“We met Ken Paxton at a lunch where Ed wanted us to pitch our services”

In a December 18, 2019 video on his “TrueBlood” channel, Schoenberger said: “we met Ken Paxton at a lunch where [Ed] wanted us to pitch our services to his wife who was running for political office. We didn’t get the job. It was a one-hour lunch and it didn’t amount to anything.” Manuel “Defango” Chavez, by then Schoenberger’s open enemy, gave a converging account on the “Smooch Panda” interview channel: on his first day in Texas he met “Ken Paxton, the AG of Texas,” who “wanted to actually hire us to help his wife’s campaign.” They agree on the core — a Butowsky-arranged lunch about Angela Paxton’s campaign — and disagree on what followed. Both carry credibility problems the reader should weigh.

What Shadowbox was selling

Will Sommer’s February 17, 2020 investigation for the Daily Beast documents the firm. Pitch materials obtained by that reporting describe Shadowbox as the client’s “army,” promising to build covert bot campaigns and to use “targeted chaos” against opponents. Butowsky told the outlet he housed Schoenberger and Chavez in a Dallas-area hotel for over a month at roughly $5,000, that they spent their time on Twitter and YouTube, and that he threw Schoenberger out over unfinished website work paid for by Butowsky’s rabbi. In a recorded video conference the same reporting obtained, Butowsky mused about publishing a critic’s phone number and email. Three people in the room at a September 2017 gathering at Butowsky’s home said surveilling Seth Rich’s parents was discussed. Butowsky denies that, and no surveillance is known to have occurred.

The timing fits — if barely

Angela Paxton entered the Senate District 8 race in September 2017 and won the Republican primary on March 6, 2018. Schoenberger places his and Chavez’s Dallas hotel stay with Butowsky in roughly that window; other accounts start the stay in January 2018. The claimed lunch therefore sits between SD8’s start and the primary, or just after. That is suggestive of opportunity, not of outcome. No Texas campaign expenditure to Shadowbox, its principals, or a successor entity has been located — a search of the Texas Ethics Commission filings for the Angela Paxton and Ken Paxton committees across 2017–2018 is the next step and is open.

The money that may or may not have moved

Secondary notes list four small Butowsky-to-Paxton contributions totaling about $1,100 between December 2019 and December 2022, cited to an OpenSecrets donor lookup. This desk could not confirm them against the primary filings in this pass; they are Unverified, not false. If confirmed, they would show personal support that post-dates the claimed lunch by nearly two years — not a transactional campaign relationship. For comparison, Tim Dunn, the Wilks family and affiliated groups had given Paxton more than $2.85 million in contributions by mid-2023, per the Texas Tribune, plus loans that brought the total above $4.65 million. The scales are different.

The method, bigger, in 2023 — through a different network

In May 2023 the Defend Texas Liberty PAC paid Influenceable (filed as “Influencable LLC”) $18,000; the firm’s recruiters offered influencers $50 per pro-Paxton post, which prompted the Texas Ethics Commission to propose disclosure rules. DTL — funded chiefly by Dunn and Farris Wilks — had floated Paxton a $750,000 loan in 2022, gave $3 million in loans and donations to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick shortly before Patrick presided over Paxton’s impeachment trial in September 2023, and in October 2023 its then-president Jonathan Stickland hosted the white nationalist Nick Fuentes at his Pale Horse Strategies office for about seven hours. That is the Shadowbox 2017 offering — covert amplification, paid influencers, opponent-confusion — operating at scale around the same politician six years later. Nothing here connects DTL to Butowsky, Schoenberger, Chavez or FitzGibbon. It is a parallel, not a continuation.

Ty Clevenger, the node that cuts both ways

Attorney Ty Clevenger filed a State Bar of Texas grievance against Paxton over the pending securities case; the bar dismissed it. The Dallas Morning News credited him in February 2017 with helping trigger Paxton’s indictment. By July 2019 he was filing amended pleadings in a Butowsky defamation suit, and in October 2020, after Butowsky dropped suits against NPR and CNN, he spoke publicly for his client. He is still litigating Seth Rich FOIA claims against the FBI in 2026. The person who became Butowsky’s voice in court had, a few years earlier, been one of Paxton’s most persistent legal antagonists. There is no indication Clevenger had any role in Shadowbox. The significance is simpler: the same small Dallas and east Texas legal world holds both ends of this story.

From the archive: two emails that touch this map

Two items in my own inbox are relevant here, and both arrived as forwards; they’re filed as Claimed until original headers surface.

July 8–10, 2017 · “Trevor, meet Richard.” Schoenberger introduces Richard Miller to a ProtonMail user who identifies himself in the thread as Trevor FitzGibbon, and pitches an “organic campaign” to restore FitzGibbon’s name — weeks before Shadowbox’s reported August launch. FitzGibbon notes Lara Logan “from 60 minutes is calling.” Schoenberger also offers to scout the circle of a critic and find out “who she is communicating with at any given time.” The copy reached me as a November 14, 2020 forward.

December 8, 2020 · the Sweigert letter. A pre-litigation letter from D. George Sweigert to a podcaster denies what Sweigert calls her claims of a “black-mail plot” involving Ken Paxton, Sweigert, Schoenberger and Chavez. It was copied to several Texas attorney general’s office addresses and to the State Bar of Texas. The letter only denies the claim; what the podcast actually alleged, and on what basis, is not resolved here (the video, ipFQxe7t9do, has been removed and needs to be recovered). It is the first time I have seen Paxton named in writing in connection with the Shadowbox circle. It is an allegation, not a finding.