BOMBSHELL VIDEO: Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With Fugitives Ahead of High-Stakes Texas Senate Race [Wall Street Journal]

Oct 13

5 min read

AUSTIN, TX — An explosive new report in the Wall Street Journal reveals video of Corrupt Ken Paxton ringing in the New Year in Dubai in 2024, watching fireworks with his mistress and two fugitives accused of stealing millions from a hospital.

WATCH: Paxton Parties In Dubai With Fugitives

The Wall Street Journal reports that Paxton attended a luxury party overlooking Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper with his mistress and two fugitives, Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, “indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges.” The trip came months before Paxton’s infamous divorce “on biblical grounds.”

The two men have been accused of embezzling $15 million from a hospital and Ahmed has been charged in a separate scheme defrauding $195 million from the government. Ahmed is also a major Paxton donor, giving “$190,000 to Paxton…including $25,000 days after he was indicted.” Paxton refused to answer questions on Dubai and what he was doing with the two fugitives.

Texas Democratic Party Spokesperson Ryan Martin said:

“New year, same old Corrupt Ken Paxton. While working Texans struggle to afford the basics, Paxton jetted off to Dubai with his mistress to celebrate New Years Eve with fugitives accused of millions of dollars of health care fraud. Texas' top law enforcement officer should not be partying in Dubai with alleged criminals. Texans deserve answers on if Paxton was cutting some dirty Dubai donor deal and why he was partying with fugitives.”

October 12, 2026

By Elizabeth Findell, Mark Maremont and Josh Dawsey

As President Trump weighed endorsing Ken Paxton over incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn this spring, he was told that damaging revelations were likely to surface about Paxton, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump was dismissive and said there would be more negative material about Democratic nominee James Talarico.
Trump plowed ahead and endorsed the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general, helping him win the Republican-primary runoff in May. Months later, that decision is looking like Trump’s biggest gamble of the midterms.
Despite efforts by Paxton to paint his opponent as a far-left zealot, Talarico consistently holds a narrow lead in polls, raising a once unthinkable possibility: A Democrat could win statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994.
Meanwhile, damaging revelations about Paxton continue to emerge. A new scene that could join the list: a previously unreported New Year’s Eve 2024 celebration where Paxton partied in Dubai with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.
As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.
Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter. Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton, campaign finance records show, including $25,000 days after he was indicted.
Talarico has hammered Paxton over his jet-setting travels, accumulation of wealth in office, and his business associations.
Paxton, 63 years old, has long been a survivor of controversy, and Trump’s allies maintain the MAGA faithful will power him to a win in the Nov. 3 election.
The three-term attorney general was re-elected twice while securities-fraud charges against him were pending. In 2020, eight of his deputies reported him to law enforcement, accusing him of using the attorney general’s office to help a top donor and spurring a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe. The accusations led members of his own party to impeach Paxton in 2023 on abuse-of-office charges, which he denied. He was acquitted by the state Senate and returned to office.
Last year, his wife of 38 years filed for divorce, citing adultery, after public reports of two affairs, including with Duhon.
In a statement, Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux didn’t directly address the Dubai trip.
The two fugitives at the Dubai event had been both indicted in federal court in Illinois in 2024 on charges that they embezzled $15 million from a Chicago hospital where Ahmed was CFO. A businessman with interests in Texas, Ahmed was later charged in a much larger scheme involving at least $195 million in alleged payments from the government for fraudulent Covid-19 tests, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Both men are now back in the U.S. to face the charges. Ahmed is in custody, and his attorneys have said in court filings that he was abroad at the time of the first indictment and his return to the U.S. was delayed by family health issues. Suhail’s attorney, Adam Sheppard, said civil matters in Dubai affected Suhail’s ability to travel after the indictment and he returned voluntarily when they were resolved.
The video of the event, taken by another guest at the party, was cited in a filing in a Texas civil court case in which that guest is a defendant.
“It’s just amazing to me that he’s never been held accountable,” said Kent Schaffer, a special prosecutor who filed charges against Paxton in 2015.
But by the time Paxton had ascended through the state House and Senate to become attorney general in 2015, he was beginning to weather a series of controversies. Another lawyer accused him of stealing a $1,000 Montblanc pen at a courthouse. He was facing simultaneous state and federal securities-fraud investigations. An effort to pay his legal bills resulted in a bribery investigation when he accepted $100,000 from a former client under investigation by his office.
Civil charges filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging securities fraud were dismissed in 2017. And in 2024, he resolved state felony-securities fraud charges with a deal that involved paying $300,000 in restitution.
Before he first ran for public office in 2002, Paxton’s only assets were a handful of stocks and a house with a mortgage, with a combined value of less than $175,000, according to a state disclosure. By 2018, he told a lender he had amassed a net worth of some $5.5 million, not including millions of dollars in assets he and his wife had moved into a blind trust. They now own at least a dozen residential properties.
Nothing has brought Paxton closer to political ruin than his relationship with Austin real-estate developer Nate Paul, a friend and campaign donor. Paxton’s former aides accused him of abusing the attorney general’s office to interfere with an FBI investigation into Paul, sparking a federal probe into Paxton, the 2023 impeachment trial and a whistleblower lawsuit that the former employees won.
At one point, Paxton requested a meeting with Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., to raise objections to the FBI agent investigating Paul, which wasn’t within those officials’ jurisdiction, according to people with knowledge of the situation. As a result, at least two top officials later had to recuse themselves when their office took charge of the separate investigation into Paxton, the people said.
In attack ads, Talarico has highlighted the abuse-of-office claims and the $6.6 million awarded to the whistleblowers who alleged they were fired for reporting Paxton’s actions to law enforcement.
Talarico has also criticized what he calls Paxton’s “jet-setting lifestyle.” From 2022 through 2025, state-funded security accompanied Paxton on 19 foreign trips to countries including Greece, Italy, South Africa and Mexico, according to records, more than either the governor or lieutenant governor during that time. The records aren’t comprehensive and don’t include the Dubai trip.
Paxton met Duhon, a Christian influencer who became his girlfriend, at the Kentucky Derby in 2024, people with knowledge of the relationship said. She divorced her husband the following year, and Paxton’s divorce is pending. Tabloid photos captured the pair as they traveled through Europe over this past summer, while Talarico’s campaign ramped up.

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