A blind trust belonging to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Senator Angela Paxton put $600,000 into a construction-materials company run by a man who had pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud, and records from Paxton's 2023 impeachment investigation show the trust may not have been so blind after all. Text messages that surfaced during that probe show Ken Paxton discussing certain investments with the trust's own manager, raising questions about a financial arrangement that was supposed to keep him at arm's length from his own money.
A Convicted Fraudster's $600,000 Boost
The money went to Scott Sherman, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to his role in a mortgage-fraud conspiracy that involved artificially inflating home prices to secure larger loans on more than two dozen properties across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to ProPublica. Previously unreleased records from the attorney general's 2023 impeachment investigation show the Paxtons' trust was far from blind, as reported by The Texas Tribune. The cash infusion helped fund Sherman's business, Wildcatter, which built on ventures Sherman and his father had started, Wildcatter Sand Services and Grayson County Sand and Gravel.
With the trust's backing, Sherman purchased a sand mine in the North Texas town of Denison and a concrete plant 40 miles away in Gunter, a city of roughly 2,000 residents near the Oklahoma border, per the same Tribune account. Neighbors near the Gunter site have said dust from Wildcatter and other companies operating there coated their properties for up to 12 hours a day, and at least one of those neighbors, Deirdre Diamond, moved away after related legislation passed, according to the San Antonio Current.
Texts Raise Questions About the Trust's Independence
Blind trusts are supposed to prevent overlap between a public official's personal investments and their official actions, and the Paxtons reportedly agreed that trust manager Chip Loper would handle their assets without consulting them or taking investment instructions, the Tribune reports. But text messages that emerged during the impeachment probe showed Loper and Ken Paxton discussed certain investments, the outlet's report notes, undercutting the premise that Paxton had no insight into where his money was going.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued violation notices to Wildcatter Redi-Mix in 2021 and 2022, per the same Tribune account, and at least one dust-related violation was resolved only after a road leading to the plant was paved in 2022. The Paxtons also claimed more than $93,000 in itemized losses from Wildcatter Sand Services and Grayson County Sand and Gravel on their 2020 joint federal tax return, the Tribune reported, and Wildcatter companies wired the Paxtons tens of thousands of dollars in the months leading up to and during Ken Paxton's impeachment.
A Senator's Seat on the Advisory Board
Angela Paxton served for years on a Wildcatter advisory board beginning in 2022, describing the position as non-governing in her financial disclosures. While holding that role, according to ProPublica, she voted for legislation that shielded a Wildcatter subsidiary from certain environmental complaints — a vote that sits alongside complaints about the dust and violation notices tied to the company's operations.
The pattern fits into a broader dynamic documented around citizen-driven environmental enforcement in Texas. A University of Texas study found that investigations stemming from citizen complaints were, on average, two to four times more likely to find violations than investigations not prompted by complaints, according to Inside Climate News. The commission conducts more than 100,000 investigations each year and issues thousands of violation notices, the outlet reported, with 9,440 complaints logged in fiscal year 2021 and 10,070 in fiscal year 2022.
What Remains Unclear
The reporting does not establish the final legal status of the legislation Angela Paxton supported, nor does it independently verify every specific payment amount that has circulated around the Wildcatter relationship. It also does not include a direct response from Ken Paxton, Angela Paxton, Scott Sherman or Wildcatter addressing the investment and the environmental complaints tied to the business, according to the available records. What the documents do show, per the Tribune, is that records gathered during Paxton's impeachment investigation first surfaced the $600,000 Wildcatter investment for outside scrutiny — a financial thread that had gone unexamined even as Paxton weathered impeachment, a federal investigation, and now a bid for higher office.
