Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on July 11, 2021. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh September 26, 2023

Newly acquitted on election-related offenses, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton blamed George Soros, the Jewish liberal billionaire, for his recent troubles. 

Soros, a Hungarian-born Democratic megadonor and Holocaust survivor, has long been the subject of antisemitic attacks from the far right. 

In a series of interviews on conservative media outlets, Paxton said Soros attempted to rig the judicial system by backing Democratic candidates in local district attorney races, and tried to influence Republican justices in his state. 

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A frustrated attorney general

Paxton has been investigating alleged election-related misconduct since assuming office in 2015. In recent years, his office initiated over 300 inquiries into potential incidents by voters and election officials, according to ProPublica, an investigative news site. They have resulted in only a handful of convictions.

He also failed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Last year, the all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the state’s Constitution forbids the attorney general — an elected member of the executive branch — from unilaterally pursuing cases of election law violations without permission from local county prosecutors. 

In a video interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Paxton — without evidence — said the justices were “put there by George Soros” to restrict his powers, calling it a “genius move.”

He repeated the claim in a radio interview the following day. “I am convinced that this was an effort by George Soros who got his DAs in all these counties, who now it’s up to them to prosecute,” Paxton said on the Michael Berry Show.

‘Scapegoating the Jewish people‘

Republicans have repeatedly blamed rising crime on local district attorneys to whom Soros has donated.  According to the Anti-Defamation League, casting a Jewish individual as a puppet master who manipulates politics for malign purposes is a common antisemitic trope. 

Philip Shulman, a spokesperson for American Bridge, a Democratic Party-funded research group, said Paxton should support the values and laws he swore to uphold as the state’s top law enforcement officer “instead of scapegoating the Jewish people for all of his problems.”

Paxton, an ally of former President Donald Trump, has faced criminal investigations in recent years and was charged in 2015 with felony securities fraud. He was recently acquitted by the Texas Senate on 16 impeachment articles that accused him of misconduct, bribery and corruption, after a trial that divided Republicans.

The embattled attorney general said in another interview that the refusal of his fellow Republicans to overturn the court ruling and the efforts to impeach him are all tied to Soros. “The third strategy was, get rid of me,” Paxton told conservative radio host Glenn Beck. “And then there’s no hope. There’s nowhere to go. So that was the goal. They didn’t get rid of me.” 

Paxton has in the past invoked Soros to blast decisions he disliked. Earlier this year he lashed out at a “Soros-backed” prosecutor in Travis County after a jury found Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, guilty in the deadly shooting of an armed protester in Austin, Texas, during demonstrations in 2020 in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He also joined other backers of Trump in accusing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of orchestrating a campaign backed by Soros to undermine the former president. 

A spokesperson for Paxton didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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