XPost: tx.politics, sac.politics, alt.politics.usa.republican
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Impeached Texas Attorney General Partnered With Troubled Businessman to
Push Opioid Program
While launching a statewide program to distribute packets to dissolve
opioids, Attorney General Ken Paxton worked to connect its leaders with
the state’s comptroller, who oversees the distribution of millions of
dollars in opioid settlement money.


A year after persuading Texas lawmakers to buy millions of child
identification kits that had no proven record of success, a businessman
with a troubled history found an in with the state's attorney general.

Last fall, Kenny Hansmire was tapped by Republican Attorney General Ken
Paxton to be part of a coalition to combat opioid abuse that Paxton
declared would “be the largest drug prevention, education, abatement and disposal campaign in U.S. history.”
Get Our Top Investigations


Riffing off the name of a popular book about Texas football, Paxton
announced the Friday Night Lights Against Opioids coalition and pilot
program. The initiative would distribute 3.5 million packets at high
school football games that contain a powder capable of destroying opioids
when mixed with water.

Paxton didn’t provide a price tag for the effort or explain Hansmire’s
exact role, but he said a partnership with the businessman’s National
Child Identification Program would be important to the program’s success.

A former NFL player, Hansmire has persuaded leaders in multiple states to
spend millions of dollars purchasing inkless fingerprinting kits on the
promise that they could help find missing children. Texas alone allocated
$5.7 million for kits over the past two years. An investigation published
last month by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found little evidence of
the kits’ effectiveness and showed that the company exaggerated missing
child statistics in its marketing.

The investigation also revealed that Hansmire has twice pleaded guilty to felony theft and was sanctioned by banking regulators in Connecticut in
2015 for his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.

Paxton has been a key ally for Hansmire. In 2020, he signed a letter to then-President Donald Trump urging him to get behind ultimately
unsuccessful legislation that would approve the use of federal money to
pay for the child identification kits. Hansmire later honored the attorney general at a Green Bay Packers game for his support.

For the opioid initiative, Paxton worked to connect Hansmire with Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who oversees the distribution of hundreds of
millions of dollars the state is set to receive after settling lawsuits
with pharmaceutical companies over their roles in the opioid crisis.

Paxton discussed the initiative with Hegar, asking him to speak with its leaders, including Hansmire. On multiple occasions, Hansmire “called Comptroller Hegar to ask for funding for the Friday Night Lights program,”
said the comptroller’s spokesperson, Chris Bryan.

Hegar, a Republican former state legislator who served with Paxton in the
Texas Senate, declined to entertain Hansmire’s requests and explained that funding decisions will follow a formal approval process that is still
being developed, Bryan said. He did not respond to additional questions.

Hansmire’s financial stake in the opioid initiative is unclear. He did not respond to questions about his role or about his requests for funding from
the comptroller. He has previously defended himself and his company,
asserting that the fingerprinting kits have made a difference in missing
child investigations and that he resolved his financial and legal
troubles.

Over the years, Hansmire has successfully leveraged his relationships with professional and college football teams in promoting his fingerprinting
kits, honoring allied lawmakers and attorneys general at high-profile
events such as football games.

While unveiling the opioid program last October, Paxton stood flanked by Hansmire and other former NFL players. Among them: NFL Hall of Famers Mike Singletary, who played for the Chicago Bears, and Randy White, a former
Dallas Cowboy. White later participated in the launch of a similar program
in Delaware alongside the state’s lieutenant governor. And last month, Mississippi’s attorney general announced the distribution of 500 free
“Family Safety Kits.” Each included a child ID kit from Hansmire’s company
and a drug disposal packet, which was provided by North Carolina-based DisposeRX. The company, which is also involved in the Texas and Delaware programs, lists Hansmire’s National Child ID Program as an official
partner on its website.

Neither Singletary nor representatives for White or DisposeRX responded to requests for comment.

Paxton also did not respond to multiple requests for comment and to
detailed questions from ProPublica and the Tribune. The news organizations requested records from Paxton’s office that could show the cost of the
opioid initiative, the scope of the work and the breakdown of compensation
for the companies involved. In response, the attorney general’s office
released some emails, including one that contained an August 2022 letter
from Paxton to Hansmire proposing to partner on the initiative. The office
has fought the disclosure of other records that include communications
with a lawmaker about potential legislation and claimed that it has no
record of written agreements or expenditures related to the Friday Night
Lights Against Opioids program.

