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Ken Paxton: “We didn't have appropriations to do all this.”

Featuring: Ken Paxton, Republican | Attorney General of Texas

Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee

Published January 28, 2025 | Video Starts at 07:35

And we still have cases that we've just filed that are not necessarily technology, but they're similar in what they're trying to accomplish. So we realized in doing this that We didn't have appropriations to do all this. As you're a lawyer, you know how this works. We have legal experts that we have to hire, we have experts in general that we have to hire. (07:35–07:38)

CLAIM

Asserts that there were no appropriations to fund legal actions against tech companies.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Ken Paxton

“My office is currently litigating almost 32,000 cases through pre-litigation advice and the rigorous defense of the state's laws.”
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“We have recovered almost 6.8 billion for the taxpayers. 1.8 billion of this was in 2024 alone.”
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“I was able to secure 1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company's practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of…”
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“The OAG's legal divisions raise substantially more revenue than they do they need to operate, providing a direct return of almost $3 for…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:05-02:14
“My office has collected nearly 44.2 billion in child support.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:23-02:28
“Our Child Support Division [is] officially ranked the best, the most effective and efficient child support agency by the federal government…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:27-02:36
“In the State of Texas, outside of Dallas and Houston, the only state agency responding to new allegations of child pornography via the…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 03:44-03:56
“LBB staff made a substantial error in OAG's budget that decreased funding to child support, Medicaid fraud investigations and crime victim…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 04:28-04:37
“The historic $1.54 billion meta settlement and this payment to outside counsel.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 04:57-05:03
“Pfizer... said it was 95% effective. We think it was significantly lower, and they knew it.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 05:08-36:41
“Funding for the payments was specifically secured as part of the settlement and is available to be distributed today.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 05:38-05:44
“We developed some of these cases against Google, which we had five cases, Meta, TikTok and others.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 07:19-07:26
“We had authority to use an outside council contract.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 07:54-07:58
“We can give these attorneys up to 35%.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:07-08:12
“This one for Meta turned out to be 10.2%.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:20-08:24
“We didn't up front any of these expert fees or any of the costs which amounted to millions of dollars.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:35-08:41
“We have cases that we need to pursue immediately or getting a legislative appropriation or permission is a long process and may never occur…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 09:41-09:54
“We did a complete restructure [of the child support program].”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:07-25:09
“It's become a lot more decentralized [the child support program].”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:10-25:13
“I used to get more complaints about child support than all the other things combined when I started.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:20-25:25
“In the last two years I get one [complaint about child support] maybe every six months.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:26-25:30
“Our technology's gotten better thanks to Tina and to Ruthanne.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:46-25:51
“I think we are far down the road in improving child support delivery.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 26:31-26:37
“We lost a lot of attorneys in the last month to the Justice Department and to other Washington that pay more.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 27:31-27:38
“We are a profit center.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 27:39-27:42
“We also prevent huge losses to the state by, by defending cases where we could have huge losses.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 28:08-28:16
“We also just generally represent the legislature and other agencies in all kinds of way that, that I think if you have the good talent, we…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 28:16-28:25
“Our basis for this claim was a state law claim.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 35:58-36:02
“We think this district judge is wrong and is saying that this federal law stops us from going after fraud.”
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“It was 6.8 billion, was a total for 10 and 4.4 for the last four years.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 37:12-37:17
“These numbers are significantly higher than has ever been generated by our office.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 37:34-37:39
“We are the only line of defense to stop some of these big companies from abusing our constituents.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 38:13-38:20
“The state had literally no risk. That's part of the reason we did it.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 38:45-38:49
“We're losing lawyers to obviously Washington right now that higher salaries.”
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“We won over three quarters of those cases because we had good people, really good people going toe to toe with the Justice Department.”
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“I sued Donald Trump when he became president.”
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“The difference, though, when I suit him is he actually wanted to know why and we had a discussion and he actually switched sides.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 45:44-45:50
“I agree with you. And I do think that needs to be addressed because I've seen it and there's almost no consequence.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 46:37-46:44
“I've already talked to the president a couple times since he's been sworn in.”
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“My office has a great relationship with Tom Holman, who's in the middle of all this.”
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“We now have similar goals to protect our border.”
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“I'd seen Illinois pursuing this and you know, we have bipartisan meetings and I thought, what a great [idea].”
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“I found that we had a statute that was similar.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 54:59-55:03
“Some of the people working for you, didn't really think this was a good idea. They told me it was a loser.”
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“The same was true for child support. It took me years to get the changes I wanted.”
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“I had to fight in my own office to get [the change] done.”
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“It took a long time because you're working on so many other things at the same time and staying diligent on something that needs to be…”
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