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A few months ago I noticed something unusual: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is increasingly outsourcing big cases to private lawyers — even though his office has 700+ attorneys in-house, with several specialized divisions. So we dug in...
Zach Despart
18.3K posts
Zach Despart
@zachdespart
Investigative reporter @propublica @texastribune. Alum @houstonchron & @uvmvermont. NY native. Dalmatian dad.
- Wow. Polls still haven’t closed because of long lines in Harris County (#Houston), but with 128,000 voters and counting we have surpassed the entire state of Georgia’s first-day turnout yesterday. Our old record was 68k. Just remarkable. 🗳✔️🇺🇸
- Replying to @zachdespart🚨 Just now: U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, a W. Bush appointee, has ruled Republicans lack standing to challenge 127k drive-thru votes cast in Harris County (#Houston).
- New: Previously unreleased investigative interviews w/ police officers who responded to the Uvalde school shooting revealed they abandoned their plan to quickly confront the gunman after learning a crucial piece of information: He was armed with an AR-15.
- With an astounding 100,000+ votes again on Day 3, Harris County (#Houston) is nearing 400k total and has now exceeded 2016's **Election Day** turnout (353k). 🗳️☑️🔥
- Replying to @zachdespartWe found that the hired-gun law firms often have personal or political ties to Paxton. They include a lawyer who recently left his leadership team, the man who successfully defended Paxton during his impeachment and several large donors to his campaign.
- New: We investigated all 254 Texas counties to find each death caused by February's cold & blackouts. We found 194, almost 2x the state's count. And toll will almost certainly increase. It's now clear: This was one of worst TX disasters in past century.
- If you need extra motivation to get to the polls today, 25 #HarrisCounty residents who are at least 100 years old voted **in person** during the early vote period, per @HarrisVotes data. Three were born in 1915. 👵🧓🗳️☑️🔥
- Replying to @zachdespartPaxton has hired these firms for cases against huge corporations, like Meta, Google & BlackRock. These lawyers work on contingent-fee contracts — meaning they don't get paid unless they win/settle. But when they do, the payouts can be massive. Let's dive into that...
- Replying to @zachdespart…but Bash had moved to private practice. Paxton hired her firm to work on the Meta case, allowing her to bill $3,780 an hour, so that day of work will cost taxpayers $24,570.
- Replying to @zachdespartAlso on that case, one of Bash’s colleagues billed 19.9 hours for a single day, noting that he was working while traveling on flights that were “substantially delayed.” It cost Texas taxpayers $75,222. (The annual salary of some assistant AGs is $81k)
- For 2 years, I've tracked how Texas is spending billions in post-Harvey federal disaster aid. The latest: We found the new TX plan steers aid disproportionately to whiter, more conservative inland counties with a lower risk of disasters than the coast.
