John Oliver has roasted Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton over the latest twist in his long-running list of controversies.
The Texas attorney general is facing Democrat rising star James Talarico in a Senate race that Oliver said has become surprisingly competitive, with polls showing Talarico ahead.
And Talarico is intensifying his attacks. On Sunday, Oliver replayed a 2018 attack ad showing security footage of Paxton picking up a $1,000 Montblanc pen that Dallas attorney Joe Joplin had accidentally left at courthouse metal detectors, then walking away with it. The ad urged voters to choose Paxton’s opponent, Justin Nelson, who “won’t steal your pen.”
The incident has now resurfaced in Talarico’s campaign, which brought Joplin into a new ad endorsing the Democrat.
“Hi, I’m Joe Joplin, and I endorse James Talarico for the United States Senate,” Joplin says. The ad ends with the line, “Vote for James Talarico. He won’t steal your pen.”
“They got the owner of the pen to endorse Talarico,” Oliver said.
Meanwhile, even though President Donald Trump has endorsed Paxton, his praise has sometimes sounded more like an insult.
“He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” Trump said in a clip played by Oliver, before calling Paxton “the best attorney general in the country, perhaps.”
Oliver seized on Trump’s admission that his remarks were “so insulting to him, but I might as well say it.”
“Yeah, you definitely might as well, given it seems you’ve already said it 400 different times,” he joked.
But Paxton’s suits are “the least of his problems,” Oliver said, turning to the scandals that have dogged the Republican—including attacks from members of his own party.
During the primary, Senator John Cornyn ran an ad accusing Paxton of cheating on his wife and increasing his net worth by as much as 7,000 percent since taking office. The Senate Republican Campaign Committee co-sponsored the ad.
Oliver also highlighted Paxton’s record of suing the Biden administration 106 times and his effort to classify gender-affirming care as child abuse. On the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Paxton tweeted, “I’m closing my office and making it an annual holiday.”
Paxton spent nearly nine years under indictment for securities fraud before the charges were dropped in a deal requiring him to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution, complete 100 hours of community service and take 15 hours of legal ethics education.
He was also accused of bribery and abuse of office by eight of his top deputies. Although he was never criminally charged over those allegations, the Republican-controlled Texas House impeached him. The state Senate later acquitted him.
Paxton subsequently fired four staffers who had reported him, prompting a lawsuit alleging he violated the state’s Whistleblower Act. Texas taxpayers eventually paid more than $6 million to those employees, Oliver said.
The segment also revisited reporting about Paxton’s acquisition of 15 properties worth around $9 million, as well as questions about whether he had used an address where he did not live to vote in six elections.
When a reporter raised the property reporting at a law enforcement event, Paxton repeatedly tried to limit questions to law enforcement. Oliver pointed out that questions about whether Paxton had broken the law were, in fact, relevant.
Then came the pen.
The incident was one Paxton is keen to brush under the rug. In a statement to Texas Monthly in August, his campaign said that it was “nothing more than a security mix-up.”
Joplin called the response “laughable.”
He added: “Seriously. By that time, I had seen the tape... It just turned out to be something much more than I thought it would be. I suspect I probably should have filed charges, but I wasn’t interested in that. I just wanted my pen back. But it would have been for a good cause if I had, probably.”
Paxton’s controversies have also surfaced among Republican voters. Oliver played a panel of undecided Trump voters describing the attorney general as a “crook,” “criminal,” “amoral,” “disgusting,” and “morally corrupt.”
One Republican voter interviewed by PBS said she would most likely not vote for Paxton, describing him as “kind of dirty right now, like a career politician that could possibly be a used car salesman.”
Oliver acknowledged that Texas Democrats have tried and failed to flip the Senate seat before, with Beto O’Rourke losing to Ted Cruz in 2018 and Colin Allred falling short in 2024.
