Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr slammed the agency's decision last week to approve a petition filed by far-left billionaire George Soros to acquire 200 local radio stations in 40 markets across the country, especially so close to Election Day.
On "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Tuesday, Carr, a Republican, said, "We have a process to deal with cases like this where there's excessive foreign ownership because they have investments from abroad somewhere. They haven't disclosed that. And rather than going through that six-month to one-year process of reviewing that foreign investment, the FCC is poised to fast-track an approval of this that lets them get ahold of these 200 radio stations right away."
It's the first time such a deal has been approved by the full FCC without a national security review, a process that can take up to a year.
Carr called the situation "sort of a special Soros shortcut."
He said it is possible the deal could be undone in the future. "At this point, we've got the cart before the horse, so there will be a second bite of the apple when we get a national security review. And probably there's no big deal with the foreign interests here. But I don't know because it hasn't been disclosed," Carr said.
"And when we do look at that down the road, then of course, the full remedies should be available to the FCC, including not granting this or finding a way to unwind it. If there is a problem, that we discover something."
The FCC decision came after a partisan vote in which the commission's three Democrats voted in favor, while the two Republicans voted against it.
Foreign company ownership of U.S. radio stations is not supposed to exceed 25% under current FCC rules. Soros took foreign investment to make his bid and then filed the petition asking the commission to make an exception to the usual review process.
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Kate McManus ✉
Kate McManus is a New Jersey-based Newsmax writer who's spent more than two decades as a journalist.
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