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U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Former Top Aide, Calls For Paxton's Resignation

From left, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Texas Tribune
From left, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a former top aide to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, called on his former boss to resign from his post after top members of Paxton's staff said the attorney general should be investigated for multiple crimes, including bribery.

"For the good of the people of Texas and the extraordinary public servants who serve at the Office of the Attorney General, Attorney General Ken Paxton must resign," he said in a statement. "The allegations of bribery, abuse of office, and other charges levied against him by at least 7 senior leaders of the Office of the Attorney General are more than troubling on the merits."

"But, any grace for him to resolve differences and demonstrate if the allegations are false was eliminated by his choice instead to attack the very people entrusted, by him, to lead the office – some of whom I know well and whose character are beyond reproach."

Roy called the office of the attorney general "too critical to the state and her people to leave in chaos."

"The Attorney General deserves his days in court, but the people of Texas deserve a fully functioning AG’s office," he added.

Roy served as Paxton's initial first assistant attorney general during Paxton's first term, but left in a major shake-up of senior staff in 2015. He was elected to Congress as a Republican in 2018.

Abby Livingston joined the Tribune in 2014 as the publication's first Washington Bureau Chief. Previously, she covered political campaigns, House leadership and Congress for Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. A seventh-generation Texan, Abby graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. She grew up in Fort Worth and has appeared in an episode of "The Bold and The Beautiful." Abby pitched and produced political segments for CNN and worked as an editor for The Hotline, National Journal’s campaign tipsheet. Abby began her journalism career as a desk assistant at NBC News in Washington, working her way up to the political unit, where she researched stories for Nightly News, the Today Show and Meet the Press. In keeping with the Trib’s great history of hiring softball stars, Abby is a three-time MVP (the most in game history —Ed.) for The Bad News Babes, the women’s press softball team that takes on female members of Congress in the annual Congressional Women’s Softball breast cancer charity game.