AUSTIN — The defense team of Attorney General Ken Paxton called several current employees from his office who testified they observed no wrongdoing and contradicted the claims made by the whistleblowers.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the House Board of Managers accidentally rested their case-in-chief on September 14, allowing the defense to proceed with presenting exculpatory evidence.
The first witness the defense called Justice Gordon, who has been the chief of the open records division since 2015 and continues to work at the Office of the Attorney General (OAG). He disputed many of the claims made by the House that Paxton had abused the OAG’s open records division to the benefit of Nate Paul.
Gordon related how the open records request submitted by Paul and litigated by his lawyer, an open government attorney named Joe Larson, was entirely proper. Furthermore, he testified that the Department of Public Safety and FBI violated several rules in their response to the request, which were causes for considerable concern.
The government agencies allegedly submitted documents late, misrepresented the documents at hand, did not properly notify third parties, and wrongfully redacted information they were supposed to disclose.
Furthermore, Gordon testified that the decision by the OAG to issue a no-ruling on the request to release documents was made because litigation by Larson was pending in court and that it would have been wrong to either reject or approve the request.
“We closed our ruling and let the court decide,” Gordon explained. Had they sided with the government and rejected the request to release, Gordon feared “it could have been seen as condoning that type of behavior.”
He also asserted that the no-decision did not release any documents to Paul and that no action taken by the OAG would have benefited Paul except insofar as it stopped the violations being made by the government agencies.
Next, the OAG associate deputy for legal counsel, Austin Kinghorn, was called to the stand.
He explained that legally, Paxton had the ultimate authority to hire outside counsel such as Brandon Cammack and that the OAG offered to pay Cammack for services rendered if he filed his investigative report.
Furthermore, Kinghorn explained the process of the OAG report on the whistleblower accusations, defending the report’s integrity and contending that he had every opportunity to identify false or misleading statements.
He also testified that he received no pressure from anyone in the office, especially not Paxton, to alter or adjust his conclusions.
Then, Henry de la Garza, an OAG employee since 1995 and the human resources director since 2020, explained that he had recommended the whistleblowers be terminated due to alleged previous violations of behavioral policies they had committed unrelated to their report to the FBI.
Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell, and Mark Penley were dismissive, adversarial, and insubordinate to Brent Webster, the new first assistant after Jeff Mateer resigned.
“I recommended that it could be done and it was reasonable,” he said regarding Maxwell, who apparently had a history of HR violations and concerning behavior.
Furthermore, “no reasonable expectation that Mr. Penley wanted to work with or for his new boss, first assistant Brent Webster,” de la Garza claimed. The same was true for all of the other employees discussed.
He defended the decision and agreed with the terminations, testifying that the ex-employees violated office policy repeatedly and showed no real effort to continue their responsibilities under anyone other than Mateer, who had led them to the FBI.
