Ken Paxton: Cake-Thieving Cake Hog?
Scum one took the cake out in his reign.
Last week, fraudy adulterous hate-pig Ken Paxton significantly improved the odds of Democrats retaking the US Senate by winning the Texas Republican primary against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. And now all of Paxton’s many, many scandals are back in the public eye, and getting fresh attention well beyond Texas. Democratic nominee James Talarico has been pointing them out at every opportunity, and Paxton supporters have tried to shift attention away by insisting that Talarico is a scary unmanly communist vegan. They’re so fucking weird, and hooray, Talarico and Dems aren’t sitting still for it.
Cornyn’s primary campaign highlighted Paxton’s many, many negatives, but that made no differences at all in the primary, because MAGA chuds are already accustomed to overlooking rank criminality, fraud, and marital infidelity in their Chosen One. Why would they care about it in a senator?
Thankfully, the social media dredging of Paxton’s past also brought up a little gem from longtime political reporter and Texan Jessica Huseman, who twote Friday,
My favorite weird Ken Paxton story: H-E-B donated a Christmas cake for his office to share. Paxton allegedly claimed it was for his birthday, then walked out carrying the cake box.
He stole cake from his own staff.
Huseman included a link to an AP story from 2023, about some of Paxton’s penny-ante sleaziness that wasn’t part of his impeachment or federal fraud charges. (Remember, he wriggled out of both, so by law, he is actually an innocent lamb and you mustn’t speak of these again. In fact, he may be entitled to compensation as a victim of his own party’s weaponization of the impeachment process.)
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That AP story really is something. Published days before the start of Paxton’s impeachment trial in the Texas Senate — spoiler: His GOP pals let him off — it features some extra greed-n-grifting that were were tangential to the formal charges. AP reporters dug through big piles of records and legal filings, and interviewed former staffers, turning up “other ways in which Paxton allegedly reaped the benefits of being one of Texas’ most powerful figures.” If Paxton were to be removed from office, the piece said (see spoiler above), Paxton would stand to lose “not just a job but a lifestyle.”
Golly, things worked our well for him, then.
The AP uncovered several petites fraudes like a bunch of trips to the Caribbean and to Europe, at taxpayer expense, along with a “previously unreported visit to Qatar to watch the World Cup.”
No corner was too small for him to cut, including requesting a set of special license plates for state officials and then picking them up without ever paying the $12.50 fee he was supposed to. Nice little perk of not having to actually go to the DMV and find out their card reader isn’t working that day so they need cash or a check and you didn’t bring your checkbook, not that we speak from personal experience.
David Maxwell, one of the Paxton deputies who reported Paxton’s securities frauding to the FBI — Paxton settled that case in 2024 — also told investigators about a cute scheme where Paxton, at a hotel for a conference, bought a $600 sports coat from the hotel store, and billed it to the organizers of the conference. “He was all about money,” Maxwell told investigators in the interview transcript. “He always had his hand out.”
Paxton also had his hands deep in the frosting, as Huseman reminded us and as three anonymous former staffers in the AG’s executive office told the AP. Since 1946, the Texas grocery chain — no, grocery institution — H-E-B has sent public officials’ offices, first responders, and charitable groups a nice little Christmas gift of a big coconut-frosted cake with a wreath and Christmas candle, and you can find lots of Facebook posts from happy recipients of the public-spirited holiday cakes, which aren’t sold to the public. Here’s one of the two cakes H-E-B sent to the Lakeway Police department in 2020. The tree was the cop shop’s idea.
The cakes were a nice little holiday treat for employees in the AG’s office every year too, at least until Paxton took office, the former staffers said:
One said Paxton once told staff not to touch the cake because it was for his birthday, which is on Dec. 23. Another said Paxton once had the cake brought to a Tex-Mex restaurant for a staff lunch but never served it. The third recalled watching Paxton and an aide walk out of the office carrying the cake box.
According to required gift logs kept by Paxton’s office, the cake was worth $45.
Such a cheapskate grifter! This story might even be weirder and more petty than that time Paxton pocketed a lawyer’s $1000 pen left behind at a courthouse security X-ray. (He returned it after sheriff’s deputies called him and said he’d been recorded on video.)
On the Twitter machine, many people responded to Huseman’s post by saying, yeah, that sounds like something Ken Paxton would do, all right; a few suggested it would make a good 30-second ad just to emphasize what a petty asshole Paxton is. But a lot of Paxton fans declared the story completely fake, a stupid attempt to smear Paxton (with coconut frosting), or mocked Huseman for trying to distract from Talarico being a vegan girlyman who literally sacrifices live babies to demons (Bluesky link).
Several weirdos even said stuff like “I voted for him before, and I’m going to do it again. No need to make me like him more.” [smiley face emoji]
Huseman herself was so bemused by the reactions from Paxton supporters that she suggested they step back and take a deep breath:
Y'all, among all of his debacles —giving his mistress a job, getting free home renovations, taxpayers footing his international travel, repeatedly cheating on his wife — yes: This is the funniest one.
I know we are so divided, but we should be able to unite on this point.
Seriously, get some perspective! Still, one doofus angrily replied, “Y’all can’t make Talarico a viable candidate. I don’t care. Paxton will protect us from Democrat insanity.”
Our verdict? Some of us like coconut, others don’t, and Ken Paxton belongs in jail, not the Senate.
[The Barbed Wire / AP]
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The cake is a li…ability.
I feel like in our day and age, normal political ads don't get noticed. A bit like how that 'meth: we're on it' ad campaign did more to get people to notice it simply because it was absurd.
Something like "Ken Paxton steals cakes. What is he doing with them? Ken Paxton: too in love with cakes for Texas."
I'm not an ad person. But an ad that was just 'Ken Paxton steals cakes' sounds like an ad that would get noticed.