{"id":46061,"date":"2021-01-14T21:02:47","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T21:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=46061"},"modified":"2021-01-14T21:02:47","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T21:02:47","slug":"ag-paxton-certainly-is-a-public-employee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=46061","title":{"rendered":"AG Paxton certainly is a &#8216;public employee&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=TexasAG%20%23KenPaxton%20%23whistleblower%20%23TexasTribune&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10788\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10788\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ken-paxton.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10788\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ken-paxton-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ken-paxton-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ken-paxton.jpg 854w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10788\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo by Erich Schlegel\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><strong>By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is making yet another dubious argument that requires a comment from, oh, this blog.<\/p>\n<p>Paxton&#8217;s legal team is arguing that as an elected official he is exempt from being held accountable for a whistleblower allegation that he has broken several laws in the conduct of his public office.<\/p>\n<p>As the Texas Tribune reports:\u00a0<em>The Texas attorney general\u2019s office is attempting to fight off efforts by four former aides to take depositions and issue subpoenas in their lawsuit claiming they were illegally fired after telling authorities they believed Attorney General\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/directory\/ken-paxton\/\">Ken Paxton<\/a> was breaking the law.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"t-align-left\"><em>The agency is arguing that Paxton is \u201cnot a public employee,\u201d and thus the office cannot be sued under the Texas Whistleblower Act, which aims to protect government workers from retaliation when they report superiors for breaking the law.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I beg to differ. Strenuously, actually. You see, the attorney general draws his salary from the public trough. Who provides the money for that salary? We do! You and I pay that money. That means the attorney general is a &#8220;public employee.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He works for us!<\/p>\n<p>Also, from the Texas Tribune: <em>Four former Paxton aides claim they were fired in retaliation for telling authorities they believed Paxton had done illegal favors for a political donor, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul. The whistleblowers\u2019 allegations have reportedly\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/ken-paxton-austin-texas-crime-f8413d14842d848e69cf81bb4d2e87e2\">sparked<\/a>\u00a0an FBI investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2021\/01\/14\/ken-paxton-texas-whistleblower-lawsuit\/\">Texas AG&#8217;s office argues whistleblower laws don&#8217;t apply to Ken Paxton | The Texas Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ken Paxton ought to resign as attorney general. He needs to free the public office from the embarrassment he brings to it &#8230; and to those of us who pay his salary!<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=TexasAG%20%23KenPaxton%20%23whistleblower%20%23TexasTribune&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is making yet another dubious argument that requires a comment from, oh, this blog. Paxton&#8217;s legal team is arguing that as an elected official he is exempt from being held accountable for a whistleblower allegation that he has broken several laws in the conduct of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=46061\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">AG Paxton certainly is a &#8216;public employee&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2652,4581,8956],"class_list":["post-46061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ken-paxton","tag-texas-ags-office","tag-whistleblower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46062,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46061\/revisions\/46062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}