The FBI on Thursday arrested Nate Paul, an actual property developer in Austin who’s on the heart of suspended Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton’s authorized and political troubles. Paxton was impeached by the Republican-led Home in Could, and a lot of the 20 articles heart on allegations Paxton corruptly used his workplace to aide Paul, a significant donor. Paul, 36, was booked in a Travis County jail Thursday afternoon on a federal warrant for unspecified felony expenses.
The FBI has been investigating Paul a minimum of because it raided his residence and enterprise places of work in 2019 alongside Treasury Division brokers. In 2020, high staff in Paxton’s workplace informed the FBI that the lawyer normal was utilizing his workplace to run authorized interference for Paul and assist his struggling actual property empire. The FBI then opened an ongoing investigation of Paxton.
Together with donating $25,000 to Paxton in October 2018, Paul is accused of paying for an in depth 2020 transform of an Austin home Paxton and his spouse, state Sen. Angela Paxton (R), purchased in 2018, and for facilitating Paxton’s extramarital affair by hiring his mistress. The lawyer normal’s workplace officers who blew the whistle on Paxton have been both fired, suspended or stop. 4 of them sued Paxton for wrongful termination, Paxton settled with them in January after which requested the Legislature to finance the $3.3 million payout. A Home committee then quietly investigated Paxton, resulting in his impeachment.
It is not clear if Paul’s arrest was tied to the Paxton allegations. The Justice Division declined to touch upon the arrest. Dan Cogdell, an impeachment lawyer for Paxton, informed The Dallas Morning Information he assumes the costs towards Paul are associated to the Paxton investigation. “You do not have to be Nostradamus to imagine that they’ll attempt to flip Nate Paul to testify towards Ken,” he stated. “I do not know that for a reality. However I might be very stunned if that wasn’t the case. … As a result of in any other case, you already know, logically [the FBI] would have arrested them each on the similar time.”