Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has traveled with a Department of Public Safety security detail on nearly 1,000 trips since taking office in 2015, at a cost to the state of $3.3 million, according to an analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published Friday morning.
The newsrooms said they could match only 138 of those trips, and about $553,000 of the security spending, to official state business. Across his tenure, the records list a business reason for only about one trip in six.
Paxton, a Republican, is running for the U.S. Senate in the Nov. 3 election. Early voting starts Oct. 19.
What the records show
The review drew on DPS logs for the detail plus travel receipts, per diem records and daily calendars kept by the attorney general's office, obtained under the Texas Public Information Act. According to the analysis:
- Paxton made at least 17 trips with the detail during his 2023 suspension, while he awaited his impeachment trial, including to Park City, Utah, and Vail, Colorado. The Senate later acquitted him.
- He traveled to 36 states and 19 countries. He went to Florida 53 times, with two of those trips carrying a documented business purpose, and to Utah 24 times. His family's blind trust owns properties in both states.
- Of 91 trips with the detail last year, five listed a business reason.
- His security has averaged about $24,300 a month. Security for his predecessor, Greg Abbott, cost the equivalent of about $7,400 a month, adjusted for inflation, over Abbott's final three years as attorney general.
The analysis also found trips where Paxton did not use the detail, including some official business trips and political fundraising travel to Florida and the Bahamas. State officials told the newsrooms they had no record of Paxton or his campaign repaying the state for any security costs.
What Paxton's office says
State law allows DPS to guard top officials such as the attorney general, though they are free to decline it. Paxton and his office did not answer the newsrooms' detailed questions or supply records showing the trips were official.
