By the time Ken Paxton finally leaves behind the eighth floor of the Price Daniel Sr. State Office Building, where the attorney general’s executive team works, he’ll have spent 12 years as what occupants of his office like to consider Texas’ top law enforcement official. Those dozen years—tied with his predecessor, Greg Abbott, for the longest AG stint in state history—were fought and clawed for, through incessant turmoil and scandal, by the former probate attorney from McKinney. 

And Paxton’s tenure has also been filled with lots, and lots, of travel—across Texas, namely to his homebase in Collin County; all around the United States; and, increasingly, to exotic destinations abroad. 

It’s not readily apparent who has covered the costs of the attorney general’s travels. Some of these trips appear to have been connected to his official work as AG, while others have been for political or personal purposes. But accompanying Paxton on most of these trips has been a state police security detail, a perk that comes along with serving as governor, lieutenant governor, or AG. And the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is, by law, required to report the quarterly expenses incurred by the state police providing security for these top officials, broken down by destination and the correlating expense of travel, food, fuel, and lodging—providing one window onto taxpayer costs. 

Since first entering office in January 2015 and up through August 2025, the most recent reporting available, Paxton’s security detail has cost a total of about $2.8 million, those DPS records obtained by the Texas Observer show. The annual cost of his security detail clocked in at an average of $245,000 a year—but the costs have steadily ticked up in recent years. At the peak, in 2024, it cost DPS nearly $500,000 to accompany Paxton on his travels. 

The details about the trips are relatively limited; for instance, DPS doesn’t provide specific dates of travel beyond the month, nor the number of officers who are present on each trip. But the reporting does provide perhaps the most readily available way to track where Texas’ most powerful politicians have been. That’s a valuable tool for public transparency, especially for someone like Paxton, who is notorious for shielding details about his activities and correspondence from the public. 

“If you look at his treatment of the office, he tends to just use his public platform for a lot of political grandstanding,” Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen Texas, told the Observer. “There are a lot of things that he does that suggest that he doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for the office, that he don’t have a lot of interest or concern about appropriate use of taxpayer resources, and that he is willing to use both the office and the state resources for reasons that go beyond the strict performance of his duties.” 

Collectively, what the DPS reports show for Paxton is that over his more-than-decade-long tenure, his security detail has racked up a considerable tab protecting him during his travels. 

In total, Paxton’s security detail racked up $965,000 in lodging costs since 2015, $835,000 in travel, $526,000 in food, $24,000 in fuel, and $352,000 in other unspecified expenses.

Over the course of his tenure, Paxton made 100 trips to Frisco, 59 to his hometown of McKinney, 44 to Plano, and 35 to Allen, according to the DPS reports. (Paxton was known, especially in his earliest years, to frequently work from his North Texas home.) Outside of Texas, Paxton has most frequently traveled to Washington, D.C., along with Florida (total spent $220,000), California ($181,000), and Utah ($107,000). 

By comparison, Governor Greg Abbott’s security travel costs are greater—just over $5 million over that same time—as he routinely travels abroad to promote Texas economic development in places including India, Japan, and Israel.

But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s security travel costs are comparatively austere—at just $1.2 million, with most trips being in-state. 

So, what accounts for Paxton’s extensive gallivanting? 

Some of Paxton’s travels are linked to attendance of national attorney general meetings, specifically with the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), the Attorney General Alliance (AGA), and the National Association of Attorneys General. These sorts of conferences and junkets are typically attended by state attorneys general from around the country and are often also financed by private corporate interests. 

In December 2023, Paxton travelled with security to South Africa, a trip which aligned with a luxury junket that the AGA was hosting at the same time. As CNN reported, “The trip featured a safari, a stay at a five-star hotel … as well as wine tours and gourmet dinners at restaurants that serve fresh prawns and Wagyu ribeye steak.” Lobbyists and lawyers for major corporations including Amazon, Uber, and Pfizer were reportedly also in attendance. Per CNN, Paxton was among the state AGs on the invite list. The high-end trip cost DPS more than $80,000.

