FCC's Carr Calls Dems' Subpoenas 'Secret & Partisan'

Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr has taken on Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the chief political targets of president Donald Trump, in a five-page letter the commissioner tweeted out.

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Schiff led the ultimately unsuccessful effort to convict Trump of articles of impeachment and remove him from office. 

In the letter, the FCC commissioner accused the committee of collecting protected and confidential call records in a "secret and partisan" process that violates citizens' rights to ask a court to keep those sensitive call records confidential.

Related: Schiff Presents Articles of Impeachment

The commissioner pointed to the publication of call records in the Impeachment Report as evidence of the collections and pointed to reports such collection might be continuing. 

Carr said the process the committee uses to obtain the records and release them, including of an investigative journalist, government officials, and members of Congress, "raised a number of serious questions." He said those include "whether Americans are comfortable with one political party in Congress having the power to secretly obtain and expose the call records of any private citizen, journalist or government official." 

Carr said the supbpoenas "effectively evade even the potential for Americans to vindicate their legal rights." 

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.