The state’s Democrats are requesting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton investigate whether any ethics laws were violated when Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 50 million Facebook users for political gain.
Texas Democrats want Paxton to investigate Cambridge Analytica because of the company's past ties to Republican Ted Cruz’s campaign.
Manny Garcia, the state Democratic party’s deputy executive director, said they asked the attorney general to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the matter.
"We see stories where organizations are exploiting information that is out there and figuring out how to harvest it and how to transfer it over to campaigns for political use, so it’s critical that we investigate what happened,” Garcia said.
Texas congressional leaders are also involved, urging the the attorney general to open an investigation into the company’s role into helping Texas Republicans win elections.
In a letter to the attorney general’s office, Congressman Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio wrote, “The Attorneys General for Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York have opened their own investigations into Cambridge Analytica and we urge you to do the same.”
Digital experts have said Cambridge Analytica hasn’t broken any state digital privacy laws, but there is no confirmation of whether the company data transfers violated any federal or state campaign laws.
Matt Welch with the Paxton campaign called the Democrats' request a political stunt.
Ryan Poppe can be reached at rpoppe@tpr.org or on Twitter @RyanPoppe1
