A journalist and advocacy group are accusing the FCC of stonewalling a FOIA request and covering up Chairman Brendan Carr’s use of Signal for government business — including possible communications with Elon Musk.
Nina Burleigh and Frequency Forward filed a motion in US District Court alleging the FCC “has sought to delay the production of responsive documents and obfuscate the existence of responsive records.” They say the agency won’t make a good faith effort to comply.
The Signal connection came to light through a previous FOIA request that produced a November 2024 email from a Fox News producer confirming an interview with Carr. The phone number in that email, when entered into Signal, shows an active account under the name “Brendan Carr.”
The FCC told the court on June 3 that Carr didn’t have phone numbers for DOGE personnel and that agency policy prohibits installing messaging apps like Signal on FCC phones. Plaintiffs aren’t buying it. They argue Carr likely communicated with Musk or other high-ranking DOGE officials directly, not with lower-level staff.
“DOGE personnel routinely conducted business on their personal phones using text messages, especially the Signal app,” the filing notes, citing a previous case.
The filing also accuses the FCC of deliberately narrowing its document search to emails with FCC, DOGE, and GSA domains — ignoring other channels. And they point out that travel documents the FCC provided don’t include anything about Carr’s visits to Starlink facilities.
This case has been running since last year. In August 2025, a federal judge ordered the FCC to produce documents and called their response “vague and uninformative.” The agency apparently hasn’t improved much since.
