What Did He Do?

Ken Paxton's Wife Finally Divorces Him on "Biblical Grounds"

Ken Paxton’s divorce is totally our business. After all, he’s made our private lives his business for years in his crusade against abortion, contraception, and porn. I for one hope it gets really ugly and really public.

Paxton is Texas’s Attorney General, a role he has held for over 10 years and almost lost in 2023 when the state’s House impeached him. In this role he has championed some of the country’s strictest abortion laws, gleefully taken access to contraception access away from teenagers, and put porn on lockdown. Paxton is currently primarying sitting Republican Senator John Cornyn, a 22-year veteran of the Senate who is apparently not MAGA enough for conservatives in the Lone Star State. Ken has been ahead in polls, but last week’s divorce announcement may put that lead in jeopardy.

Before we get to why Angela Paxton filed for divorce 38 years into a marriage that has already survived one indictment, one impeachment, and at least one long-term extramarital affair, let’s review some of Ken’s greatest hits.

Going After Women and Doctors for Abortions

Even before Dobbs, Texas had some of the strictest abortion rules in the country—including a law that asked neighbors to spy on neighbors—but that wasn’t enough for Paxton. As soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned, Paxton released guidance reminding people that Texas had a trigger law that made abortion a felony. “My office,” he wrote, “is specifically authorized to pursue and recover those civil penalties, and I will strictly enforce this law. Further, we will assist any local prosecutor who pursues criminal charges.”

In the years since, he has repeatedly threatened women and their doctors. When a District Court Judge granted the right to an abortion to Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two who was 20-weeks pregnant with a fetus that was unlikely to survive, Paxton fought back. Within hours of the court’s decision, Paxton released a statement threatening any doctor or hospital that performed Cox’s abortion. He wrote: “The judge’s orders will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws. This includes first degree felony prosecutions.”

Paxton sent similar language in a letter to three area hospitals where he ominously noted that the judge’s order “will expire long before the statute of limitations for violating Texas’ abortion laws expires." He also filed a successful motion with the Texas Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s order. (The outcome was moot, however, as Ms. Cox left the state to get the medical care she needed and deserved.)

Threatening doctors is one of his favorite moves. He successfully sued the Biden administration to fight against protections for Texas physicians who perform abortions in emergency circumstances. In December 2024, Paxton filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor who had prescribed the drugs used in medication abortion to a Texas resident. A U.S. District Court judge agreed with Ken that the doctor had violated Texas laws (albeit without ever having set foot in Texas) and fined her $100,000 plus over $13,000 of court fees and 7.5% interest every day the fines aren't paid. The ruling also banned her from prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents. New York, which has passed laws to protect doctors from just this kind of thing, isn’t taking Ken’s suit seriously. Just yesterday a county clerk again refused to certify a civil judgment against the doctor.

In March 2025, Ken charged a midwife who serves a low-income, Spanish speaking neighborhood with illegally performing abortions. Paxton’s office investigated the clinic based on an anonymous tip that two women got abortions there. (By the way, it’s unusual for the AG to do such an investigation. His office doesn’t have the power to prosecute someone on criminal charges. That is a job left to local district attorneys, but Ken is a man on a mission). Thus far the only evidence they’ve produced is a bottle of misoprostol and some cash found in the midwife’s car. Misoprostol is one of the drugs used in medication abortions, but it is also used to help women who are miscarrying.

The midwife spent 10 days in jail and was released on a whopping $1.4 million bail. Her midwifery (what a great word) license was revoked, her phone was seized, and she was forced to wear a tracking device. Yet as of the beginning of June she had not yet been indicted which lawyers call highly unusual. While he keeps her in a state of limbo in which she can’t earn a living and leaves her community without a much-needed resource, Ken has used her arrest to prop up his pro-life street cred: “In Texas, life is sacred. I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn.”

Other Popular Conservative Causes

A member of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Paxton is a favorite among the Christian Right because he plays their greatest hits on a perpetual loop. He’s led the fight for displaying the 10 commandments in schools and will soon defend his state’s new mandate to do so (the ACLU has vowed to fight it on First Amendment grounds). He fought back when the Biden administration tried to protect teenagers’ access to contraception in Texas. He championed age requirements for porn sites (and won a SCOTUS case in the process). He tried to get access to the health records of transgender youth across the state and filed charges against a Dallas pediatrician for providing gender affirming care. He pursued legal action against the Dallas Independent School District over its transgender athlete policies. He said the 2020 election was stolen and has beaten Trump’s drum against voter fraud, illegal immigration, and better yet—against voter fraud by illegal immigrants.

And he credits the Christian right with his success. Paxton was a long shot when he ran for AG in 2014. He was a real estate attorney with no law enforcement background, though he did do two years in the Texas Senate. He said this of his come from behind win, “My strategy was very simple… get the church out to vote.”

Legal Troubles, Lots of Them

Just seven months after he was elected, Paxton was indicted on securities fraud for encouraging people to invest in a technology firm that was paying him to encourage people to invest in it. He didn’t share that last part with the investors. Paxton delayed this case as long as possible and then made a deal in which he would pay partial restitution, complete community service, and take ethics training classes. The case was officially dropped just this year.

