Texas governor says his emails with Elon Musk are too ‘intimate or embarrassing’ to release

Texas Governor 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, the governor’s bureau argued that the emails are covered by a instrumentality that prevents the disclosure of “highly intimate oregon embarrassing” information.

The Texas Newsroom, which is investigating Musk’s influence implicit the Texas government, asked the governor’s bureau successful April to stock emails with the billionaire dating backmost to past fall. Though the governor’s bureau accepted a interest of $244 to stitchery the records, The Texas Newsroom reports that it aboriginal refused to travel done connected the request

In a letter to the Texas Attorney General shared by The Texas Newsroom, 1 of Greg Abbott’s nationalist accusation coordinators said the emails dwell “of accusation that is intimate and embarrassing and not of morganatic interest to the public,” specified arsenic “financial decisions that bash not subordinate to transactions betwixt an idiosyncratic 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 the disclosure of its emails, claiming they incorporate accusation that would origin the institution “substantial competitory harm.”

Musk has expanded his footprint successful Texas successful caller years arsenic he shifted further to the governmental right. Tesla, X, and SpaceX are present all headquartered successful Texas, portion xAI inactive remains successful San Francisco. In May, voters successful South Texas approved a program to marque 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 calendar accusation revealing that a Texas lawmaker had planned respective meetings with representatives from SpaceX. It besides showed that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote a missive to the Federal Aviation Administration to assistance person the bureau to fto SpaceX summation the number of its rocket launches.