Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa has sued Gov. Greg Abbott, seeking unredacted access to over 1,100 pages of his communications with Elon Musk — after Abbott's office released heavily redacted versions of the records, citing "intimate and embarrassing" content alongside business and privilege exceptions.
Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin and the Democratic nominee for governor, argues that her seat in the Texas House entitles her to inspect the records for legislative purposes under Texas law. The communications cover the governor's dealings with Musk and his companies — dealings she says bear directly on the Legislature's work, including state incentives and grants, broadband deployment, public beach access, environmental impact, artificial intelligence and data center development. Her lawsuit, filed in Travis County, asks the court for expedited action, including a temporary restraining order barring the governor's office from blocking her access.
"The people have a right to know, and I, as their representative, have a right to see them."
The records fight did not start with Hinojosa. The documents were first assembled for a media public-records request from The Texas Newsroom, and the governor's office ultimately produced 1,374 pages — but all but about 200 of them were redacted or completely blacked out. Hinojosa filed her own request on September 29, asking to inspect the unredacted communications and offering to sign a confidentiality agreement. The governor's office refused, and the fight is now in court. Her attorney, Cris Feldman, says the governor's office "has continued to obstruct her ability to review these intimate and embarrassing emails, despite clear statutory language," and the lawsuit states it plainly: "Governor Abbott has failed and refused to comply with the law by allowing Representative Hinojosa access to the Abbott-Musk communications."
The reason the records matter is the scale of Musk's footprint in Texas. Musk has made the state the center of his business empire — SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, X, The Boring Company, Neuralink and xAI all operate there — and he has been a major financial backer of Texas Republicans, contributing $500,000 to Abbott's re-election campaign this year, according to Texas Ethics Commission records. Hinojosa's lawsuit describes the documented connections between Abbott and Musk as extensive: personal interactions, joint public appearances, large political contributions, economic-development incentives, and public praise for one another, with the two men speaking frequently. Speaking outside the Travis County courthouse on Monday, she put her case in one line: "What this is about is we have the world's only trillionaire getting massive tax breaks from this governor after giving him over $500,000 in campaign contributions."
Abbott's side is not conceding an inch. His press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, called the lawsuit "baseless and nothing more than an act of desperation," accusing Hinojosa of "abusing her official capacity as an outgoing lawmaker to generate headlines for political purposes." The governor himself, after casting an early ballot in Del Valle on Monday, said Hinojosa was trying to get attention because "this election has slipped through her hands." The suit was filed on Monday — the first day of early voting for the November 3 election.
That timing is the whole ballgame. Abbott, a three-term incumbent with a vast campaign warchest, is seeking a fourth term; Hinojosa's own House term ends in January, and she argues that access delayed is oversight denied. The judge's ruling will now run on the same clock as the campaign — and whatever is hiding behind those blacked-out pages will either come out before Texans finish voting, or not at all.