Last month, the attorney general became one of only three state officials
in Texas history to be impeached. He has been temporarily suspended while
he awaits a trial in the Texas Senate on charges that include bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. (Those charges are not related to
the opioid program.)

The impeachment vote in the Texas House was the culmination of a probe by
the lower chamber’s General Investigating Committee. In a memorandum, the
panel said the inquiry was initiated by Paxton’s request for $3.3 million
to cover a negotiated settlement he announced in February with four former
top aides.

Those aides sued Paxton in 2020 under the state’s whistleblower law,
arguing that they were illegally fired after reporting their boss to the
FBI for alleged misdeeds, including bribery and leveraging the power of
his office to help a political donor.

Paxton has denied wrongdoing and has dismissed his impeachment as
politically motivated.
“Slower Approach”

The week after Paxton announced the proposed settlement of the suit
against him, state Sen. Donna Campbell, a New Braunfels Republican, filed
a bill that would transfer $10 million to the attorney general from the
opioid settlement fund.

Also a supporter of Hansmire’s, Campbell authored legislation in 2021 that
led to the approval of $5.7 million to provide child ID kits to elementary
and middle school students across the state. (State lawmakers had been set
to approve additional money this year to purchase kits, but budget
negotiators nixed the funding following publication of the ProPublica-
Tribune investigation.)

In this case, Campbell’s bill would direct funding to Paxton that he could
use “for the purpose of prevention, education, and drug disposal awareness campaigns to include providing at-home drug disposal kits and abatement
tools for children- and youth-focused populations across this state.”

A new 14-member council led by Hegar is responsible for doling out the
bulk of the opioid settlement funding, though lawmakers can allocate some
of the money through legislation.

A week before Campbell filed her opioid bill, Hansmire’s longtime business partner, Mark Salmans, registered a new company with the state called
Friday Night Lights LLC. Little information is publicly available about
the company.

Campaign finance records show Salmans has donated $6,500 to Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, since late 2019. That includes a $1,000 donation to the attorney general the week after the Friday Night Lights
Against Opioids announcement. He has not donated to Campbell, according to records from the same time period. Salmans and the Paxtons did not respond
to questions about the new entity or their roles in the program.

Campbell also didn’t respond to questions. Her bill, which died in
committee, came after both Paxtons publicly criticized Hegar for being
slow to distribute the opioid settlement money. Neither Paxton mentioned
the Friday Night Lights Against Opioids initiative while doing so.

“My main concern is that if we wait to use that money, we’re missing the opportunity to help people that need the help and we’re missing the
opportunity to really save lives,” Ken Paxton said at a hearing in
response to questions from Campbell less than two weeks before she filed
her bill. Hegar has defended the pace, noting that the nature of the
council’s work is unprecedented and that it needs to establish a clear,
fair and transparent process to get the money out.

At a legislative hearing in late January, Hegar pointed to the sweeping corruption scandal that plagued the Cancer Prevention and Research
Institute of Texas during its first few years as a reason to ensure a more deliberate process. The state agency came under fire a decade ago for
doling out tens of millions of dollars in grants to politically connected applicants through a process that lacked proper scientific review. The
scandal, which raised concerns about conflicts of interest and lax
oversight, resulted in various resignations and reforms.

“The point is, we’re taking a slower approach to make sure we get it
right,” Hegar told Angela Paxton. “That entire board was wiped away
because the process that was put into place was not very thorough, and all
of their reputations were tarnished.”
Opioids and Missing Children

At the October news conference where Paxton announced the Friday Night
Lights Against Opioids initiative, Hansmire explained that it would employ
the model pioneered by his child identification company, which got its
start by distributing kits at college and professional football games.

He also linked the initiative to his child identification company by
repeating the incorrect statistic he’s used to promote the company’s fingerprinting kits. Hansmire asserted that, “out of 800,000 children that
are reported missing every year, 200,000 of those have an opioid issue.”

