Revealed: FCC chair Brendan Carr’s close ties to White House and rightwing media

Brendan Carr was very firm.“As a general rule, we don’t get into any discussions that happen with the White House or don’t happen with the White House,” Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told Politico’s Dasha Burns in a recent interview. Burns had pressed Carr to explain how exactly he came to issue a highly unprecedented order forcing ABC to apply early to renew its eight local broadcast licenses just one day after the man who appointed Carr, Donald Trump, and his wife Melania called for ABC to be punished for a joke made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.“Did you get a call or talk to the president either before or after you made that announcement?” Burns had asked. Later in the interview, Carr repeated his policy: “As a general matter, I don’t speak publicly about conversations with the White House, or whether they happen or don’t happen.”While Carr may not be keen to detail his relations with the Trump administration, a trove of FCC documents – obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit filed by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, and provided to the Guardian – shed light on the close working relationship between Carr, his top staffers and members of Trump’s White House team.Between 12 March 2025 and 11 February 2026, Carr attended at least eight meetings at the White House, according to the records, and had at least three scheduled calls with administration officials, including two conversations with chief of staff Susie Wiles. He also spoke by phone with administration officials such as controversial health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.In addition, the files provide insight into Carr’s media strategy, including communications with producers at Fox News, and make public previously undisclosed meetings he has held with media titans such as Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch and Sinclair Broadcast Group chair David Smith.Free press advocates at a protest in support of first amendment rights in Washington earlier this month. Photograph: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Free Press“These records show a remarkable breadth of access to FCC leadership for this administration’s political allies, conservative media figures, and powerful industry interests, including companies and organizations with business before the commission,” said Dan McGrath, special counsel, oversight at Democracy Forward. “This raises serious questions about whether the FCC is operating as an independent regulator, or whether political relationships and industry influence have become too intertwined with its decision-making.”The White House meetings, which are memorialized as Microsoft Outlook calendar items, occasionally include details about the topic of discussion. For example, on 29 August 2025, Carr was listed as the organizer of a “White House deputies” meeting focused on “FAA/Spectrum issues,” which also included chief of staff Greg Watson and Arpan Sura, a senior counsel focused on spectrum, space and artificial intelligence.Another White House meeting, in November 2025, was titled “Drones – Principals meeting”, making obvious the focus.But a 2 June 2025 calendar entry shows only that Carr attended a “WH mtg”, giving no further details on the nature of the visit.While it’s not uncommon for FCC chairs appointed by a president of their party to meet and confer with the administration, Carr is known to be unusually well-synched with the priorities of the Trump White House, particularly with its focus on using the levers of government to punish the legacy television networks that Trump has derided as fake news. Countering past precedent, he has denied that the agency is “independent” because the president can remove commissioners at any time. ABC cited Carr’s “repeated public statements confirming his allegiance to the president and the president’s agenda” in a lawsuit filed Tuesday challenging the FCC’s early license renewal order.Tom Wheeler, who served as chair of the FCC under President Barack Obama, called the meeting logs “very interesting” and “lots of fun”, particularly those memorializing conversations between Carr and Wiles in the winter of 2025. But, he told the Guardian: “I don’t think it’s terribly unusual.”In the summer of 2025, a calendar entry noted that White House office of the deputy chief of staff for strategic implementation Nick Luna would “call BC cell”, referring to Carr’s cellphone.In early February of this year, the calendar shows a scheduled call between Carr and health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, noting “Secretary Kennedy to call Chairman Carr Directly” for what appears to be a quick 15-minute conversation.Click to see document double quotation mark*Secretary Kennedy to call Chairman Brendan Carr Directly* A few days later, Carr was in the West Wing of the White House for a meeting with director for domestic policy council Vince Haley, described by the Wall Street Journal last year as “the Most Influential Trump Adviser You’ve Probably Never Heard Of”.Also in February, Carr traveled to the Department of Justice to meet with Omeed Assefi, who served as acting assistant attorney general for the antitrust division. No reason was given for the meeting, though there is obvious overlap between the regulatory oversight functions provided by the justice department and the FCC over media mergers that involve the transfer of television licenses.There is nothing unusual or nefarious about the chair of the FCC meeting with the leaders of media companies his agency regulates – though such meetings are kept private unless they are directly related to an agency matter, which would then require a publicly filed “ex parte” acknowledgement of the conversation. Notably, though, most of Carr’s meetings with media executives (and personalities) represent companies that appeal to conservatives.Matt Gaetz at a rally in Henderson, Nevada in October 2024. Photograph: Mike Blake/ReutersIn June 2025, Carr met in his office with Matt Gaetz, the former GOP congressman and one-time attorney general nominee who in December 2024 joined the far-right cable network One America News as a host. Charles Herring, OAN’s president, was listed as an optional attendee.In January 2026, Carr and his aides had a previously unreported meeting with Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s head of government relations Kristopher Jones, and FCC-focused Fox senior vice-president Joe Di Scipio, who had requested the meeting.Click to see document double quotation markI would like to set up a meeting with Chairman Carr and Lachlan Murdoch at the FCC on Friday, January 30. In February 2026, Carr met with David Smith, the powerful chair of the conservative media company Sinclair, which in September 2025 had briefly acceded to Carr’s wishes and pre-empted Jimmy Kimmel Live over comments the late-night host had made about the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.An expert communicator who rarely deviates from talking points, Carr is a regular presence on conservative media podcasts, radio shows and television programs.In April 2024, Carr reached out to a booker for the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends to see if the show might be interested in having him on to discuss “tech issues”, including legislation involving TikTok, and shared links to videos of his past appearances on the network. “No worries at all if there’s nothing that makes sense,” Carr wrote. The Fox News booker responded that there was no availability for the following day’s show but expressed a desire to have him on the show in the future.Click to see document double quotation markNo worries at all if there’s nothing that makes sense. Happy to stay in touch or be a resource as tech issues percolate. Takeaways from filesThe emails paint a picture of a telecommunications regular who is extremely cautious about the language he uses in communications that are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. In none of the emails does Carr express pro-Trump sentiments, or suggest that he is doing the bidding of the Trump administration, as some critics have suggested. Carr is professional, diplomatic and respectful in the email exchanges with industry representatives and past and present telecommunications professionals.But, on one occasion, in an email conversation with a national journalist who covers the FCC, Carr made a slightly off-color remark when the reporter brought up protesters who had interrupted the commission’s monthly meeting a day earlier and called for the chair to be fired for seeming to pressure television groups to drop Kimmel’s show.“I was going to hit them with the Trump dance if they did the chant a second time,” Carr told the reporter, referring to the president’s signature halting moves.In the email files, Carr showed himself to be something of a stickler for proper grammar. After Carr emailed his staff with his preferences for document formatting, his chief of staff joked that “those who fail to comply will be reported to Doge”.Click to see document double quotation markA reminder on the Carr style guide below. Those who fail to comply will be reported to DOGE. Carr is also a lover of internet memes, and he leaned on a relatively niche pop culture reference in his introductory email to the agency, referencing a scene from the 2018 Coen brothers film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Waiting to be executed, James Franco asks a bereft old man standing with him on the gallows: “First time?”In his email to employees, Carr made clear that his staff represented the unafraid and irreverent Franco character.