Gov. Abbott's office redacts pages of emails about Elon Musk
Mood
heated
Sentiment
negative
Category
politics
Key topics
Government Transparency
Public Records Law
Elon Musk
Texas Politics
Texas Governor Abbott's office redacts emails about Elon Musk, sparking controversy over potential trade secrets and intimate exchanges.
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Nov 19, 2025 at 2:13 PM EST
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I'm not seeing much to be gained by making it impossible for governments to do due diligence with many suppliers because they'd rather turn down the contract than broadcast such information to their competitors (not sure it'd jive particularly well with public company control over what is and isn't public information either)...
> "The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE"
> "Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to jeevacation@gmail.com, and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved"
What kinds of things could Musk and Abbott be discussing that could lead to an exchange of intimate messages? The only (non-jokey) thing I can think of would be discussions about the kinds of accommodations Abbott might need at SpaceX or Tesla events due to being paralyzed.
So yeah, there's probably some genuinely not-for-public consumption stuff about Tesla/SpaceX future business initiatives and a whole lot of racism and snarky comments about people that are supposed to be political allies...
Edit: wondering if the downvote brigade are supposed to be signalling that Elon doesn't have any legitimate reason to start conversations about his companies with Texas politicians or that private conversations with Elon would never end up segueing into something that might be embarrassing. Not sure which of those opinions is more ridiculous really...
This is how corruption is defined.
Like his support of racist organizations in Europe? Or hiding information about failures of self-driving automobiles? Or unexpected layoffs? There's probably a lot more, involving SpaceX, etc.
Honestly, that first one alone merits a lot of hairy eyeballing, but I despise racists and hate that my home state is associated with them.
Why are politicians involved with legal issues? Is this correct?
My downvote was to indicate that I reject your implication that there are legitimate reasons to keep his communications with government officials private. "Government" is, in most instances, replaceable with "Public". If you don't want your private business to be public knowledge, do not do business with the public. And if you do business with the public, expect that business to be public. There are mechanisms to protect "private" information that do not require government secrecy or redactions. Private businesses use them all the time. They are fallible, sure, but so is everything. More importantly, they are subject to subpoena and other legal remedies so they can be made public if necessary, but they are otherwise private (unlike email). And no, it doesn't matter to me what levels of harm can be done by the lack of secrecy; that's not a reason to be secret, that's a reason to not provide so much harm exposure. Government should be minimizing risk, not providing mechanisms that engender it. Besides, if my refusal to show ID to a cop with no RAS can still get me arrested, obviously the state understands the law as a "do the bad thing, sort it out later" kind of setup. So show us the emails and let's start working to fix the fallout.
Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't have used your government email account to have intimate and embarrassing exchanges? That thought come to mind, Mr. Abbott?
No. But there are investigative reporters.
The government uses "special masters" or "taint teams" if there's a scenario like this, at times. One was involved in the Trump Mar-a-Lago case.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/resources/news...
It's called an "In camera review". Assuming someone sues Abbott over this, then a judge can take the documents in question, look over them, and make a determination on whether or not Abbott's claims are true.
That ruling can be appealed to higher courts.
The FBI and friends can also use their means of unlawful surveillance and leak the contents to politically aligned publishers.
My guess is that they discussed a lot of horse trading too candidly.
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