More Bush Ties to Paxton Impeachment Revealed
Attorney General (OAG) went to the FBI on September 30 regarding potential unlawful conduct by Paxton. The very next day, Bush reactivated his law license after a 10-year hiatus.
Furthermore, many of the whistleblowers had retained Bush-affiliated lawyer Johnny Sutton to represent them in the matter. However, during the trial, it was revealed that Sutton had not charged them over the course of three years and that fees had hardly been discussed.
Ryan Vassar explained, “He has agreed to bill us at a future date.”
Sutton was the criminal justice policy director for George P. Bush’s uncle, George W. Bush while the latter served as the governor of Texas. Sutton also led the Department of Justice transition team for George W. Bush after he was elected president.
Bush then named Sutton associate deputy attorney general before appointing him as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, a position he held from November 2001 to April 2009.
Sutton also notoriously prosecuted several border patrol agents while acting as a U.S. attorney, apparently giving drug traffickers legal immunity in order to secure the agents’ convictions.
Prior to his attempt to unseat Paxton as attorney general, George P. Bush was Texas land commissioner after being elected in 2014. Before this, he founded the real estate equity firm Pennybacker Capital and St. Augustine Partners, an oil and gas consulting firm, in 2007.
By 2020, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, a central figure in the impeachment proceedings against Paxton, had several of his properties raided by law enforcement, his assets frozen, and eventually, his properties foreclosed on.
Despite several attempts to forestall the foreclosure auctions, his properties went to the auction block in 2021. All of the properties were won by “entities connected to two powerful real estate firms: Karlin Real Estate LLC and Pennybacker Capital,” per the Austin Business Journal.
Additionally, potential bidders “complained they weren’t allowed to bid on the World Class properties because trustees would only [accept] cashier’s checks … which multiple attendees said was atypical at foreclosure sales.”
As previously noted, Pennybacker Capital, which acquired the building that housed Paxton associate Nate Paul’s headquarters, was founded by Bush. The firm had also filed a nearly $16 million claim on Paul’s company during the bankruptcy proceedings for another property, but it was dismissed in court.
A few years before Pennybacker bought Paul’s properties, Bush in his capacity as land commissioner in 2017 reportedly used the General Land Office (GLO) to invest around $75 million from the Texas Permanent School Fund into his real estate company. The GLO controls the Real Estate Special Fund Account “to invest in real property on behalf of the Permanent School Fund.”
Bush also used the GLO to retain Johnny Sutton’s law firm, Ashcroft, for legal services worth nearly $180,000 in 2022 alone.
During this time, Sutton was representing the whistleblowers, who reported Paxton to the FBI based on their “good faith belief” that criminal misconduct had occurred, as reported by The Dallas Express.
https://dallasexpress.com/state/more-bush-ties-to-paxton-impeachment-revealed/
Thx, Rusty!
Stay out da Bushes, forever, Texas!!
“More Bush Ties to Paxton Impeachment Revealed”
Thanks for that. Very enlightening and pretty much what I expected. The Bushes are dead to me and the list is long and growing (Pence being the most recent addition).