Texas attorney general Ken Paxton welcomed in 2025 at a lavish New Year’s Eve gathering in Dubai, sharing a luxury high-rise balcony with two American men who were fugitives from US justice at the time, according to reports this week.
The December 31 gathering, held as fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa, included Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon alongside Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail. Both men had been indicted months earlier on federal health-care fraud charges and had not returned to the United States to answer them. Video of the event was reviewed by the newspaper, with details also found in court filings, according to reports.
The donor connection
Ahmed’s ties to Paxton go well beyond a shared party. Campaign-finance records show the health-care executive gave Paxton’s campaign about $190,000, including a $25,000 contribution made days after his indictment. Prosecutors allege Ahmed and Suhail embezzled more than $15 million from a Chicago hospital where Ahmed served as chief financial officer. Ahmed was later charged in a separate alleged scheme involving at least $195 million in fraudulent Covid-19 testing payments, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Asked about the Dubai trip, Paxton’s camp did not address it directly. A senior adviser instead said Paxton had been “politically persecuted for years”. Both men have since returned to the United States to face the charges; Ahmed is in custody, while his lawyers have said family health problems and civil cases in Dubai delayed his return.
A tight race under a cloud
The report lands as Paxton, the Republican nominee, fights Democrat James Talarico for a US Senate seat in one of the country’s most closely watched contests, with polling showing a competitive race rather than a settled result. One October survey put the two tied at 45 per cent, while another gave Talarico a narrow four-point edge. Senate contests with national stakes are unfolding elsewhere too, and voter mood ahead of the midterms remains unsettled, giving every new revelation added weight.
Neither camp has treated the story as a one-day headline. For a race where the margins could be razor-thin, questions about who the state’s top law-enforcement official parties with — and who bankrolled his campaign — are likely to follow Paxton well past the Dubai skyline.