He didn’t cite a source for the figures, but they appear to come from an
old Department of Justice study that was co-authored by David Finkelhor,
the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the
University of New Hampshire. Finkelhor previously told ProPublica and the Tribune that the 800,000 figure Hansmire was using from the 24-year-old
study was no longer accurate and overstated the scale of the missing
children problem, in part because it included children who were missing
for benign reasons such as spending the night at a friend’s house or
coming home late from school. Using the inflated and outdated figure to
then suggest that a quarter of those children have opioid-related problems
is simply wrong, Finkelhor said.

The Department of Justice study estimated that 292,000 children who ran
away or were kicked out of their homes in 1999 were “using hard drugs.” Finkelhor said the study referred to anything aside from marijuana — not
just opioids — as a hard drug. He said he is not aware of anyone who
formally tracks “opioid issues” among missing or runaway children.

Experts say that beyond being premised on incorrect statistics, the
promotion of disposal packets as a solution for the opioid epidemic is a misguided use of resources, in large part because prescription opioids can
be safely disposed of in multiple ways. According to the Food and Drug Administration, the best way to dispose of most medications, including
opioids, is to drop them off at a drug take-back site. If that’s not an
option, they should either be flushed down the toilet or be thrown in the trash, depending on whether they are on the FDA’s flush list.

Pushing disposal packets is a good way for a politician or legislator “to appear to be addressing the opioid crisis without actually doing anything
that would upset industry,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director for
the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University.

Paxton and Hansmire didn’t respond to questions about the effectiveness of
the packets. But Paxton said during the October news conference that it
was his “hope and prayer that this program will aid in fighting the opioid epidemic that has claimed far too many young lives across our great
state.”

The attorney general’s original plan was to distribute the 3.5 million
disposal packets at high school football programs across Texas in the
latter part of last year. But Brian Polk, chief operating officer of the
Texas High School Coaches Association, said the inaugural distribution was smaller than envisioned.
The Supreme Court Upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act. The Long Struggle
to Implement the Law Continues.

Polk, whose organization partnered with Paxton on the initiative, couldn’t remember exact numbers but said in an interview that about 10 school
districts received 3,000 packets each. A much larger distribution is
expected this fall, but plans are still being finalized, Polk said.

Paxton did not respond to questions about Polk’s comments or whether unsuccessful efforts to tap opioid settlement money contributed to the smaller-than-planned distribution.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: tx.politics, sac.politics, alt.politics.usa.republican
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns

Impeached Texas Attorney General Partnered With Troubled Businessman to
Push Opioid Program
While launching a statewide program to distribute packets to dissolve
opioids, Attorney General Ken Paxton worked to connect its leaders with
the state’s comptroller, who oversees the distribution of millions of
dollars in opioid settlement money.


A year after persuading Texas lawmakers to buy millions of child
identification kits that had no proven record of success, a businessman
with a troubled history found an in with the state's attorney general.

Last fall, Kenny Hansmire was tapped by Republican Attorney General Ken
Paxton to be part of a coalition to combat opioid abuse that Paxton
declared would “be the largest drug prevention, education, abatement and disposal campaign in U.S. history.”
Get Our Top Investigations


Riffing off the name of a popular book about Texas football, Paxton
announced the Friday Night Lights Against Opioids coalition and pilot
program. The initiative would distribute 3.5 million packets at high
school football games that contain a powder capable of destroying opioids
when mixed with water.

Paxton didn’t provide a price tag for the effort or explain Hansmire’s
exact role, but he said a partnership with the businessman’s National
Child Identification Program would be important to the program’s success.

A former NFL player, Hansmire has persuaded leaders in multiple states to
spend millions of dollars purchasing inkless fingerprinting kits on the
promise that they could help find missing children. Texas alone allocated
$5.7 million for kits over the past two years. An investigation published
last month by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found little evidence of
the kits’ effectiveness and showed that the company exaggerated missing
child statistics in its marketing.

The investigation also revealed that Hansmire has twice pleaded guilty to felony theft and was sanctioned by banking regulators in Connecticut in
2015 for his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.

Paxton has been a key ally for Hansmire. In 2020, he signed a letter to then-President Donald Trump urging him to get behind ultimately
unsuccessful legislation that would approve the use of federal money to
pay for the child identification kits. Hansmire later honored the attorney general at a Green Bay Packers game for his support.

For the opioid initiative, Paxton worked to connect Hansmire with Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who oversees the distribution of hundreds of
millions of dollars the state is set to receive after settling lawsuits
with pharmaceutical companies over their roles in the opioid crisis.

