AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has dismissed a lawsuit that Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange and he had filed against Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker.
Walker agreed to stop his allegedly improper pursuit of ExxonMobil that included using a Washington-based private law firm to issue an unconstitutional and harassing subpoena for decades of ExxonMobil records. Paxton and Strange originally intervened because they believed the contingency fee arrangement between Walker and the private law firm implicated sensitive questions of constitutional due process.
“The so-called 'investigation' by Walker was a constitutionally improper attempt to suppress the freedom of speech based only on the content being communicated,” Paxton said. “In America we have the freedom to disagree, and we do not legally prosecute people just because their opinion is different from ours. We are glad that the abuse of power by Attorney General Walker, and those that he hired, has come to an end. Attorneys working for the government should be motivated by public interest, not financial gain.”