Ryan Bangert, deputy first assistant to the attorney general, continued his meticulous testimony detailing his increasing alarm with how Ken Paxton was using the office to benefit his political donor Nate Paul throughout 2020. Bangert ultimately concluded there was nothing more he could do but report the behavior to law enforcement.
“I was deeply concerned that the name, authority and power of our office had been, in my view, hijacked to serve the interests of an individual against the interests of the broader public,” Bangert testified. “…It was unconscionable.”
In June 2020, Bangert recalled, he and Ken Paxton met Nate Paul at his office, got in his car and drove with Paul to Polvos, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Austin. There, Paul shared a laundry list of grievances related to his belief that he was being unfairly targeted by federal and state law enforcement, and a charity that had sued Paul, the Mitte Foundation.
Bangert walked the jury through the summer and fall, as he and other senior staff learned Paxton hired outside counsel to investigate law enforcement who had an open investigation into Paul’s businesses. Bangert said he and other senior staff pushed back against the idea to hire outside counsel, but were unsuccessful.
During questioning, House impeachment lawyer Rusty Hardin posed to Bangert many of the arguments that Buzbee used the previous day to try and poke holes in Mateer’s testimony, such as why the whistleblowers didn’t go directly to Paxton to express their concerns with his behavior. But Bangert said there was “no question that he was well aware of our objections” that had been lodged “repeatedly” and “in various ways” for months.
Bangert also rejected an allegation Paxton’s lawyer Tony Buzbee posited to Mateer on Wednesday that they were staging a “coup” in the attorney general’s office.
“It was not a mutiny,” he said. “We were protecting the interests of the state and ultimately, I believe, protecting the interests of the attorney general and, in my view, signing our professional death warrant. We understood the gravity of that act.”
– Kate McGee and Robert Downen