Paxton discussed the initiative with Hegar, asking him to speak with its leaders, including Hansmire. On multiple occasions, Hansmire “called Comptroller Hegar to ask for funding for the Friday Night Lights program,”
said the comptroller’s spokesperson, Chris Bryan.

Hegar, a Republican former state legislator who served with Paxton in the
Texas Senate, declined to entertain Hansmire’s requests and explained that funding decisions will follow a formal approval process that is still
being developed, Bryan said. He did not respond to additional questions.

Hansmire’s financial stake in the opioid initiative is unclear. He did not respond to questions about his role or about his requests for funding from
the comptroller. He has previously defended himself and his company,
asserting that the fingerprinting kits have made a difference in missing
child investigations and that he resolved his financial and legal
troubles.

Over the years, Hansmire has successfully leveraged his relationships with professional and college football teams in promoting his fingerprinting
kits, honoring allied lawmakers and attorneys general at high-profile
events such as football games.

While unveiling the opioid program last October, Paxton stood flanked by Hansmire and other former NFL players. Among them: NFL Hall of Famers Mike Singletary, who played for the Chicago Bears, and Randy White, a former
Dallas Cowboy. White later participated in the launch of a similar program
in Delaware alongside the state’s lieutenant governor. And last month, Mississippi’s attorney general announced the distribution of 500 free
“Family Safety Kits.” Each included a child ID kit from Hansmire’s company
and a drug disposal packet, which was provided by North Carolina-based DisposeRX. The company, which is also involved in the Texas and Delaware programs, lists Hansmire’s National Child ID Program as an official
partner on its website.

Neither Singletary nor representatives for White or DisposeRX responded to requests for comment.

Paxton also did not respond to multiple requests for comment and to
detailed questions from ProPublica and the Tribune. The news organizations requested records from Paxton’s office that could show the cost of the
opioid initiative, the scope of the work and the breakdown of compensation
for the companies involved. In response, the attorney general’s office
released some emails, including one that contained an August 2022 letter
from Paxton to Hansmire proposing to partner on the initiative. The office
has fought the disclosure of other records that include communications
with a lawmaker about potential legislation and claimed that it has no
record of written agreements or expenditures related to the Friday Night
Lights Against Opioids program.

Last month, the attorney general became one of only three state officials
in Texas history to be impeached. He has been temporarily suspended while
he awaits a trial in the Texas Senate on charges that include bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. (Those charges are not related to
the opioid program.)

The impeachment vote in the Texas House was the culmination of a probe by
the lower chamber’s General Investigating Committee. In a memorandum, the
panel said the inquiry was initiated by Paxton’s request for $3.3 million
to cover a negotiated settlement he announced in February with four former
top aides.

Those aides sued Paxton in 2020 under the state’s whistleblower law,
arguing that they were illegally fired after reporting their boss to the
FBI for alleged misdeeds, including bribery and leveraging the power of
his office to help a political donor.

Paxton has denied wrongdoing and has dismissed his impeachment as
politically motivated.
“Slower Approach”

The week after Paxton announced the proposed settlement of the suit
against him, state Sen. Donna Campbell, a New Braunfels Republican, filed
a bill that would transfer $10 million to the attorney general from the
opioid settlement fund.

Also a supporter of Hansmire’s, Campbell authored legislation in 2021 that
led to the approval of $5.7 million to provide child ID kits to elementary
and middle school students across the state. (State lawmakers had been set
to approve additional money this year to purchase kits, but budget
negotiators nixed the funding following publication of the ProPublica-
Tribune investigation.)

In this case, Campbell’s bill would direct funding to Paxton that he could
use “for the purpose of prevention, education, and drug disposal awareness campaigns to include providing at-home drug disposal kits and abatement
tools for children- and youth-focused populations across this state.”

A new 14-member council led by Hegar is responsible for doling out the
bulk of the opioid settlement funding, though lawmakers can allocate some
of the money through legislation.

A week before Campbell filed her opioid bill, Hansmire’s longtime business partner, Mark Salmans, registered a new company with the state called
Friday Night Lights LLC. Little information is publicly available about
the company.

