FCC Accused of Hiding Chairman Carr's Signal Use in DOGE Transparency Lawsuit

What the Lawsuit Is Actually About

This case started with a February 2025 FOIA request. Journalist Nina Burleigh and advocacy group Frequency Forward asked the FCC for records documenting DOGE's activities inside the agency, specifically communications involving Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Starlink, which are active FCC license applicants and regulated entities.

After months of minimal production, they sued in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson entered an order in July 2025 requiring the FCC to produce documents and separately criticized a July 23, 2025 FCC status report as "vague and uninformative," according to Broadband Breakfast. She set hard rolling deadlines of September 15 and October 6, 2025 for document releases.

The FCC produced 35 pages by August 13, 2025. Burleigh and Frequency Forward called that response "incomplete and intentionally misleading," per Broadband Breakfast. An emergency injunction motion was denied — Judge Jackson ruled there was no proof of irreparable harm requiring extraordinary relief — but the underlying litigation continued.

The Signal Question

The fight escalated significantly with the plaintiffs' most recent court filing, reviewed by Ars Technica and The Desk. Burleigh and Frequency Forward allege the FCC has been concealing the fact that Chairman Brendan Carr has an active Signal account on a phone he uses for FCC business.

Here is what the filing actually shows: a prior FOIA request by University of Minnesota journalism professor Christopher Terry surfaced a November 2024 email chain in which Carr provided his personal cell phone number to a Fox News producer for interview booking purposes. The FCC had failed to redact that number. Burleigh's team entered that number into the Signal app and, according to their court filing, found an active account under the name "Brendan Carr."

The Desk, which received an advance copy of the filing, adds important nuance. When its reporters entered Carr's phone number into Signal independently, the app did NOT display his name. A message sent to the account received no response. So the exhibit in the court filing is a screenshot, and independent verification produced a different result. That is a material discrepancy the filing does not resolve.

The FCC's position is straightforward. Signal is NOT on the agency's approved technology list, so the FCC had no obligation to search for Signal messages under the FOIA request. That is a legally defensible argument under existing federal records policy, which generally requires preservation of government business conducted on government-approved systems.

The DOGE Ethics Gap

The Signal dispute is one thread. The ethics-clearance question is a separate and more concretely documented problem based on internal emails cited in the filings reviewed by Radio Ink.

Three DOGE representatives, Tarak Makecha, Jordan Wick, and Jacob Altik, are listed in the FCC staff directory under the Office of the Chairman. Wick completed onboarding fully. Altik apparently never completed it. Makecha's situation is the focal point.

Makecha arrived at the FCC around March 17, 2025, detailed from the Office of Personnel Management. On that same day, he signed a financial disclosure acknowledging he held stock in Tesla — Musk's company. The FCC ethics office did not sign off on his access until nine days later. In the gap, Makecha was already requesting FCC personnel data and broadband mapping information.

His stated goal in a March 17 email to FCC General Counsel Adam Candeub was clear. "At the end of the day, all I need is a badge/laptop so I can get FCC data and support FCC leadership in execution."

A second DOGE staffer, David LaCerte, asked in the same email chain whether ethics clearance was even required before starting. Candeub's response was to take the conversation offline. The FCC has produced no documentation showing Makecha or LaCerte completed required ethics clearances before receiving system access, according to Radio Ink's review of the filings.

The Strongest Defense of the FCC

Before reaching any conclusions, the FCC's position deserves a fair hearing. The agency argues it searched the systems and devices it was legally required to search under its own records-management policies. Signal is not an approved platform. Personal devices are not agency property. Using an unapproved app, if it occurred, would itself be a policy violation by the official involved, but that does not automatically make the messages subject to a FOIA search the agency is required to conduct. Courts have generally held that agencies need only search records they control.

On the contract side, the FCC points to concrete results. Chairman Carr publicly announced in May 2025 that the agency reduced more than $567 million in authorized contract spending, with near-term savings of $6.7 million for the remainder of 2025 and a projected $21.1 million in 2026, representing roughly a 20 percent reduction in planned contract spending. The eliminated items included redundant IT services, underused software licenses, and what the agency described as an unnecessary feral swine and hog trapping contract. Whether the process that produced those savings was tainted by ethics lapses is exactly what the litigation is trying to determine, but the savings themselves are not in dispute.

Where This Stands

Burleigh and Frequency Forward are now asking the court to deny the FCC's pending summary judgment motion, order full document production within one week, and authorize discovery so plaintiffs can identify what records actually exist. Their filing accuses the FCC of having "wasted a year of the Court's time."

The central unresolved question is not whether DOGE cut contracts. It is whether a DOGE staffer holding Tesla stock accessed sensitive FCC data before an ethics officer cleared him, and whether any communications relevant to that question were routed through Signal in a way the FCC is now declining to search. Judge Jackson has already shown she is watching the FCC's compliance closely. Her ruling on the summary judgment motion will determine whether the plaintiffs get the discovery they are asking for.