Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled home after attempted serving of subpoena

Federal court documents filed on Monday detail evasive actions taken by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after he was approached by a process server with a subpoena for a federal court hearing on Tuesday.

As first reported by The Texas Tribune’s Eleanor Klibanoff, the subpoena was connected to a lawsuit filed by nonprofit organizations looking to provide funding for Texans to receive abortions out of state. An affidavit filed in federal court in conjunction with the suit states Paxton fled process server Ernesto Martin Herrera when approached at his McKinney, Texas home on Monday. 

In the documents, Herrera describes knocking on Paxton’s front door and speaking with the attorney general’s wife, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton. At one point Ken Paxton entered Herrera’s view from the front door and promptly turned around and walked into another room. Herrera stated he was told by Angela Paxton that the attorney general was on the phone.

Herrerra offered to wait in his car for Paxton, and 50 minutes later witnessed a black Chevrolet Tahoe arrive and reverse into the attorney general’s driveway. 

“At approximately 9:40 am the garage door opened up and I saw Mr. Paxton exiting the garage,” Herrera states in the documents. “He was wearing a white shirt and dark pants and carrying a suit jacket in his hands. I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name. As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage.”

After this encounter, Herrera says the attorney general’s wife started up the family’s truck—a different black Chevrolet in the driveway—and left a back passenger door open for her husband, who ran to the car and jumped in while Herrera attempted to petition him.

“I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage towards the rear door behind the driver side. I approached the truck, and loudly called him by his name and stated that I had court documents for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck,” Herrera states in the documents. “After determining that Mr. Paxton was not going to take the Subpoenas from my hand, I stated that I was serving him with legal documents and was leaving them on the ground where he could get them.”

Herrera states that Paxton and his wife left the residence in the truck without taking the subpoenas. The attorney general, who is under FBI investigation in a federal whistleblowers case and was indicted five years ago for his alleged participation in securities fraud, took to Twitter Monday night to claim he’d fled the subpoena for fear of his personal safety. 

“All across the country, conservatives have faced threats to their safety — many threats that received scant coverage or condemnation from the media,” Paxton wrote. “It’s clear that the media wants to drum up another controversy involving my work as Attorney General, so they’re attacking me for having the audacity to avoid a stranger lingering outside my home and showing concern about the safety and well-being of my family.”