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FCC Chair Carr and Commissioner Trusty accepted Kennedy Center gala seats amid pending Paramount merger review

On December 7, 2025, FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty attended the Kennedy Center Honors gala while Paramount's mergers were before the commission. Trusty accepted tickets worth more than $12,000 that ProPublica confirmed came from Paramount; Carr sat in a private $125,000 skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison, though the source of his seat was unconfirmed pending his outstanding financial disclosure. Both had voted five months earlier to approve Paramount's $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, and neither had recused from the company's pending $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

On December 7, 2025, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty attended the Kennedy Center Honors gala on tickets provided by Paramount, a company with multibillion-dollar business pending before their agency. According to ethics disclosure records obtained by ProPublica, Trusty accepted tickets worth more than $12,000. Carr and his wife watched from a private skybox alongside Paramount CEO David Ellison; Kennedy Center guidelines price such seats at $125,000 each, though it remained unclear whether Paramount gifted Carr the box because the FCC had not released his most recent financial disclosure. Carr's earlier filings show he had accepted more than $63,000 in Kennedy Center gala tickets from CBS or its parent company since 2017.

Five months earlier, Carr and Trusty had cast the deciding votes approving Paramount's $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. On the night of the gala, Paramount was fighting Netflix for control of Warner Bros. Discovery, a roughly $110 billion transaction that also requires FCC approval; hours after the event ended, Paramount announced a hostile takeover bid for the company. Federal ethics rules prohibit employees from accepting gifts from any entity that is regulated by, does business with, or seeks official action from their agency.

Ethics experts — including Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics; Virginia Canter, a former White House ethics lawyer; and Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center — said accepting the tickets compromised the agency's impartiality and that both commissioners should recuse from any decision on the Warner Bros. Discovery merger; neither had done so. An FCC spokesperson said agency ethics officers had for years cleared commissioners' attendance as consistent with a "widely attended gathering" exception, a justification the experts disputed. Neither Carr nor Trusty responded to ProPublica's requests for comment.

Why we recorded this

Public-service ethics require regulators to stay free of financial entanglements with the companies they oversee, and federal rules bar officials from accepting gifts from entities with matters before their agency. Two FCC commissioners accepted thousands of dollars in gala tickets from Paramount while the company had multibillion-dollar mergers pending before the commission, and did not recuse. This archive records when officials accept private benefits from parties they regulate, because such conflicts erode public confidence that government decisions are made on the merits rather than bought with access and favors.

Sources

  1. FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals — ProPublica investigative accessed July 16, 2026
  2. Paramount launches a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery — CNN primary accessed July 16, 2026

See also