Talarico campaign seeks court order to release Ken Paxton's past deposition transcripts

The campaign of Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico will file a petition in Collin County to unseal two years-old depositions given by Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2019 and 2022. Those depositions stem from a complex securities-fraud lawsuit filed by Charles Loper III, who oversees Paxton’s blind trust, against Unity Resources and its investors Byron Cook and Joel Hochberg. Loper claimed Cook and Hochberg ran a scheme to profit from a Unity investment fund, while Cook and Hochberg counter-claimed that Loper and Paxton tried to damage their reputations to secure their roles as witnesses in a separate criminal case against Paxton.

Paxton, a former lawyer and board member for Unity, was indicted in 2015 but the federal charges were dropped in 2024 after he agreed to restitution and ethics training. The depositions are among the few instances Paxton has answered sworn questions, and Talarico’s attorneys say the testimony may reveal violations of attorney-client privilege and other ethical breaches. They cite a report indicating Paxton admitted providing Unity records to his lawyer Mitch Little, who also represented Paxton in a 2023 impeachment trial. Paxton’s campaign denounces the report as false, while the judge had previously stalled the matter for four years before the case settled in 2023.