Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted on multiple counts of fraud and financial shenanigans, some of which carry the possibility of life in prison:

Facing three felony counts of securities law violations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed Monday morning for alleged violations that took place when he was a state legislator.

Indicted by a Collin County grand jury last week, Paxton surrendered at the county jail in his hometown of McKinney, avoiding assembled reporters by entering through a side door.

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The grand jury indictments against Paxton, unsealed shortly after noon, revealed that two first-degree fraud charges were based on Paxton’s efforts in July 2011 — when he was a member of the Texas House — to sell stock on behalf of Servergy Inc., a privately held, McKinney-based tech company.

According to the indictments, Paxton failed to tell stock buyers — including state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg, who each purchased more than $100,000 in Servergy stock and were listed as complainants on the fraud charges — that he had been compensated with 100,000 shares of Servergy. Paxton also said he was an investor in Servergy when he had not invested his own money in the company, the charges indicated.

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Paxton encouraged investors to put more than $600,000 into Servergy, special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told The New York Times last week. Paxton’s role was discovered as part of a Texas Rangers investigation, Schaffer said.

First-degree felonies can be punished by up to life in prison.

Paxton is a wingnut’s wingnut, even by the standards of Texas, which is saying a lot.

The fact that he has been caught red-handed defrauding fellow Republican members of the state legislature makes this whole affair quite ……… entertaining.

I am amused.