Where in the world is Ken Paxton?
In 2021, Mr. Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, and his wife left town for Utah during a deadly winter storm that left millions in his home state without power. When lawyers tried to depose him in a securities-fraud case in 2023, he was roving around Europe. And this past summer, in the middle of his hotly contested U.S. Senate campaign, a British tabloid spotted Mr. Paxton in Iceland and London.
Since his 2015 swearing-in as the state’s top lawyer, Mr. Paxton has taken about 350 trips outside of Texas with a taxpayer-funded security detail, including 25 to foreign countries such as South Africa, India and Aruba, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Texas law does not limit Mr. Paxton’s use of state-sponsored protection to official business.
Mr. Paxton also has benefited from the largess of wealthy friends, who donated $730,000 toward his legal bills in the securities-fraud case and have treated him to hunting and fishing trips, airplane flights and lodging, and tickets to various events, including the Grammy Awards, records show.
Mr. Paxton’s Democratic rival, James Talarico, has sought to turn the attorney general’s lifestyle into a liability, repeatedly accusing him of exploiting the perks of his office to enrich himself. Mr. Talarico, a state representative, has dinged Mr. Paxton on his apparent affinity for luxuries big and small — from his real estate portfolio that includes at least 15 properties worth about $9 million to the $1,000 pen he once swiped from a courthouse security tray. Polls indicate a tight race in a conservative state that hasn’t elected a Democrat in more than three decades, suggesting that Mr. Talarico’s attacks may be resonating with some voters.
“He became a multimillionaire on a government salary,” Mr. Talarico said in a widely viewed social media post. “He takes lavish vacations in Iceland while Texans can’t afford the basics. Ken Paxton doesn’t serve us — he serves himself.”
Mr. Paxton’s campaign and office did not respond to that criticism or to questions about his travel, security or personal finances.
He has long denied any wrongdoing. Several of his trips were to conferences with other attorneys general. Mr. Paxton also has traveled frequently to Washington during a career in which he brought dozens of lawsuits against the Biden and Obama administrations.
Mr. Paxton’s allies say criticism of his travel unfairly distracts from his record battling for conservative causes.
“What does that have to do with his ability to take on the Obama administration and win cases?” said Bob Hall, a Republican state senator. “Ken Paxton has gotten the job done, and I think that’s what is important.”
Mr. Talarico has not reported accepting any gifts while in office. In a form filed with the U.S. Senate in August, he said he earned about $51,500 as a state lawmaker and about $33,000 from a consulting firm from January 2025 to May 2026. He also reported several mutual funds and a book deal for an unspecified amount. In a separate form filed in Texas, Mr. Talarico listed one piece of property.
Nearly 225 Cities
Security costs for Mr. Paxton’s travel since 2015 have exceeded $3.1 million, according to state records, which do not specify whether a trip is related to his official duties. That tally does not include other travel-related expenses charged to taxpayers. He has visited nearly 225 cities, making multiple trips to destinations like Park City, Utah, and New Orleans. Security costs peaked in 2024 at more than $483,000.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has also traveled across the country and abroad, with security costs topping $5.4 million since 2015, records show.
“Business or pleasure — security detail goes,” said Arnold Alejandro, a former member of the state security detail who protected Mr. Paxton and other Texas officials. “I don’t care if it’s the Bahamas on vacation in a bikini or Washington, D.C.”
A recent ProPublica investigation found records indicating a work-related purpose for only one in six of the locations logged by Mr. Paxton’s security team. Mr. Alejandro added that many politicians, including Mr. Paxton, mixed business and personal activities while away from the office.
“You schedule one meeting with a politician or state representative and then you go play — you have dinners, you have sightseeing, but as long as you call it state business, it’s business,” he said.
Chris Toth, who served as a top official of the National Association of Attorneys General for 18 years, called Mr. Paxton’s travel “incredibly excessive.”
“It’s beyond the pale of anything that’s ever been brought to my attention,” said Mr. Toth, an outspoken critic of Mr. Paxton. “When you are running an office the size of the Texas attorney general’s office, it’s very demanding, and there is a cost to being out of the office.”
Security for a 2017 trip by Mr. Paxton to Israel, which was organized by the national attorneys general group, cost nearly $75,000 and was one of his most expensive trips. Mr. Toth said Mr. Paxton insisted on his own security detail even though the Israeli government provided protection for the entire delegation, which included six other attorneys general. Mr. Paxton also traveled in a separate vehicle from the rest of the group, Mr. Toth said.