I’d argue that the ethics training didn’t stick. As I mentioned earlier, Paxton was impeached by the legislature in 2023. These charges stemmed from his relationship with Nate Paul, a real estate developer whose business was struggling. He turned to Ken for help. According to the 4,000 page House filing, Paxton helped Paul investigate the police who were investigating him and helped him spy on (and threaten) supposed enemies. He also helped Paul delay foreclosure sales on his properties.

If Ken doesn’t seem to you like the type of guy to do these things out of the goodness of his heart, you’re right. There was backscratching to be sure. Paul paid to have Ken’s kitchen renovated, but Paxton didn’t do this for a Viking range and hidden butler’s pantry. Paul helped him hide something else. He apparently hired Ken’s long-term mistress, giving her a reason to move back to Austin where they could more easily meet up. Ever the accommodating boss and friend, Paul helped facilitate these extramarital rendezvous by sharing an Uber account with Ken under the fake name “Dave P.” (You’re two shady, conniving men, and “Dave P.” is the best you got? You’re not even trying. Need I remind you of Carlos Danger? Do better!)

The boffing was old news to many people in Paxton’s orbit. In 2018, while he was running for reelection, the AG gathered his staff and confessed to an extramarital affair with this same woman. Mrs. Paxton was by his side as he swore to recommit to his marriage and promised it was over. (I realize that his affair could affect their careers which, like his, were built on hammering Texas citizens over the head with so-called Christian values whether they liked it or not, but this still feels like a conversation that is better had in front of their children or perhaps their pastor.)

Some of the employees who heard this confession later went to the FBI with charges of corruption against Paxton based on the deals he helped make for Nate Paul. The upstanding AG retaliated by firing four of the eight senior advisors who went to the feds (others resigned). They fought back by filing a whistleblower lawsuit. In 2023, Ken had the audacity to ask a House subcommittee to fund a $3.3 million settlement. Instead, they started an investigation that led to the House voting to impeach him.

Paxton’s affair was front and center during the trial with House impeachment managers maintaining that covering it up was the motive for many of his misdeeds. It wasn’t just that he needed to hide it from his wife, they argued, his real motivation was hiding it from voters so as to preserve his image as a man of faith.

Ken’s wife Angela stood by her man throughout those proceedings, but not just in a Tammy Wynette kind of way. Angela was elected to the Texas Senate in 2018. She sat through the trial with her Senate colleagues listening to details of the affair and knowing she would not be able to vote. (Even Texas has its corruption limits.)

Angela had stood by her husband in the past. At that 2018 office confession, throughout his original indictment on securities fraud, and when he was caught on tape stealing a $1,000 pen that someone left at the courthouse metal detector (he returned it after being contacted by a sheriff’s deputy). She even drove the getaway truck when he ran away to avoid being served a subpoena by abortion advocates.

Senator Paxton liked to attend her husband’s campaign events and sing “I’m a pistol-packing mama, and my husband sued Obama.” (I think she owes Irving Berlin and Ethel Merman an apology. “A man's love is mighty, He'll even buy a nightie, For a gal who he thinks is fun, But they don't buy pajamas, For pistol packin' mamas, And you can't get a hug from a mug, with a slug, Oh you can't get a man with a gun.”)

Mrs. Paxton doesn’t come across as much more ethical than her husband. As Senator, she filed bills to expand the powers of his office and approved his agency’s budget and even his salary. She also introduced a bill to prevent people under 18 from buying sex toys. (See I Heard You Like Magic; I Have a Wand and a Rabbit (Just Not in Texas) and join me in once again thanking Chappell Roan for the headline.)

The Biblical Divorce

The two really did seem MFEO, but last week Angela filed for divorce “on biblical grounds.” In a post on X, Senator Paxton wrote:

I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.

Her post left us all asking, “What did he do?!!”

Sure, adultery is grounds for divorce, and it goes against the bible, but the fact that Ken hasn’t kept it in his pants is not news. We knew that, and Angela knew that. If she didn’t divorce him in 2018 when he first confessed or in 2023 when the woman he was schtupping was called as a witness in his impeachment trial (sadly the mistress never took the stand), why is she divorcing him now?

What’s the new information? And what’s the biblical transgression? Is it just another woman? A few women? A few women at the same time? Could it be a man? A transgender man? A sheep? Did he force his mistress to get an abortion? Is it butt stuff? When the GOP seals a document, it’s usually butt stuff. (Oh, please let it be butt stuff.)

This is just speculation built on a healthy dose of schadenfreude; I have no proof and am making no accusations. I’m just having fun, because nobody deserves us poking into his private life more than Ken. Turnaround is fair play.

Like so many white Republican men, Ken has weathered all of these storms and come out relatively unscathed. His 2015 charges have been dropped. He was acquitted of all charges in his impeachment trial when only two Republican senators showed any willingness to vote against him. The feds dropped their related charges. And the state of Texas is now going to pay $6.6 million to the whistleblowers because Ken was too afraid to testify under oath (he consented to judgement in the case).

My hopes that the divorce would play out nastily and publicly were dampened yesterday when the court sealed the couple’s divorce filing. But rumors only grow. Maybe Angela will get mad enough to talk. You know what they say about a pistol packing mama scorned. Let’s also not forget that he’s in the middle of a nasty primary against a sitting U.S. Senator. Fingers crossed that Team Cornyn is good at oppo research, that details of his biblical transgressions are as salacious as we hope, and that Ken Paxton is finally held accountable for something. (Oh, please let it be butt stuff.)