Campaign finance records show Salmans has donated $6,500 to Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, since late 2019. That includes a $1,000 donation to the attorney general the week after the Friday Night Lights
Against Opioids announcement. He has not donated to Campbell, according to records from the same time period. Salmans and the Paxtons did not respond
to questions about the new entity or their roles in the program.

Campbell also didn’t respond to questions. Her bill, which died in
committee, came after both Paxtons publicly criticized Hegar for being
slow to distribute the opioid settlement money. Neither Paxton mentioned
the Friday Night Lights Against Opioids initiative while doing so.

“My main concern is that if we wait to use that money, we’re missing the opportunity to help people that need the help and we’re missing the
opportunity to really save lives,” Ken Paxton said at a hearing in
response to questions from Campbell less than two weeks before she filed
her bill. Hegar has defended the pace, noting that the nature of the
council’s work is unprecedented and that it needs to establish a clear,
fair and transparent process to get the money out.

At a legislative hearing in late January, Hegar pointed to the sweeping corruption scandal that plagued the Cancer Prevention and Research
Institute of Texas during its first few years as a reason to ensure a more deliberate process. The state agency came under fire a decade ago for
doling out tens of millions of dollars in grants to politically connected applicants through a process that lacked proper scientific review. The
scandal, which raised concerns about conflicts of interest and lax
oversight, resulted in various resignations and reforms.

“The point is, we’re taking a slower approach to make sure we get it
right,” Hegar told Angela Paxton. “That entire board was wiped away
because the process that was put into place was not very thorough, and all
of their reputations were tarnished.”
Opioids and Missing Children

At the October news conference where Paxton announced the Friday Night
Lights Against Opioids initiative, Hansmire explained that it would employ
the model pioneered by his child identification company, which got its
start by distributing kits at college and professional football games.

He also linked the initiative to his child identification company by
repeating the incorrect statistic he’s used to promote the company’s fingerprinting kits. Hansmire asserted that, “out of 800,000 children that
are reported missing every year, 200,000 of those have an opioid issue.”

He didn’t cite a source for the figures, but they appear to come from an
old Department of Justice study that was co-authored by David Finkelhor,
the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the
University of New Hampshire. Finkelhor previously told ProPublica and the Tribune that the 800,000 figure Hansmire was using from the 24-year-old
study was no longer accurate and overstated the scale of the missing
children problem, in part because it included children who were missing
for benign reasons such as spending the night at a friend’s house or
coming home late from school. Using the inflated and outdated figure to
then suggest that a quarter of those children have opioid-related problems
is simply wrong, Finkelhor said.

The Department of Justice study estimated that 292,000 children who ran
away or were kicked out of their homes in 1999 were “using hard drugs.” Finkelhor said the study referred to anything aside from marijuana — not
just opioids — as a hard drug. He said he is not aware of anyone who
formally tracks “opioid issues” among missing or runaway children.

Experts say that beyond being premised on incorrect statistics, the
promotion of disposal packets as a solution for the opioid epidemic is a misguided use of resources, in large part because prescription opioids can
be safely disposed of in multiple ways. According to the Food and Drug Administration, the best way to dispose of most medications, including
opioids, is to drop them off at a drug take-back site. If that’s not an
option, they should either be flushed down the toilet or be thrown in the trash, depending on whether they are on the FDA’s flush list.

Pushing disposal packets is a good way for a politician or legislator “to appear to be addressing the opioid crisis without actually doing anything
that would upset industry,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director for
the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University.

Paxton and Hansmire didn’t respond to questions about the effectiveness of
the packets. But Paxton said during the October news conference that it
was his “hope and prayer that this program will aid in fighting the opioid epidemic that has claimed far too many young lives across our great
state.”

The attorney general’s original plan was to distribute the 3.5 million
disposal packets at high school football programs across Texas in the
latter part of last year. But Brian Polk, chief operating officer of the
Texas High School Coaches Association, said the inaugural distribution was smaller than envisioned.
The Supreme Court Upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act. The Long Struggle
to Implement the Law Continues.

Polk, whose organization partnered with Paxton on the initiative, couldn’t remember exact numbers but said in an interview that about 10 school
districts received 3,000 packets each. A much larger distribution is
expected this fall, but plans are still being finalized, Polk said.

Paxton did not respond to questions about Polk’s comments or whether unsuccessful efforts to tap opioid settlement money contributed to the smaller-than-planned distribution.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)