Former SEC Chief Council calls BS on Obama Administration's anti-Paxton pile on....

"Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution."
2 Timothy 3:12

Well, well, well....

A lawyer who previously served as the chief litigation counsel in the enforcement division at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), filed a motion to dismiss the SEC civil lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday. He writes, “In short, the SEC’s claims against Mr. Paxton are a dramatic overreach and lack any basis in law.”

The 29-page pleading filed by Paxton’s defense urges that the SEC does not claim that Paxton ever lied or made a misrepresentation, and that no one has alleged they lost money in any of the transactions involving Paxton. The motion also states that the SEC’s argument that Paxton failed to disclose that he could receive a commission for touting securities, and that he had not investigated the company, runs counter to decades of case law precedent that has never required such discussions or actions.

Paxton’s lead counsel in the civil SEC case served as the Chief Litigation Counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the SEC, and he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist. He also served as lead counsel for the SEC in its highest-profile enforcement case arising out of the 2008 financial crisis – the case against former Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre.

Ken Paxton has hired Matthew T. Martens to represent him in the civil securities fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC. Martens filed a motion explaining why the federal lawsuit against Paxton must be dismissed with prejudice.

The SEC filed the lawsuit against the Texas AG one week to the day before he was to lead a coalition of 26 states at the U.S. Supreme Court in the executive amnesty case against President Obama.

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The claim that Paxton’s “introduction of several acquaintances (all of who were experienced accredited investors) to Servergy over a three-week period almost five years ago somehow rendered him a professional securities broker” is “nonsense,” they write. The broker registration requirements apply only to individuals who are “in the business of effecting transactions in securities for the account of others.”

Martens, Paxton’s lead counsel, managed the SEC’s enforcement litigation unit. The unit included 40 lawyers in the SEC’s headquarters in Washington, and lawyers in all of its eleven regional offices. He supervised the only three litigated Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) cases ever tried to date. He counseled commissioners in complex SEC enforcement matters and former SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro told Reuters, Martens has “this extraordinary ability to, in a very cogent, concise, logical way, pull all the information together that was necessary for us to make a decision.”

Read the whole thing here.