Paxton's Attorneys Fire Back at Prosecutors in Court Filing

Lawyers in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s ongoing securities fraud case have fired back against special prosecutors in the latest in a series of back-and-forth court filings.

In their Thursday filing, Paxton’s attorneys called the prosecutors' reply to their motions to drop three felony charges “bombastic and diversionary.”

“Attorneys Pro Tem attempt sarcasm and inappropriate fictional analogies to mask their unsubstantive Reply that repeatedly misrepresents both Paxton’s arguments and the law,” the court filing said. “They are under the misguided belief that sound bites and quotes from fictional characters somehow trump law and documented facts.”

Last month, Paxton’s attorneys filed six motions to dismiss three indictments from a grand jury earlier this year. Paxton pleaded not guilty to charges of misleading investors to a technology company, at a time before he was attorney general.

Paxton’s attorneys' motion to quash the indictments was based on the claim that Collin County Judge Chris Oldner — who has recused himself from the case — acted improperly throughout the grand jury process, including by telling his wife about the indictments.

Special prosecutors replied to the motions with a 19-page court filing that made reference to the film "Animal House" and included the sentence, "That Paxton’s motion is not only desperate, but utterly without merit is predictable; that it recklessly and unnecessarily tars both a respected jurist and his spouse without a legal or factual basis to do so is unconscionable."

Paxton’s attorneys say the reply does not address their actual argument of improper grand juror qualification and that Paxton’s right to due process under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was violated.

The latest filing also claimed that prosecutors are enabling Oldner’s inappropriate actions as they “concoct a fiction that is unsupported in law or fact, to excuse his behavior."