The Texas Attorney General’s office (OAG) has come under scrutiny after agency employees reallocated taxpayer-funded rooms to donors and other private citizens, some who failed to pay their own costs.
The issue of non-payment became a factor when the state comptroller office began auditing the AG’s office earlier this year. Two senior officials involved in the incident resigned soon after it was brought to agency leadership’s attention.
The recent investigation centers on hotel rooms the agency booked for employees attending last year’s Trump inauguration and Supreme Court arguments over a new state law, that was defended by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, according to deputy first assistant attorney general Ralph Molina said in an investigative report conducted by the agency.
The agency paid more than $20,000 for a non-refundable block of 10 hotel rooms at the Courtyard Marriott which was interrupted by a winter storm.
According to records, the OAG agency would have been responsible for about $16,000 of unused hotel rooms. Agency employees identified private citizens who wanted the rooms and agreed to pay out of pocket for them, including major Paxton donors Terry and Jennifer Lacore, controversial Albanian businessman Bashkim Ulaj and chair of the Albanian Republican Party Fatmir Mediu, and Keith Craft, lead pastor at Elevate Life Church in Frisco. State Sen. Angela Paxton, who filed for divorce from Ken Paxton six months later, also took one of the rooms at her own expense.
According to the comptroller’s office report, the state employees did not go through the proper process to transfer these rooms. When two of the citizens did not use them, they were ultimately billed to the OAG.
In June, officials from the state comptroller’s office notified the attorney general’s office they were opening a “routine post-payment audit” to review payroll, purchasing and travel expenditures. Shortly after, Craft and another guest paid the hotel for the cost of the room; the hotel then reimbursed Paxton’s office.
That audit was paused after Comptroller Glenn Hegar left office and was replaced by acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock.
In October, two of Paxton’s senior aides, chief financial officer Michele Price and chief of staff Lesley French, began emailing about the travel discrepancies, but stopped until a few days after the primary election at which time Hancock reopened the audit. Shortly after, both Price and French resigned.