Greg Abbott has spent more than a year fighting to keep Texans from reading his office's emails with Elon Musk's companies. On Monday, a judge told him to stop. On Tuesday, he appealed.
State District Judge Catherine Mauzy ordered the governor's office to let state Rep. Gina Hinojosa — Abbott's Democratic opponent for governor — see the unredacted records by 10 a.m. Thursday, KUT and the Texas Newsroom reported. The judge wrote that Hinojosa "has an immediate legal right to access the requested documents."
Abbott's office says its appeal "automatically halts" that order, and on Tuesday it asked a state appeals court to block it, KSAT reported. The next hearing in the trial court is set for November 2 at 9 a.m. — the day before Election Day.
1,374 pages, almost all blacked out
This fight started with reporters. Last year, the Texas Newsroom asked for communications between Abbott's office and Musk's businesses, which have a huge footprint in Texas.
Abbott's office fought it. It claimed exceptions for confidential legal and policy discussions. It also claimed a privacy exception for information it called "intimate and embarrassing."
When the office finally released the records, there were 1,374 pages. All but about 200 were entirely blacked out, according to KUT. Many of the readable pages were already public or said little about Musk's dealings with the state.
Hinojosa sued on October 19, arguing that as a sitting lawmaker she has the right to see them. She isn't asking to make them public, KSAT reported.
Abbott's spokesman called the lawsuit "a baseless stunt and nothing more than an act of desperation." His office now argues that the Travis County court "lacked jurisdiction" and that only the Texas Supreme Court can give orders to the governor.
What Musk has gotten — and given
Hinojosa's lawsuit lays out why she wants to see the emails. According to KSAT's summary of the suit, it alleges:
- More than $54 million in state grants to SpaceX
- $1.7 billion in school tax breaks for Musk's "Terafab" project
- At least $500,000 in direct Musk contributions to Abbott
- That Musk asked whether Abbott would "have his back," Abbott answered "I said 100%," and the next day Musk filed paperwork to move SpaceX's incorporation to Texas
Those are the lawsuit's claims. The emails Abbott is fighting to keep sealed are exactly where the public could check them.
Meanwhile, the money kept coming. Abbott raised $26 million from late September through October 24 — his biggest reporting period of the cycle — and "nearly one-fifth of Abbott's latest haul came from one man: Elon Musk," the Texas Tribune reported. The Houston Chronicle put it at a $5 million boost, donated on September 28.
So while Abbott's office was still fighting to keep his Musk correspondence hidden, Musk was supplying nearly a fifth of the biggest fundraising haul of Abbott's race.
Not the first Musk favor we've seen
A draft agenda for Abbott's hand-picked parks commission put a closed-door session on selling Boca Chica State Park two days after the election — and two sources told Texas Monthly the buyer is SpaceX. After reporters asked, the agency said the sale wasn't on its November agenda.
It fits a pattern with Abbott's donors. The data-center industry he says he's cracking down on has given him about $9 million.
Texas's public records law exists so people can see how their government treats the powerful. Abbott's office used it to release a stack of black pages.
The bottom line
Greg Abbott's office released 1,374 pages of communications with Elon Musk's companies and blacked out all but about 200, citing among other things information it called "intimate and embarrassing." When a judge ruled on Monday that his opponent has "an immediate legal right" to see them, Abbott appealed, and the next trial-court hearing isn't until the day before the election. In the same reporting period, Musk gave Abbott nearly a fifth of his $26 million haul.
