Ken Paxton credits God with delivering him from legal battles: ‘The Bible is full of those stories’

WASHINGTON — Texas Attorney General and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton told the crowd gathered Saturday on the last day of the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference that he believes God delivered him from the legal obstacles he has faced in recent years.

“There’s a greater power, and I’m not here because of some great thing I did. I’m here because God delivered me,” Paxton said to an enthusiastic Evangelical audience at the Washington Hilton, a day after President Donald Trump delivered remarks there.

“The Bible is full of those stories about all kinds of people, and none of them are particularly perfect — whether you talk about Peter or Paul or David, the story is about what God did, not what they did. All they did was trust and believe, and that’s the message: that my life is an example of that,” he said.

Paxton recounted the trajectory of his political career since first becoming Texas attorney general in 2015, noting that his plentiful and largely successful efforts to sue both the Obama and Biden administrations were an attempt “to control an out-of-control executive branch.”

Paxton said after former President Barack Obama lost control of Congress in the 2014 midterm elections, he “decided that he wasn’t going to work with Congress anymore, unlike other presidents who understood the Constitution.”

“He decided that he was going to make his own laws through executive orders, through guidance letters, through actions of agencies, and also ignore the 10th Amendment, which said that the federal government only had those powers that were granted to them, and that the rest were retained by the states,” he continued, drawing applause when he noted his office “sued Barack Obama 27 times in 22 months, won about 80 percent of those cases.”

The Biden administration echoed Obama’s tactics on a larger scale, said Paxton, who claimed they were “even more aggressive” in their lawlessness and effectively opened the border to the drug cartels.

Paxton filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Biden administration over immigration, environmental regulations, elections, vaccine mandates, transgender policies and other issues, marking a historic level of legal challenges against a federal administration.

Paxton touched on the ordeal of his 2023 impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives on 20 charges, which stemmed primarily from whistleblower allegations involving his relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer and campaign donor who faced federal scrutiny.

When the Texas Senate tried and acquitted him on 16 of the charges that year, Paxton framed the process at the time as political retaliation, calling it a “sham impeachment coordinated by the Biden Administration with liberal [Texas] House Speaker Dade Phelan and his kangaroo court.”

Paxton echoed his assessment of his impeachment to his Saturday audience, suggesting his extensive litigation against Democratic administrations had made him a political target. He likened his legal battles to those faced by Trump, who he said was the first to call him after his acquittal in 2023.

Paxton said he told his lawyers before his trial: “If God wants me here, no one can stop me. If God doesn’t want me here, no one can help me.”

Paxton later pivoted the U.S. Senate race by reading from a lengthy list of quotes by Talarico, whom he called “an interesting guy.”

Paxton highlighted when his opponent lamented the limitations of his “whiteness” and “masculinity,” expressed admiration for a transgender-identifying activist theologian, described himself as “a Christian who hates Christianity,” claimed Jesus Christ was a radical feminist, alleged “radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country,” likened systemic racism to the COVID-19 virus and said “our trans community needs abortion care, too.”

Paxton went on to cite when Talarico claimed allowing assault weapons “encourages violence against black sons and black daughters,” pinpointed “trans children” as something he loves, called the American flag “such a complicated symbol for most us,” likened the southern border to a front porch with “a giant welcome mat out front” and said no true Christian can “destroy God’s creation with greenhouse gases.”

Paxton concluded his list with Talarico’s claims that God is non-binary and that modern science has determined as many as six biological sexes. Talarico has recently backtracked on the supposed non-binary nature of God, telling CBS News last month that he was being “intentionally provocative,” but standing by his assertion that God “can’t be defined by human categories.”

Paxton concluded his address by urging support for his campaign, citing the need for prayer and financial contributions to ensure his victory in the tightening race in Texas, where a recent poll shows Paxton leading Talarico 43% to 42%. He has faced scrutiny from some conservative and Christian leaders over his personal life in the wake of his wife filing for divorce against him on “biblical grounds” last summer.