Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is refusing to release months’ worth of emails between his office and right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, claiming that the contents are too “intimate or embarrassing” to share.
That’s not a joke.
According to a joint report from ProPublica, The Texas Newsroom, and The Texas Tribune, the correspondence spans from last fall to now and was requested under public records laws. Abbott’s office initially estimated it would take more than 13 hours to review the emails, and accepted a $244.64 processing fee. Then it suddenly changed course.
Instead, the governor’s office argued the records were protected by “common-law privacy”—a legal doctrine that, as some attorneys say, is usually reserved for personal health information or details about minors, not conversations between elected officials and billionaires with big business interests in the state.
“Section 552.101 encompasses the doctrine of common-law privacy, which protects information that is (1) highly intimate or embarrassing, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person and (2) not of legitimate concern to the public,” Abbott’s public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, wrote in a letter to the Texas attorney general’s office.
The letter went further, claiming the emails included “financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body,” as well as privileged exchanges with lawyers, internal policy discussions, and information on how Texas courts major companies to invest in the state. Releasing them, Taylor warned, “would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”
That might sound plausible—if it didn’t also seem like a dodge.
“Embarrassment” is a strange excuse for hiding messages between one of the country’s most powerful Republican governors and the world’s wealthiest man. Musk’s companies are deeply involved in state policy, and Abbott has openly allied himself with Musk, promoting him as a symbol of Texas’s pro-business, anti-regulation stance.
As ProPublica notes, the privacy exemption cited by Abbott’s office is rarely used to block records about high-profile government dealings. It’s usually invoked to hide things like medical records, not secret communications between public officials and politically connected billionaires.
Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, for its part, also objected to releasing its communications, claiming the emails contained proprietary info and warning of “substantial competitive harm” if made public.
Meanwhile, a recent Texas Supreme Court decision has made it even easier for state officials to avoid open records laws. And Abbott’s office still has not given a clear explanation for why these specific emails with Musk should stay under wraps.
That only adds to the mystery.
Records like these allude to Musk’s growing influence in Texas politics. Earlier this year, The Texas Newsroom published emails and calendar entries revealing that the tech billionaire’s company’s representatives met regularly with lawmakers who backed Musk’s priority bills. The outlet also found a letter from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to the Federal Aviation Administration, pushing for faster approval of SpaceX rocket launches.
Since then, Musk’s Texas operations have expanded. Tesla, SpaceX, and X are now or will soon be headquartered in the state. Voters recently approved turning Starbase—SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas—into an official town. And as Musk has moved further right politically, Abbott and other Texas leaders have kept paving the way for his business ventures.
So the real question isn’t whether the emails are embarrassing. It’s what, exactly, Abbott and Musk were discussing behind closed doors—and why they’re working so hard to hide it.