Texas Attorney General and Senate candidate Ken Paxton spent New Year’s Eve 2024 partying in Dubai with his mistress and two U.S. fugitives indicted on health care fraud charges.
In a video obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Paxton can be seen surveying the fireworks over the Dubai skyline next to his girlfriend Tracy Duhon. Indicted fugitives Sameer Suhail and Anosh Ahmed, who donated to Paxton’s campaign, were also present. Suhail and Ahmed were federally indicted in 2024 on charges of embezzling $15 million from the Illinois hospital where Ahmed was chief financial officer. Ahmed was later charged with another even grander scheme in which he allegedly sold $195 million worth of faulty COVID-19 tests to the government.
Ahmed donated $190,000 to Paxton’s campaign, including $25,000 just a few days after his indictment. Both men spent significant time outside of the U.S. after their indictments, making time to link with Paxton in Dubai before Ahmed went to Serbia, where he was arrested. Suhail was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Both are back in U.S. custody now.
“Every time you think Ken Paxton couldn’t get worse, he finds a way to prove you wrong,” the Democratic Senate Majority PAC wrote on X. “Turns out, Paxton partied in Dubai with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.”
So why did the Texas attorney general spend New Year’s Eve in Dubai with his mistress and two indicted men, one of whom donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his election efforts? His campaign didn’t have a solid answer.
“Like President Trump, Ken Paxton has been politically persecuted for years, and every time, voters have seen through it and sent him back to office because they know he has always fought for Texas,” the Paxton campaign told WSJ.
This is just the latest development in one of the most scandal-ridden Senate campaigns in recent history. And yet even through his own grand jury indictment, a public affair and divorce, and multiple controversial leaks in which he made disparaging remarks about the president, Paxton still remains neck and neck with his Democratic opponent James Talarico.