Texas AG under scrutiny for tax breaks, mortgage fraud

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, are longtime owners of a $1.5 million house in a gated community outside Dallas. In 2015, they snapped up a second home in Austin. Then another.

The problem: Mortgages signed by the Paxtons contained inaccurate statements declaring that each of those three houses was their primary residence, enabling the now-estranged couple to improperly lock in low interest rates, according to an Associated Press review of public records. The lower rates will save the Paxtons tens of thousands of dollars in payments over the life of the loan, legal experts say.

The records also revealed that the Paxtons collected an impermissible homestead tax break on two of those homes, and they have routinely flouted lending agreements on some of their other properties.