Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home to avoid receiving a subpoena Monday in a federal lawsuit filed by groups seeking to help Texans obtain out-of-state abortions, court filings show.
Paxton ran from the garage of his home in McKinney, Texas, into a truck driven by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, while refusing to accept documents from a process server, according to an affidavit filed Monday in District Court of the USA in Austin. .
The Paxtons left without taking the documents, which were left on the ground from the house, process server Ernesto Martin Herrera wrote in the affidavit.
The subpoena ordered Paxton, a Republican, to testify at a hearing Tuesday morning in a civil lawsuit in which multiple Texas-based nonprofits want to resume helping pregnant residents get abortions in other states. This includes paying out-of-state abortion providers and providing financial assistance to those seeking abortions, as well as providing interstate travel for those providers.
The nonprofits say their abortion-aid activities had ceased shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had protected the federal right to abortion for decades, in a 5-4 vote in June. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization also dismissed another case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which had largely upheld the right to an abortion created by Roe.
Paxton in a pair of tweets late Monday night claimed he was showing concern for his family and attacked the media for reporting the affidavit, without denying the document’s content.
“This is a ridiculous waste of time and the media should be ashamed of themselves,” Paxton tweeted in response to a Texas Tribune article.
“Across the country, conservatives have faced threats to their safety — many threats that received little coverage or condemnation from the mainstream media,” he tweeted.
“It’s clear the media wants to stir up another controversy involving my work as Attorney General, so they’re attacking me for having the audacity to prevent a stranger from staying outside my home and showing concern for the safety and well-being of my family. “, he said in a second tweet.
Herrera’s statement said he arrived at Paxton’s home at 8:28 a.m. Monday and was greeted at the front door by a woman who identified herself as Angela. When he told her he was trying to serve the subpoenas on Ken Paxton, she told him the AG was on the phone.
Herrera, who said he recognized Ken Paxton inside the house through the glass in the door, offered to wait for him. Angela replied that Paxton “was in a hurry to leave,” according to Herrera, who observed a black Chevy truck in the driveway and then saw another car pull up.
Around 9:40 a.m., Herrera said he saw Paxton come out of his garage. Herrera walked up the street to Paxton and called his name, at which point “he turned and ran back inside the house through the same door to the garage.”
A few minutes later, Angela got into the truck and opened the driver’s side door and the door behind her, Herrera wrote. A few minutes after she started the truck, “I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage to the rear door behind the driver’s side,” Herrera wrote.
“I walked up to the truck and called his name out loud and told him I had court papers for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and continued walking toward the truck. After deciding that Mr. Paxton was not going to take them the subpoenas from me. hand, I stated that I was serving him with legal documents and I was leaving them on the ground where he could take them”, wrote Herrera.
I then placed the documents on the ground next to the truck. The service ended at 9:50. He got into the truck, leaving the documents on the ground, and then both cars left,” he wrote.
In July, Paxton sued the Biden administration over guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services that hospitals and doctors must perform emergency abortions.
Paxton, who was elected attorney general in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, has been under indictment on securities fraud charges for seven years, though the case has not gone to trial. He won his Republican primary in May, defeating GOP challenger George P. Bush in a runoff.
