Advocacy group Frequency Forward and journalist Nina Burleigh have accused the Federal Communications Commission of concealing Chairman Brendan Carr's use of Signal on a phone he uses to conduct government business, escalating a public-records battle over the agency's ties to the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk. In a filing entered yesterday in US District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs charged that the FCC acted in bad faith on multiple fronts—a finding that, if credited by the court, would represent a significant legal setback for the agency.
The Bad-Faith Allegations
The filing lays out two distinct lines of misconduct. First, the plaintiffs allege the FCC unilaterally redefined the search criteria used to fulfill their Freedom of Information Act request without notifying either the plaintiffs or the court—a procedural move they characterize as deliberate obfuscation. Second, and more pointed, they allege the agency actively concealed the existence of Carr's Signal account, software commonly used because messages can be set to disappear. The combination, Frequency Forward and Burleigh argued, constitutes a pattern rather than an oversight.
Background: A Lawsuit Already Producing Friction
The underlying FOIA suit was filed last year, after the plaintiffs alleged the FCC wrongfully withheld agency records related to DOGE's influence on the commission. The litigation was already generating friction before yesterday's filing: in August 2025, a federal judge ordered the FCC to produce documents and publicly criticized the agency for responses described as "vague and uninformative." That judicial rebuke did not, according to the new filing, produce full compliance.
What It Means for FCC Oversight
For investors tracking telecommunications policy, the case keeps regulatory independence at the FCC in question. The agency sits atop spectrum licensing, broadband rules, and broadcast ownership—decisions with material consequences for the sector. Any finding that the chairman's communications with DOGE were conducted on an ephemeral-messaging platform, and then concealed from a court-supervised records process, would deepen uncertainty about how those decisions are being made and by whom. The court has not yet ruled on the bad-faith claims.