Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton is bragging about letting a child predator out of jail after just two months.

Paxton has been criticized over a lenient plea deal he offered to Adam Hoffman, a former Waco attorney who was charged with first-degree felony continuous sexual abuse of a young child. Hoffman faced a potential sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. At trial, a friend of Hoffman’s son testified that the disgraced lawyer sexually abused him multiple times over the course of three years beginning in the third grade.

Paxton offered Hoffman a deal that reduced his charges to indecent assault and display of harmful materials to a minor, accompanied by an admission of intent to abuse the victim without specifying an age. Because his admission did not include the victim’s age, Hoffman was not required to register as a sex offender.

The deal also proposed that Hoffman serve just one day in jail, but a judge increased it to 60 days. Hoffman was ultimately released after just 30 days behind bars.

On Monday, Paxton pushed back on criticism of the deal.

“The criticism has been that I let a child predator out [after serving] one day,” Paxton said at a United States Hispanic Business Council forum. “Well, guess what? They served 60 days. It wasn’t what we wanted, but we did not control the situation. We did our best.”

Paxton’s comment comes just as he is locked in a close midterm election against Democratic candidate James Talarico for the U.S. Senate.

Talarico has strongly criticized Paxton’s handling of the case, labeling the deal an “Epstein-style sweetheart deal”. Talarico’s campaign also filed an open records request for internal communications within the Attorney General’s office regarding the Hoffman case, which the agency denied.

“The Epstein class has no place in Texas,” Talarico later wrote on Twitter. “And if there’s one thing that we can all still agree on, Democrats, independents and Republicans alike, it’s that no one, including the Attorney General of Texas, should be able to cover up crimes against children.”