McKINNEY, Texas (AP) — Court documents detailing the divorce of Republican U.S. Senate candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, were released Friday by order of a judge, months after she filed citing “biblical grounds.”
The initial filing showed that Angela Paxton sought the divorce on the grounds that Ken Paxton had committed adultery, but included no additional details. She had previously referenced “recent discoveries” when announcing the filing on social media in July. In a separate filing, Ken Paxton denied the allegations in the divorce petition. Future filings will also be released to the public after the Paxtons and a coalition of media outlets came to an agreement.
“It’s a victory, I think, for the American public and for the Texas voters,” Tyler Bexley, an attorney for the media intervenors, told reporters after the judge ordered the documents unsealed.
The divorce and the surrounding speculation have only fueled attacks against Paxton in one of the nation’s most heated Republican primaries as he seeks to unseat Sen. John Cornyn. Whether the divorce details resonate with voters remains to be seen, with the Senate primary set for March 3. Despite years of controversy, the three-term attorney general has remained competitive in the race, which includes Rep. Wesley Hunt.
The divorce comes after 38 years of marriage, during which Angela Paxton had supported her husband through a series of legal troubles, including state and federal corruption investigations. A state securities fraud indictment against Ken Paxton was dismissed after a 2024 plea deal in which he agreed to pay restitution and complete community service, and the Justice Department dropped a federal corruption probe earlier this year.
Angela Paxton also stood by Ken Paxton's side during that impeachment trial, which publicly exposed an extramarital affair. The 2023 impeachment trial ended in an acquittal for him.
Paxton’s support in Texas has remained strong amid a decade of legal troubles. He won reelection in 2022 by nearly 10 percentage points.
Paxton launched his bid to unseat Cornyn in April and has since drawn attacks from Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, with some in the party concerned that while Paxton could prevail in the GOP primary, he may complicate the general election and force national Republicans to spend heavily to hold the seat. On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are facing off in their party’s primary.
Groups supporting Cornyn have spent more than $21 million on television ads this year, according to AdImpact, to promote the four-term senator and attack Paxton.
“What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in July. “No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family during this difficult time.”
Paxton has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, while Cornyn has at times drawn criticism within his own party for working with Democrats. Trump’s endorsement is expected to be a decisive factor in Texas, which he won in 2024 by nearly 14 percentage points. Trump has not yet endorsed in the race.
Judge Robert Brotherton approved the agreement on Friday to release the records, which had been sealed following a request by Angela Paxton shortly after she filed. Another judge signed the agreed order to seal the records. In a filing after media outlets and the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability intervened to have the documents unsealed, Ken Paxton said he was opposed to the documents being publicly released.
Bexley said Friday that the media outlets he represents believe that voters have the right to know information about the case as “they are making decisions in the upcoming elections.”
Follow the AP's coverage of Ken Paxton at https://apnews.com/hub/ken-paxton.
FILE - Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wife of suspended Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton, walks through the Senate Chamber during the impeachment trial for her husband at the Texas Capitol, Sept. 16, 2023, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, right, listens as his wife, Texas State Sen. Angela Paxton, speaks to anti-abortion activists at a rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan has come to represent the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in New York City, with agents carrying out chaotic and sometimes violent arrests in the hallway as migrants leave hearings.
Now the court is serving as a front in a different kind of battle: one of the city’s most closely watched congressional races.
In the Democratic primary between incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — for a district so solidly blue that the June primary is considered its deciding election — both candidates have made the Trump administration's treatment of migrants at 26 Federal Plaza a feature of their campaigns, but with decidedly different approaches.
Goldman — an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and former prosecutor who was lead counsel for President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — has approached the topic with a lawyerly bent that leverages the power of his office.
He sued the administration to open immigration detention centers to members of Congress, conducts oversight visits and turned his office across the street into what he's called a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services.
After a recent visit, Goldman credited his oversight work as a reason conditions at a holding facility inside the building have improved.
“What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” he told The Associated Press outside 26 Federal Plaza after he toured the detention center that is closed to the public.
Meanwhile, Lander — a progressive city government stalwart who is running with the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has acted as protester and court observer, watching hearings and attempting to accompany immigrants out of the building past masked federal agents.
His efforts have gotten him arrested twice, the most recent headed to a trial scheduled to take place just before the primary.
“I would characterize his oversight function as strongly worded letters," Lander told AP when asked about Goldman's approach. “And my oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you.”
Lander's first arrest happened last year when he linked arms with a person authorities were attempting to detain in the hallway outside the court. Lander was running for mayor at the time, and the arrest gave his campaign a jolt of excitement at a time when Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were considered the front-runners in the race.
A few months later, after losing the mayoral primary but not long before launching his congressional campaign, Lander was arrested again during a large protest at the building and hit with a misdemeanor obstruction charge.
But instead of accepting a deal that would have made the case go away in six months, Lander instead opted to go to trial. He said the case would extract information about the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts at the building.
Goldman dismissed Lander's efforts as performative.
"I don't understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” Goldman said.
This week, Lander returned to 26 Federal Plaza to sit in on hearings. But just before entering the building, his team got word that federal agents were lingering outside an immigration hearing at a different federal courtroom in a building across the street. He raced over and eventually found the agents, who were wearing masks and milling around in the court's waiting room.
“The challenge is trying to figure out who they're going to arrest,” Lander said, popping out of the hearing, where he sat in a back row and took notes. After a while, the agents walked away from the hearing room, down a hallway and exited the floor. It was not clear why they left.
“Maybe we have different styles," Lander said of his opponent after the agents departed. He later went back across the street and filmed a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.
FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., left, speaks to the federal agents at the Jacob K. Javits federal building, June 18, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
FILE - New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI agents outside federal immigration court, June 17, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, File)
FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol, July 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)
Candidate for U.S. Congress Brad Lander appears outside a Federal Immigration Courtroom, in New York, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
