FCC Chair Carr Says Paramount Antitrust Case Is Weak, as Records Show He Took Paramount-Funded Gala Seats

Since Paramount Skydance rejected the 12-state lawsuit against its Warner Bros. Discovery deal on Monday, July 13, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has weighed in publicly on both that fight and a separate, escalating set of proceedings against Disney.

In a Bloomberg interview, Carr said he doesn't see a strong antitrust case against the $110 billion Paramount-Warner deal. "It's hard to see a real legitimate antitrust action," Carr said, adding that competition questions ultimately belong to antitrust enforcers, not the FCC.

Carr specifically pushed back on reporting that California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office signaled it would drop its objection if Paramount spun off CNN. "I did think it was interesting that there was a statement at least attributed to the California Attorney General that said that they would not sue if Paramount agreed to spin off CNN," Carr said, arguing it's hard to see how CNN ownership alone should be the deciding factor in blocking the broader merger.

The Justice Department has already approved the transaction. The 12 states, led by Bonta, argue the deal would cut competition, raise prices, and shrink consumer choice. Their lawsuit doesn't block the merger outright, but it can delay it while litigation plays out. Paramount says killing the deal would choke off investment in Hollywood and hand an advantage to Netflix.

Carr said the FCC still has to complete its own review of foreign investment tied to the transaction and has not reached a final call.

Three Open Fronts Against Disney

Carr also detailed what he described as three separate FCC matters involving Disney. One traces back to concerns first raised in March 2025 about the company's DEI practices. Carr said the commission is examining whether Disney's employment practices produced discrimination in pay or job opportunities.

"Frankly, the view was that Disney was being disingenuous in the way it was responding to the FCC's inquiries," Carr said. He said that response prompted the commission to require an early review of Disney's broadcast licenses. Carr also referenced scrutiny of ABC's "The View" as part of the broader review of programming standards.

Disney has not been charged with any violation, and no formal enforcement action has been announced. These remain open inquiries, not findings.

The Gift Question ProPublica Raised

While Carr was framing Paramount's antitrust exposure as thin, reporting from ProPublica, republished by National Memo, surfaced a different angle: what FCC commissioners received from Paramount while regulating it.

At the Kennedy Center's December gala honoring Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, and Gloria Gaynor, Commissioner Olivia Trusty attended with a tickets package from Paramount worth more than $12,000, according to ethics disclosure records reviewed by ProPublica. Trusty had cast a deciding vote five months earlier approving Paramount's $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.

Carr and his wife sat in a private skybox that evening alongside Paramount CEO David Ellison and other Paramount and CBS executives. Kennedy Center guidelines put the price of those skybox seats at $125,000 apiece. ProPublica reported it's unclear whether Paramount specifically gifted Carr those seats, because the FCC has not yet released his financial disclosure for last year.

Carr's past disclosures show he accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from CBS or its parent company at least seven times since his 2017 appointment to the commission, totaling more than $63,000 in gifts, according to ProPublica. Seven FCC commissioners in total have taken CBS or Paramount-funded gala tickets over the past decade.

Federal ethics rules bar agency employees from accepting gifts from companies that do business with, are regulated by, or are seeking action from that employee's agency. Four ethics experts told ProPublica that Carr and Trusty should have recused themselves from any Paramount-related vote after taking the tickets.

"There's no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect," said Walter Shaub, who ran the federal Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. Virginia Canter, a former White House and Treasury ethics lawyer, also flagged the arrangement as a conflict.

There is a fair counterpoint here. Kennedy Center honors tickets are a longstanding Washington tradition, gala seating is often treated as a networking courtesy rather than a bribe, and neither Carr nor Trusty has been charged with any ethics violation. No formal investigation into either commissioner has been announced. The ethics experts quoted by ProPublica are making an argument about appearances and standards, not a legal finding of wrongdoing.

Still, the timing is hard to separate from the substance. Carr is now the FCC's leading voice arguing the case against Paramount is weak, at the same moment records show he and Trusty took five-figure hospitality from the same company while it had merger business pending before their agency. The FCC has not released Carr's most recent financial disclosure, and no timeline for the agency's final decision on the foreign-investment review of the Paramount-Warner deal has been announced.