When Politico’s Dasha Burns asked Brendan Carr whether he’d spoken with President Trump before or after issuing an unprecedented order forcing ABC to apply early for renewal of its broadcast licenses, the FCC chair gave a practiced non-answer: as a general rule, he said, he doesn’t discuss whether conversations with the White House happen at all. That posture of studied opacity is now considerably harder to maintain. A trove of FCC records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, and shared with the Guardian, documents a working relationship between Carr and the Trump administration that is far more extensive – and far more concentrated among conservative media interests – than Carr’s carefully worded deflections would suggest.
The numbers alone tell part of the story. Between March 2025 and February 2026, Carr attended at least eight meetings at the White House and had at least three scheduled calls with administration officials, including two separate conversations with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. He also spoke directly with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a striking connection for the head of an agency whose mandate centers on broadcasting and telecommunications, not public health. The calendar entries documenting these contacts vary widely in specificity: some meetings carry descriptive titles, like an August 2025 session on “FAA/Spectrum issues” or a November 2025 “Drones – Principals meeting”, while others, like a June 2025 entry marked simply “WH mtg”, offer no detail at all about what was discussed.
Dan McGrath, special counsel for oversight at Democracy Forward, framed the significance of the records directly: they show, he said, a remarkable breadth of access granted to this administration’s political allies, conservative media figures, and industry interests – including parties with active business before the commission – raising real questions about whether the FCC is functioning as an independent regulator or has become entangled with political relationships and industry influence.
Carr’s relationship with the administration stands out not just for its frequency but for how openly he’s departed from the FCC’s traditional posture of independence. He has explicitly rejected the idea that the agency operates independently of the president, pointing to the fact that commissioners can be removed by the White House at any time – a notable reversal of how FCC chairs, including those appointed by presidents of the same party, have traditionally described the commission’s role. That stance has real legal consequences: ABC’s lawsuit challenging the FCC’s early license-renewal order specifically cites what it calls Carr’s repeated public statements affirming his loyalty to the president and his agenda as evidence supporting the network’s case.
Tom Wheeler, who chaired the FCC under President Obama, offered a more measured read of the disclosures when asked by the Guardian, describing the meeting logs as interesting and entertaining, particularly the record of calls with Wiles, while stopping short of calling the pattern unusual. That’s a useful check on overreading the records – FCC chairs appointed by a sitting president’s party routinely coordinate with the White House on policy priorities. What distinguishes Carr’s documented conduct is less the existence of contact with the administration than the specific direction that contact has taken: toward disciplining media outlets the president has publicly criticized, and toward unusually close coordination with conservative media executives.
The records show Carr meeting repeatedly with figures at the intersection of conservative media and Republican politics. In June 2025, he met in his office with Matt Gaetz, the former congressman turned One America News host, with OAN’s president listed as an optional attendee. In January 2026, Carr and his aides held a previously unreported meeting with Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch, arranged at the request of a Fox senior vice president focused on FCC matters. The following month, Carr met with David Smith, chair of Sinclair Broadcast Group – the same company that had briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air months earlier following pressure tied to comments Kimmel made about the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
None of these meetings are improper in isolation; FCC chairs routinely meet with executives from companies their agency regulates, and such meetings only require public disclosure when they directly concern a specific matter before the commission. What stands out in the pattern, as the Guardian’s review notes, is the composition: the overwhelming majority of Carr’s documented meetings with media executives and personalities involve companies and figures that cater specifically to conservative audiences, rather than a cross-section of the broader media industry the FCC oversees. Carr has also maintained a steady media presence of his own on conservative platforms, at one point reaching out directly to a Fox & Friends booker to pitch himself as a guest on tech policy issues, including legislation affecting TikTok.
The internal correspondence paints a more nuanced picture than the “administration loyalist” caricature some critics have applied. In none of the disclosed emails does Carr express overtly pro-Trump sentiment or suggest he’s carrying out the administration’s directives – his written communications with industry contacts and telecommunications professionals read as professional and measured throughout, consistent with someone well aware that his correspondence is subject to public records law. The most candid remark uncovered involves a lighter moment: responding to a journalist’s question about protesters who’d disrupted an FCC meeting demanding his firing over the Kimmel controversy, Carr joked that he’d planned to counter a repeated protest chant with an impression of Trump’s signature dance moves.
Smaller details round out the portrait of Carr as a meticulous, image-conscious operator – a stickler for internal grammar and formatting standards whose chief of staff joked that noncompliant staffers would be “reported to DOGE”, and someone fluent enough in internet culture to open his introductory email to agency staff with a niche film reference from a Coen brothers movie. Taken together, the documents don’t show a regulator issuing explicit written instructions to punish Trump’s critics. What they show instead is a level of access, coordination, and personal rapport with the White House and conservative media that Carr’s own public statements – carefully engineered to avoid confirming or denying any of it – have consistently tried to keep out of view.
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