The greatest service that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton can offer the state is to resign. His many embarrassing years as a self-serving public official have reached a bizarre tipping point as prosecutors seek a felony securities fraud indictment against Texas’ top legal official.

Paxton is dissembling under the glare of scrutiny. Each week brings damaging revelations about his judgment and behavior. Those who still believe he is the best Republican for the job are under the influence of a tea party strange brew. After all, the tea party activists who promoted then-Sen. Paxton to statewide office last year originally sought to oust self-indulgent career politicians — not to keep them in power.

Paxton settled a Texas Securities Board civil complaint in April 2014 by admitting that he acted as an unregistered securities agent for Mowery Capital. The Securities Board alleged that Mowery charged investors excessive fees and failed to inform clients that Paxton pocketed 30 percent of their prodigious fees (fees that Paxton omitted from his legislative financial disclosures). Paxton paid a $1,000 civil fine and admitted to acting as an unregistered securities agent — a third-degree felony.

To hold a candidate for our top legal office accountable, Texans for Public Justice filed a criminal complaint against Paxton last July. After months of delay and mounting public pressure, Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis — Paxton’s longtime friend and business partner — recused himself in April.

District Judge Scott Becker then appointed two special prosecutors. After uncovering more wrongdoing, prosecutors Kent Schaffer and Brian Wice say they soon will present grand jurors with evidence that Paxton committed first-degree felony securities fraud. Such a conviction could result in five to 99 years in prison.

Voters should have known better. When Paxton was elected to the House in 2002, he ran a quiet law practice that specialized in estate planning.

As a lawmaker over the next decade, he amassed stakes in dozens of businesses, including some with major state interests, this paper reported. Paxton owned a hunk of a company that landed a $10 million contract to put video cameras in state patrol cars. As part owner of a company operating cellphone towers, Paxton introduced legislation to exempt cellphone companies from sales taxes. Paxton and Willis were partners in a venture that flipped a $700,000 property for more than $1 million after obtaining a crucial zoning change. That tract became the home of the Collin County Central Appraisal District.

Paxton owns more than 10,000 shares of data server company Servergy Inc. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating if Servergy misled investors by saying that its servers use 80 percent less power and that major corporations had ordered its servers. Part of the SEC’s probe has targeted Servergy documents mentioning Paxton, The Associated Press recently reported.

A signature character incident occurred in 2013, when another attorney’s $1,000 Montblanc pen disappeared from the metal detectors that screen visitors to a Collin County courthouse. Last year the sheriff reviewed security camera footage and noticed Paxton walking off with the pricey pen (which he later returned).

Paxton hasn’t changed in his first 180 days as attorney general. He awarded 13 administrative jobs to Republican insiders without complying with a law requiring him to advertise the positions, the Austin American-Statesman found. He has been slow to implement a campaign promise to divest business interests or to stick them in a blind trust, according to the Houston Chronicle. When the Supreme Court recently ruled that gay couples have a constitutional right to marriage, Paxton issued a nonbinding opinion inviting county clerks to ignore the law by refusing to grant gay couples marriage licenses.

Paxton has become a lampooned pox on Texas. He is a farcical distraction from his office’s purpose to uphold the law. To grant Texas a desperately needed attorney general upgrade, Paxton should sign a letter of resignation. For the good of Texas, he should then fall upon a mightier-than-the-sword “borrowed” Montblanc pen.