Brendan Carr, Donald Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, insisted during a Wednesday Senate hearing that the agency wasn’t independent, prompting a Democratic senator to show a screenshot from the FCC’s site saying the opposite.
Moments later, the website was edited to remove any reference to the FCC’s independence, instead saying the commission is a “U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.”
A spokesperson for the FCC acknowledged the edits, telling The Independent that with “the change in Administration earlier this year, the FCC’s website and materials required updating,” adding: “That work continues to ensure that they reflect the positions of the agency’s new leadership.”
During a Senate hearing that was already expected to feature fireworks over Carr’s “easy way or the hard way” threat to ABC over Jimmy Kimmel, which came just before the talk show host’s brief suspension, the pro-Trump FCC chief was confronted over who he felt actually ran his agency.
At one point in the hearing, which featured the other two commissioners of the FCC, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) directly asked if the commission was an independent agency, leading Carr to attempt to sidestep the question.
“There’s a test for this in the law,” Carr replied, only for Luján to interject and press the chairman for a simple yes-or-no answer.
“Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent,” the Democratic lawmaker noted while waving a screenshot of the site’s “About Us” section. “This isn’t a trick question. Just a yes or no!”
Carr finally said the FCC “is not an independent agency,” resulting in the New Mexico senator to wonder if the commission’s website was lying. “Possibly,” the chairman said.
“The FCC is not an independent agency because –,” Carr added before Luján interjected to read from the website, which stated that it was “an independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.”
While Carr continued to argue that the FCC was not independent “formally” because its leadership could be removed by the president, Luján moved on to ask the same questions to Olivia Trusty, the other Republican commissioner at the FCC.
“The president is the chief executive vested with all executive power in our government and FCC commissioners are not. We do not have for-cause removal protections, which means that we aren’t independent,” Trusty stated, though she would not say whether the website was wrong.
Meanwhile, Anna Gomez – the lone Democratic commissioner at the FCC – asserted that the agency was independent and “they should be.”
Shortly after Carr’s declaration about the FCC’s independence, Axios media reporter Sara Fischer noticed that the website had already been scrubbed – and shared before and after images of the changes.
“This is INSANE,” she tweeted. “I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr's comments during this hearing!”
Minutes later during the hearing, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) pressed Carr about his previous stance about the FCC and how it was independent from the executive branch and White House.
“‘Congress long ago determined that the FCC is an independent expert agency.’ Is that correct or not?” Kim wondered, noting that this was a quote Carr had given before Congress in 2018.
“Senator, there has been a sea change in sort of the law and the approach since I wrote that sentence, I'm assuming,” Carr replied.
Elsewhere in the exchange, the New Jersey lawmaker repeatedly asked Carr whether he felt Trump was his “boss,” prompting the chairman to attempt to deflect and dodge the question.
“I can be fired by the president,” Carr said.
“So he's your boss,” Kim countered.
“Look, the decisions of the commissions are going to be based on a vote,” the chairman retorted.
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