Ken Paxton’s security detail has been traveling in style, and Texas taxpayers are picking up the check. Newly surfaced state police travel logs show that over three terms in office, the attorney general’s protective team has racked up nearly $3 million in costs for hotels, meals and flights tied to trips across the country and overseas. The bills cover everything from routine North Texas runs to high-price junkets abroad, and the growing ledger is once again raising questions about how Paxton uses state resources.
What the DPS records show
State Department of Public Safety records reviewed by reporters list roughly $2.8 million in security-detail expenses through August 2025. According to the The Texas Observer, that total includes about $965,000 for lodging, $835,000 for travel, $526,000 for food, $24,000 for fuel and $352,000 categorized as other costs.
International trips and missing entries
Some of the steepest charges line up with private conferences and political gatherings that put Paxton on the road, both in the United States and overseas. Yet not every high-profile journey shows up in the DPS paperwork. The Associated Press has reported that Paxton attended the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a trip that does not appear in the DPS travel logs, which highlights the limits of what the publicly released records capture.
Critics call it perks over public duty
Watchdogs and former staffers say the pattern looks less like essential law-enforcement work and more like a taste for political grandstanding and taxpayer-funded perks. “He likes the perks of the office,” former deputy Blake Brickman told investigators, and Public Citizen Texas director Adrian Shelley labeled the spending “extravagant,” according to the The Texas Observer.
Political stakes
The timing is not great for Paxton. He officially launched a bid for the U.S. Senate in April 2025, and the security-spending trail gives rivals plenty of material for attack lines. The Observer’s reporting was later republished by the San Antonio Current, which zeroed in on how the totals stack up against Paxton’s busy national travel schedule.
What comes next
The DPS summaries list only months, destinations and broad categories of expenses, so they provide a partial and sometimes murky window into how state resources were used. Spokespersons for Paxton and the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment, the Associated Press reported, and public-records advocates say the episode underlines the need for clearer, more detailed accounting whenever elected officials travel on the public dime.
.jpg){kind=link}