A few months later, in February 2024, Paxton and his security detail went to Big Sky, Montana, which lined up with RAGA’s “Victory Fund Ski Retreat” (DPS’ bill: $11,927). A trip to Orlando in March 2024 cost DPS nearly $19,000. Weeks later, a trip to Pinehurst, North Carolina, for a RAGA golf retreat cost around $8,000. Then, in May 2024, photos show that Paxton attended the Kentucky Derby in Lexington; DPS records show a trip costing $13,000 to the same destination that month. 

Paxton has also traveled extensively across Europe. 

In the summer of 2022, he and his wife Angela Paxton went on a weekslong trip across Europe, with a security detail, that included Malta, Italy, and Albania. It also included a visit to the Balkan nation of Kosovo to help promote a company that his associate was running, and for which Angela Paxton served on the board of directors. The total DPS security cost of that trip totaled around $80,000. 

In March 2023, he traveled to Helsinki, Finland; Krakow, Poland; Prague, Czech Republic; and Tel Aviv, Israel. Those extensive travels cost his security detail nearly $180,000 that month—with almost $70,000 just on the Israel leg. According to a Facebook post by the Jewish Community Center of Krakow, which featured a photo showing Paxton, the AGA had organized the trip to Poland and Israel to learn about antisemitism. 

Another European trip included a May 2023 jaunt to Budapest for a conservative political conference in Hungary where Paxton was listed as a speaker (cost: $9,200). 

“Traveling around the globe … on the taxpayer’s expense, [on] these truly extravagant trips that are costing tens of thousands of dollars a go—I don’t think anybody would agree that that’s in the public’s interest,” said Shelley. “His role is the chief law enforcement officer of the state. The vast majority of his concerns are going to be right here in Texas.”

The full scope and nature of Paxton’s travel during his AG tenure is not known. The right-wing conservative is notoriously secretive, and the DPS security travel reports don’t capture all of his travels. For instance, Paxton reportedly traveled to China for a luxurious AGA policy junket back in the fall of 2019, against the advice of his top deputies, who were concerned about security exposure, but no such trip appeared in DPS reports. Nor did his trip to Qatar in December 2022 to watch the World Cup, which the Associated Press uncovered in 2023. That same month, DPS did disclose a trip to the resort town of San José de Cabo, in Mexico, in December 2022 where his security detail racked up a cost of $20,000—including about $9,000 for food alone—and an $18,000 trip to Walnut Creek, California. 

The security costs do not reveal who covered other costs associated with the AG’s travel, but annual personal financial disclosures—along with those of state Senator Angela Paxton, with whom he is in divorce proceedings—have shown tens of thousands of dollars worth of “gifts” in the form of transportation, meals, and lodging from both the AGA, RAGA, and the Rule of Law Defense Fund, which is affiliated with RAGA. 

Paxton’s campaign did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment, nor did the Texas Attorney General’s Office. 

Paxton reportedly has a reputation for fully enjoying the luxuries that can come with his powerful office. “He always cared about what trip he was going on, who was taking him to dinner,” said Blake Brickman, one of his former top deputies who became an FBI whistleblower accusing Paxton of engaging in bribery and abuse of power, according to records from Paxton’s impeachment trial. “He likes the perks of the office.” 

Now, Paxton is in the middle of a hotly contested primary with longtime incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Houston-area Congressman Wesley Hunt. Paxton formally launched his campaign bid last April, promising to take a “sledgehammer” to the Washington swamp. 

That same month, he went to Augusta, Georgia, home to the renowned PGA golf course, during which lodging costs ran up to $17,000. Around that same time, he racked up a DPS security cost of $18,000 travelling to Palm Beach (home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago), and he also made time for a jaunt to none other than Washington, D.C.—cost $17,000.

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