The memo warned that \u201cforeign adversarial interests\u201d might be seeking to \u201cabuse\u201d and \u201cexploit\u201d Texas, and \u201cundermine our communities from the inside,\u201d Texas Monthly reported Monday. The memo had no letterhead, signature, or date but was disseminated to different agency heads by members of Abbott\u2019s office and his advisers. Sure enough, the memo\u2019s language has since reappeared in press releases announcing official inquiries from a range of state agencies, including the Texas Funeral Service Commission, Texas Workforce Commission, and the Texas Rangers, among others. <\/p>\n
Travis Iles, then-commissioner of the Texas State Securities Board, had a meeting in March 2025 with Daniel Mittnacht, a political adviser; Trevor Ezell, Abbott\u2019s general counsel; and Caleb Gunnels, an assistant general counsel. The group went over the memo, and after the meeting, Iles assembled a team of six career regulators and attorneys to investigate whether EPIC City\u2019s investors were being told enough about the project, Texas Monthly reported.<\/p>\n
Iles\u2019s investigation found that EPIC City\u2019s fundraising didn\u2019t seem to have anything to do with securities at all. Investors in EPIC City had purchased units that would guarantee them the opportunity to purchase property lots at a discounted price\u2014not securities that would passively derive profits. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The memo warned that \u201cforeign adversarial interests\u201d might be seeking to \u201cabuse\u201d and \u201cexploit\u201d Texas, and \u201cundermine our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-464454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}