The Texas Attorney General's Lunch With Nate Paul

Tex-Mex brings everyone together in Texas, but this one is unusual.

For the last three days, impeachment prosecutors have made the case that Attorney General Ken Paxton and Austin real estate investor Nate Paul had an inappropriate relationship. Many of the allegations, including bribery and abuse of office, have been public for years. But this morning, one of Paxton’s former deputies laid out a startling story of the acquaintanceship.

Ryan Bangert, who spent nearly two years working for Paxton, testified that he was summoned to lunch with Paul and the attorney general shortly after the state’s top legal officer had recently intervened in a lawsuit between Paul and the Mitte Foundation, a local charity that had invested in one of Paul’s deals.

The staffers were uncomfortable with the idea of grabbing a bite with Paul, and they told Paxton it would raise ethical problems. Bangert told Paxton they would need Paul’s lawyers to sign a waiver allowing him to meet with the Attorney General’s office without his lawyers present. He assumed that would end the conversation, but Paxton simply went into his office and returned shortly thereafter with a signed waiver, Bangert testified.

“It was not a request to which I could say no,” Bangert testified Thursday morning.

Paxton, Bangert and other aides then drove to Paul’s downtown Austin office, where they parked and piled into Paul’s car. From there, they rode to Polvo’s, a run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex restaurant, where Bangert said Paul insisted on sitting outside despite the warm weather.

After a brief introduction from Paxton, Paul did “almost all of the talking.” Over the course of the 30 to 40 minute lunch, Paul listed a series of “grievances” against the Mitte Foundation. The complaints reflected those laid out in a memo he had received from Sheena Paul, a lawyer and Nate’s sister and chief operating officer, Bangert testified.

“Mr. Paul completed his, uh, exposition, and that was a signal for the lunch to end,” Bangert said. “It very much had the feeling that I had been summoned.”

The lunch was one of several times Bangert was taken off other work to look into Paul’s problems, he later testified. At the time, the attorney general’s office was busy preparing a multi-state lawsuit against Google, handling questions about Covid restrictions and election-related cases.

“We were devoting far more resources to Nate Paul than we ever should have, given the importance of those issues,” Bangert said.

Bangert and several other top aides later blew the whistle on Paxton and Paul’s relationship to the FBI. A common issue in their complaint was that Paxton set up meetings between Paul and his staff that the aides felt were inappropriate and unnecessary. But the Polvo’s lunch, including the group ride to the restaurant in Paul’s car, is strange even by those standards.

After the lunch, Bangert turned to Paxton’s body man, Drew Wicker, and for the first time that day spoke his mind.

“Drew, that was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.”