<p>Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attended a 2025 New Year’s party in Dubai with two fugitives who did not return to the United States, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>The report comes as Paxton, a Republican backed by former President Trump, is challenging Texas Democrat James Talarico in the final weeks of the Senate race.</p>
<p>Paxton was seen in a video celebrating the start of New Year’s Day atop a high-rise building with Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, two U.S. citizens indicted on federal charges related to healthcare fraud in 2024. The Department of Justice stated that the two men were accused of embezzling over $15 million from a Chicago hospital into bank accounts they owned.</p>
<p>Ahmed, a former healthcare executive, reportedly donated $190,000 to Paxton, according to campaign finance records cited by the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Paxton was also seen with Tracy Duhon, a Christian influencer who became his girlfriend. The video showing them together was recorded months before Paxton’s estranged wife, Texas state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year. Duhon filed for divorce from her husband in July 2024, shortly after meeting Ken Paxton at the Kentucky Derby.</p>
<p>While Paxton has not confirmed an affair with Duhon, they have been seen together publicly on multiple occasions, including in London during the Fourth of July weekend. This marks the second affair involving Ken Paxton.</p>
<p>His first affair was central to his 2023 impeachment trial, which resulted in an acquittal. Paxton faced accusations of accepting bribes and abusing his office to assist a political donor under FBI investigation. He has maintained that the impeachment charges were politically motivated.</p>
<p>Paxton's tenure has been marred by several corruption scandals, including indictments on state security fraud charges in 2015 and federal fraud charges in 2016, both of which were dropped.</p>
<p>“When you go after things that protect the people of your state, they come after you, and none of those things were proven,” Ken Paxton told Fox News at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last month. “If you’ll notice, they were all dismissed, or they’re gone.”</p>
<p>Talarico has criticized Paxton over his numerous scandals in campaign advertisements. It remains to be seen if Talarico can leverage these controversies in a race that could result in a Democrat winning statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994. Talarico has been polling consistently better than Paxton.</p>