Texas Governor Says His Emails With Elon Musk Are Too ‘intimate Or Embarrassing’ To Release

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is refusing to merchandise months’ worthy of emails sent to Elon Musk and his companies nether nationalist records laws, according to a associated study from ProPublica, The Texas Newsroom, and The Texas Tribune. After initially agreeing to an accusation request, nan governor’s agency based on that nan emails are covered by a rule that prevents nan disclosure of “highly friendly aliases embarrassing” information.

The Texas Newsroom, which is investigating Musk’s influence complete nan Texas government, asked nan governor’s agency successful April to stock emails pinch nan billionaire making love backmost to past fall. Though nan governor’s agency accepted a interest of $244 to stitchery nan records, The Texas Newsroom reports that it later refused to travel done connected nan request.

In a letter to nan Texas lawyer wide shared by The Texas Newsroom, 1 of Abbott’s nationalist accusation coordinators said nan emails dwell “of accusation that is friendly and embarrassing and not of morganatic interest to nan public,” specified arsenic “financial decisions that do not subordinate to transactions betwixt an individual and a governmental body.”

As noted by The Texas Newsroom, this connection is “fairly boilerplate,” drawn from a common-law privateness exemption to nationalist disclosure requests connected Attorney General Ken Paxton’s website. SpaceX, which is based successful Texas, similarly objected to nan disclosure of its emails, claiming they incorporate accusation that would origin nan institution “substantial competitory harm.”

Musk has expanded his footprint successful Texas successful caller years arsenic he shifted further to nan governmental right. Tesla, X, and SpaceX are now all headquartered successful Texas, while xAI still remains successful San Francisco. In May, voters successful South Texas approved a scheme to make Starbase, Texas, wherever SpaceX performs rocket launches, a town. Public records requests person helped illuminate this process.

Earlier this year, for instance, The Texas Newsroom published emails and almanac accusation revealing that a Texas lawmaker had planned respective meetings pinch representatives from SpaceX. It besides showed that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote a missive to nan Federal Aviation Administration to thief person nan agency to fto SpaceX summation nan number of its rocket launches.