A senior Federal Communications Commission official overseeing ABC-owned California stations privately offered to assist FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s campaign last year against the Walt Disney Co. and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, according to internal emails obtained by WIRED.
On September 17, Carr threatened Disney with regulatory action regarding the Jimmy Kimmel monologue about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, prompting major station affiliates to drop the broadcast and forcing ABC to temporarily suspend the show.
Later that day, Lark Hadley, the FCC West Coast enforcement director, emailed Carr and FCC chief of staff Scott Delacourt. The email, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, was titled “personal note of support re Charlie Kirk ABC/Disney issue” and quoted Carr’s remarks from an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson: “This is a very, 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 had been a broadcaster himself, Hadley wrote that the “absolute lack of accountability has always confused (and sickened) me,” telling Carr and Delacourt: “Please, do not let up, and let me know if I can help in any way.”
It is highly irregular for a career civil servant and enforcement chief to express support for a politically motivated pressure campaign, or pledge services to a targeted retaliation effort against a broadcaster in their own jurisdiction.
Federal ethics rules prohibit government employees from participating in matters where their impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
Carr’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
While FCC headquarters typically handles television content complaints, Hadley’s office holds direct enforcement authority over physical ABC-owned stations in its jurisdiction, including KABC-TV in Glendale, the broadcast origin for Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! became a defining test of Carr’s ability to leverage the FCC’s regulatory apparatus against political critics. Following Carr’s public threats, 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 on the FCC chairman’s regulatory threats against broadcasters that air views the president doesn’t like.
“Just like Brendan Carr, they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution—and that includes the First Amendment, which bars the government from coercing private broadcasters into censoring dissent,” Creeley says. “This is a public servant paid by our taxpayer dollars. Is it too much to ask for him not to sound so excited about the chairman abusing the power of his office?”