FCC Officials Took Gifts From Paramount While It Had Business Before Them — ProPublica

FCC officials who voted on Paramount’s merger accepted luxury Kennedy Center gala tickets worth over $260,000 from the company they regulate, violating federal ethics rules that explicitly prohibit gifts from entities with pending business before the agency. FCC Chair Brendan Carr attended the December 2025 gala in a private $125,000 skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison after the company sought FCC approval for its $110 billion merger with Skydance Media, while Commissioner Olivia Trusty received tickets worth $12,000 before casting a decisive vote approving the deal.

Ethics experts, including former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub and former White House ethics lawyer Virginia Canter, said the commissioners violated federal law by accepting gifts from a regulated entity with business pending before them. Shaub stated that “there’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” and Canter called the conduct “shocking” and “disturbing.” The experts warned that Carr and Trusty compromised the agency’s impartiality and should have recused themselves from voting on the merger.

Seven of ten FCC commissioners who served since 2016 accepted Kennedy Center tickets from CBS or its parent company, totaling over $260,000 according to ProPublica’s analysis of ethics disclosures. Carr alone has accepted tickets at least seven times since 2017, totaling over $63,000. Federal ethics rules explicitly ban employees from accepting gifts from entities that do business with, are regulated by, or seek official action from their agency, yet the FCC claimed agency ethics officers approved the practice as consistent with law—a justification Shaub dismissed as equivalent to a “school child” excuse.

The timing of the gifts intensified the conflict. Paramount filed its Skydance merger paperwork in September 2024, and the December gala occurred as the company prepared its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Hours after the gala ended, Paramount launched the hostile bid. Trump has systematically pressured the FCC to strip broadcast licenses, and Carr reopened a CBS investigation days after taking office, later requiring Paramount to eliminate diversity initiatives and appoint a bias ombudsperson to secure the merger’s approval.

Multiple ethics experts told ProPublica that the Justice Department should investigate potential violations of federal ethics rules and that the commissioners’ gift-taking could become central in legal challenges to the merger. California, New York and ten other Democratic states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the $110 billion consolidation under federal and state anti-monopoly laws, citing concerns about job elimination and industry independence from consolidated ownership.

(Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/paramount-mergers-fcc-kennedy-center-gala?fbclid=IwdGRleATEdV1wZG9mA2ZkaWQWUKl7HV6hSpBeYhKKEUCD5qTfb1VVhGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR5j5tj7vuKcNF4EYkiA-zdtgiNLF39w-xW5ou0h_zK0uZfJ56eQA2uIrEgulg_aem_j4wlCLmUFGCAM_E3ngC6aw)state anti-monopoly laws, citing concerns about job elimination and industry independence from consolidated ownership.