Revealed: FCC chair Brendan Carr’s close coordination with White House and rightwing media

Brendan Carr was appointed as FCC chair by Donald Trump. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenBrendan Carr was appointed as FCC chair by Donald Trump. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty ImagesMediaRevealed: FCC chair Brendan Carr’s close coordination with White House and rightwing mediaInternal documents obtained by Guardian show White House meetings, scheduled calls with top Trump officials and communications with Fox News producers

“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 the 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 the chief of staff, Susie Wiles. He also spoke by phone with administration officials such as the 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 the Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, and Sinclair Broadcast Group chair, David Smith.

View image in fullscreenFree 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 the FCC’s 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 in sync 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 on 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.”