton has done. He is now saying he is not contesting our facts. The impeachment trial was based on our allegations, and now he's saying what we said is true," Brickman said. "The people of Texas really need to think about that. Conservative, rule-of-law Republicans really need to think about how disingenuous this attorney general is for him to say, actually, all these things are true now, right before he's about to get deposed, after he went through the impeachment. It's shocking. It really is."

Brickman said he does anticipate Paxton to appeal the judge's order. However, that last resulted in the Texas Supreme Court rejecting his request to avoid testifying under oath in the lawsuit.

If Paxton does eventually go under oath, though, he could invoke his Fifth Amendment right and not answer any questions. Mike Golden, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said that could end up harming a defendant in a civil case like this.

"Here in a civil case, any witness, including the defendant or an employee defendant, can plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any particular question. That's protected by the Constitution, and they can't be compelled to answer those questions," Golden said. "But the flip side is, in the civil case, their refusal to answer that question gets used against them in court. The plaintiffs can argue to the jury: he didn't answer this question because he knew the answer will be bad for him, and he didn't answer 77 questions because he knew the answers were going to be bad for him. That's the huge difference between how a criminal case works and a civil case [works]."

In new campaign finance reports released this week, Paxton detailed how he spent nearly 2.3 million dollars in campaign funds to pay for his legal defense in his impeachment trial.