Ken Paxton Took Money From People Named in the Epstein Files. Yes, You Read That Right.

Let me tell you something. I have four kids. I pack lunches, I check backpacks, I read the news while the pasta boils. I am not a journalist. I am not a political operative. I am a mom who pays attention because somebody has to. And what I just read made me set my phone down and stare at the wall for a solid minute.

Federal campaign finance records show that at least one member of the Jaffe family, a Texas clan that runs a real estate and aviation empire, donated more than $6,000 to groups supporting Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign. This year. After the Epstein files were already public. You know, the files where the Jaffe name shows up not once but twice.

Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

The first appearance: their aviation company, Jetran, tried to buy Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. The plane. Registration N-908JE. The one allegedly used to ferry teenage girls to his properties. They were in talks to buy it for $1.5 million in May 2016. Doug Jaffe Jr. had concerns about “engine issues,” and by June the deal was dead after “due diligence.” So they looked at the Lolita Express and said, “Nah, the engines are bad.” Not “Nah, this plane was used to transport children for a predator.” The engines. Okay.

The second appearance is worse. A 2020 anonymous tip to the FBI alleged that Doug Jaffe III was connected to young girls in Mexico. The tipster described seeing a girl who looked 11 or 12 at a villa, and described a club in Acapulco where underage girls were brought on stage and groped. The FBI closed the tip in October 2021 with no indication it was substantiated. Doug Jaffe Jr. called the whole thing “someone trying to stir up shit.” Doug Jaffe III said he had “absolutely nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Maybe they’re telling the truth. Maybe the tipster was wrong. Maybe the plane purchase was just business. I’m a fair person. But here is what I know as a mother: when someone’s name shows up twice in files about a man who trafficked children, you do not take their money and shrug. You do not pocket $6,000 and hope nobody notices. You give it back. You give it back so fast the check bounces from the speed.

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Paxton’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, including whether they would return the money. Of course they didn’t. Because what are they going to say? “We vet our donors carefully”? With what, a Magic 8 Ball?

And here is the part that really gets me. Paxton’s longtime sugar daddy, the oil billionaire Tim Dunn, apparently told Paxton to his face that he didn’t want him to be a senator. Dunn has given nearly $11.5 million to other right-wing candidates this cycle and not a single direct dollar to Paxton’s Senate run. So Paxton, who is getting walloped in fundraising, who is fresh off a brutal news cycle about his real estate portfolio and his European vacation with his girlfriend while divorcing his wife, is now taking checks from a family that appears in the Epstein files. That is where we are.

I don’t care what party you are. I don’t care what letter is next to your name. If you are a public servant and someone whose name is in the Jeffrey Epstein documents writes you a check, you hand it back. You don’t need a focus group for that. You need a conscience.

Rcsprinter123 (CC BY 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

My nine-year-old knows the difference between right and wrong. Apparently the man who wants to be Texas’s next senator does not.