Records show the attorney general’s security team also accompanied him to Louisville, Ky., in May 2024, when Mr. Paxton was photographed at the Kentucky Derby with a group that included Tracy Duhon, an aspiring Christian influencer he is currently dating. Security for that trip cost $13,235. One month later, Mr. Paxton and his wife, Angela, separated, according to her divorce petition the following year, which accused him of adultery.
In response to questions from The Times about security costs for Mr. Paxton’s trips to Louisville, Israel and other destinations, the Department of Public Safety called the expenses “appropriate” and in line with the agency’s “strict standards.”
It’s unclear how often Mr. Paxton has traveled without Texas law enforcement, but a few foreign trips that were not listed in state logs drew media attention.
In 2019, he traveled to China with other attorneys general and met with government officials there, despite warnings from staffers about surveillance by the communist government, according to Fox News. In 2023, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Paxton went to Qatar for the World Cup.
Another foreign trip not reported in state security logs: Mr. Paxton’s excursion in 2024 to Dubai, where he celebrated New Year’s Eve with two fugitives wanted on federal fraud charges, according to a lawsuit and video from the party. Ms. Duhon also appears in the video and in photos with Mr. Paxton in Europe this past summer; she has declined interview requests. Mr. Paxton’s campaign did not respond to questions about who paid for the Dubai trip.
In a rare instance in which Mr. Paxton faced questions about his travel in a public forum, state senators grilled him in February 2021 about his appearance at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Paxton declined to say who paid for his trip to Washington. “I didn’t spend money personally,” said Mr. Paxton, who had tried to help President Trump overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Paxton’s security detail spent about $7,000 to go to Washington in January 2021, though it’s not certain that trip included the rally since the logs do not specify exact dates.
Robert Nichols, one of two Republican state senators who voted to convict Mr. Paxton at his 2023 impeachment trial, said elected officials should expect rigorous scrutiny of their travel.
“Most people would ask who is paying for these trips,” he said. “Why is he gone all the time? It’s not like he’s selling economic development.”
‘We Didn’t Have Much’
Shortly after he took office as attorney general in 2015, Mr. Paxton was indicted on securities-fraud charges. Because the allegations were not connected to his job, he could not use tax dollars or campaign donations to pay for his lawyers. Instead, he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from about 50 people, including campaign donors, for a legal defense fund. He relied on an exemption in state law that allows government officials to take gifts from people with whom they have an existing relationship, separate from their public office.
In 2017, a $100,000 donation to the fund from an executive under investigation for health care fraud led to bribery allegations against Mr. Paxton. The prosecutor handling the case, Erleigh Wiley, ended the inquiry after Mr. Paxton’s attorneys argued that he had an existing relationship with the donor.
“If you’re going to take down a big fish, you better make sure you can go all the way,” Ms. Wiley said.
Mr. Paxton later cut a deal in which the securities-fraud charges were dropped and he did not admit guilt.
His impeachment trial, in which he was acquitted, centered on allegations that Mr. Paxton had misused the power of his office to help a donor in legal trouble who had paid for expensive renovations to Mr. Paxton’s home. In the lead-up to the trial, one of Mr. Paxton’s top aides said the attorney general had asked him to review the donor’s case — during a call from a Mexican resort town.
“He always cared about what trip he was going on, who was taking him to dinner,” the aide, Blake Brickman, told investigators for the Texas House. “He likes the perks of the office.”
Other high-level staffers also described what they said was Mr. Paxton’s penchant for freeloading during the investigation that led to his impeachment. David Maxwell, Mr. Paxton’s director of law enforcement, accused the attorney general of charging a $600 sport coat in a hotel gift shop to a conference organizer. “He always had his hand out,” Mr. Maxwell said.
As criticism of his lifestyle has mounted during the Senate campaign, Mr. Paxton has tried to remind voters of his humble upbringing as the son of an Air Force pilot.
“Growing up, we lived in a white trailer with no air conditioning outside of an Air Force base,” Mr. Paxton said at the Republican Party’s convention in Dallas last month. “We didn’t have much but I learned more about service to my country in that trailer than I did in any classroom.”
Now, his real estate holdings — the target of attacks by Mr. Talarico — include four condominiums at a luxury resort in Utah, three homes in Florida and a plot of land in Hawaii.
And photos on social media offer a glimpse of his cross-country travel, including a black-tie charity event in Palm Beach, Fla., and a luxury golf resort in South Carolina.
During Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, a men’s clothing store near Dallas, Lombardo Custom Apparel, posted a photo of Mr. Paxton in a tuxedo.
“We started doing his clothes a couple years ago as he started to build a pretty nice wardrobe,” said the owner, Jay Lombardo. “He’s trying to look the part as he runs for office.”
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