FCC Chairman Offered to Help Brendan Carr Target Disney, Records Show

A senior federalist The Communications Commission official overseeing ABC-owned California stations privately offered to help FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in last year’s campaign against Walt Disney Co. and Jimmy Kimmel Live!according to internal emails obtained by WIRED.

On September 17, Carr threatened Disney with regulatory action regarding Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, prompting the station’s flagship affiliates to stop broadcasting and forcing ABC to temporarily suspend the show.

Later that day, Lark Hadley, the FCC’s West Coast enforcement director, sent an email to Carr and FCC Chief of Staff Scott Delacourt. The email, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, was titled “Personal Memorandum in Support of Charlie Kirk’s ABC/Disney Case” and quoted Carr’s remarks from an interview with conservative broadcaster Bennie Johnson: “This is a very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said during the interview.

Noting that he was a broadcaster himself, Hadley wrote that “the utter lack of accountability has always baffled (and disgusted)” me, and told Carr and Delacour: “Please, don’t be complacent, and let me know if I can help in any way.”

It is highly unusual for a career civil servant and chief executive to express support for a politically motivated pressure campaign, or to pledge services to targeted retaliation efforts against a broadcaster in his jurisdiction.

Federal ethics rules prohibit government employees from participating in matters where their impartiality might be in reasonable doubt.

Carr’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

While FCC headquarters typically handles television content complaints, Hadley’s office has direct enforcement authority over the actual ABC-owned stations in its jurisdiction, including KABC-TV in Glendale, ABC’s broadcast source. Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Short comment for Jimmy Kimmel Live! It became a defining test of Carr’s ability to leverage the FCC’s regulatory apparatus against political critics. After Carr’s public threats, the major affiliate networks Nexstar and Sinclair—both of which had multibillion-dollar mergers pending before the commission—refused to air the program, forcing Disney to temporarily pull the show.

An ABC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tells WIRED that regional directors like Hadley have no business cheering the FCC chairman’s regulatory threats against broadcasters who broadcast viewpoints the president doesn’t like.

“Just like Brendan Carr, they took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that includes the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from coercing private broadcast stations to censor dissent,” Creeley says. “This is a public servant who is paid with our taxpayer money. Is it too much to ask him not to seem so passionate about the Chairman’s abuse of the power of his position?”