Source: Getty Images / Greg Abbott / Elon Musk
Is Texas Governor Greg Abbott hiding something about his dealings with Elon Musk? Some people think so after he gave a rather ridiculous reason for not sharing his emails with Phony Stark.
According to a joint report from ProPublica and The Texas Newsroom, Abbott is refusing to release months of emails sent to Elon Musk and his companies under public records laws.
As for his reasoning, the report states that after his office initially agreed to release the emails, they changed their mind on the ridiculous grounds that the emails are “highly intimate or embarrassing.”
The request comes as part of The Texas Newsroom’s investigation into Musk’s influence over the Texas government, which has requested to see the emails between the office and the billionaire dating back to the fall.
The governor’s office initially accepted the $244 to gather the records before later refusing, The Texas Newsroom reports.
The Texas Newsroom shared a letter to the Texas attorney general. In it, one of Abbott’s public information coordinators claimed that the emails consist of “of information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public,” such as “financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body.”
The decision has only sparked more suspicion because Musk’s footprint in Texas has only gotten bigger since his pivot to the right.
Per The Verge:
Musk has expanded his footprint in Texas in recent years as he shifted further to the political right. Tesla, X, and SpaceX are now all headquartered in Texas, while xAI still remains in San Francisco. In May, voters in South Texas approved a plan to make Starbase, Texas, where SpaceX performs rocket launches, a town. Public records requests have helped illuminate this process.
Earlier this year, for instance, The Texas Newsroom published emails and calendar information revealing that a Texas lawmaker had planned several meetings with representatives from SpaceX. It also showed that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration to help convince the agency to let SpaceX increase the number of its rocket launches.
You can see reactions to Greg Abbott holding back those emails in the gallery below.
