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July 2, 2015      6:24 PM

Special Prosecutors respond forcefully to Ken Paxton spokesman

“Our investigation will continue to be informed by what our oaths as special prosecutors commands: to do justice. And sound bites and personal attacks won’t change that.”

Following this statement from Attorney General Ken Paxton’s spokesman Anthony Holm, special prosecutors Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer had this to say Thursday evening:

“The statement made by Mr. Paxton's spokesman recycles the usual sound bites, culled from the play book of any public official whose conduct places them in the cross-hairs of a grand jury investigation.

Neither the TSSB, nor the Dallas and Travis County District Attorney's Offices, have looked at the matters which we have been tasked with investigating through the same prism as we have, or with the benefit of the evidence being assembled by the Texas Rangers, that none of these agencies had before them.

Indeed, both the Dallas and Travis County District Attorney’s Offices declined to “pursue a criminal action” precisely because they concluded that neither office had jurisdiction over the conduct giving rise to this investigation.

While Mr. Paxton implies that being from Houston is a reason why our investigation is politically-motivated, his silence as to why our hometown comes within a time zone of relevance speaks volumes.

We were brought in from Houston to ensure that an investigation that could have easily been driven by partisan politics and political agendas would not. While Mr. Paxton would seem to prefer that this investigation be conducted by experienced prosecutors from North Texas, no one who is the subject of a grand jury investigation, least of all one of the top public officials in Texas, gets to make that call. Tellingly, Mr. Paxton feels that a Dallas address or a career spent as a prosecutor somehow trumps our over seven decades of trial and appellate experience as two of Texas’s most respected criminal lawyers.

The facts, which Mr. Paxton would rather ignore than acknowledge, are, as Churchill said, stubborn things. And that’s exactly what we will provide the grand jury with: the facts. Our investigation will continue to be informed by what our oaths as special prosecutors commands: to do justice. And sound bites and personal attacks won’t change that.”

Hat tip to the Houston Chronicle’s Lauren McGaughy, who tweeted out the statement from Wice and Schaffer this evening.