Trump's FTC Demanded a Watchdog's Documents. A Judge Found the Demand Stopped Stories About the FTC.

On May 20, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission sent the watchdog Media Matters a civil investigative demand, or CID: twenty numbered specifications for documents and information.¹² The demand was part of the agency's advertising-boycott investigation.¹² A federal judge found it likely retaliatory, and found that it had already stopped Media Matters from pursuing stories about the FTC, its chairman and Elon Musk.²

The FTC was one of five federal regulators that put government permission or enforcement behind political priorities.³²⁴⁵⁶ Donald Trump chose its chairman, Andrew Ferguson, himself, on January 20, 2025.⁷ Ferguson called policing censorship practices that break the antitrust laws "a top priority of the Trump-Vance FTC."⁸ The FTC wrote restrictions on advertising exclusions based on political or ideological viewpoints into its order allowing the $13.5 billion Omnicom-Interpublic merger, though advertisers could still choose where their own ads ran.^9101112 Its final order of September 26, 2025 also covered third-party journalistic standards and DEI criteria.¹¹¹²

An Antitrust Demand Stopped Reporting

Ferguson's defense rests on real antitrust law: competitors cannot justify a price-raising cartel by attaching a political message, and the Supreme Court has upheld enforcement against a concerted refusal to deal.¹³ The same decision distinguished protected political boycotts from the price-and-output restraint before it.¹³ That distinction matters when an agency uses antitrust process against a publisher and not merely to stop competitors from fixing the terms of trade.¹³²

On August 15, 2025, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the demand with a preliminary injunction.² She found that Media Matters was likely to show retaliatory animus caused the demand, and that the demand's breadth supported a finding of pretext.² By then the demand had chilled reporting.²

Media Matters for America v. FTC, preliminary-injunction opinion, page 3²

Because of the CID, Media Matters has decided against pursuing certain stories about the FTC, Chairman Ferguson, and Mr. Musk.

On May 4, 2026, with the retaliation finding still preliminary, the two sides agreed to dismiss the lawsuit.²¹⁴ Media Matters said a binding settlement required the FTC to withdraw the demand, never reissue it or a substantially similar demand, and state that Media Matters was not the target of an investigation.¹⁵

The other four regulators used different powers: a merger approval, grant terminations, criminal referrals and a closed investigation.³⁴⁵⁶

CBS Newsroom Promises Became Merger Conditions

On July 24, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission approved Skydance's $8 billion acquisition of Paramount, the parent of CBS.¹⁶³ The vote was 2-to-1, and promises about CBS news coverage were written into the approval.³¹⁷ The FCC's order accepted Skydance's commitments to eliminate Paramount's DEI initiatives, establish none at the combined company, and make CBS reporting fair, unbiased and fact-based; it granted the license-transfer applications subject to the commitments, an ombudsman among them.³

Paramount-Skydance transfer order, FCC 25-43, paragraph 59³

Finally, to promote transparency and increased accountability, Skydance will have in place, for a period of at least two years, an ombudsman who reports to the President of New Paramount, and who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, whom Trump designated on the same day as Ferguson, has a substantial defense.⁷ Merger commitments are routine, and he cited the FCC's Comcast-NBC Universal approval as precedent for an ombudsman.¹⁸³ The Supreme Court recognizes the FCC's broad public-interest discretion.¹⁹²⁰ The FCC majority also found no material public-interest harms and expected the transaction to address Paramount's financial difficulties and improve service by CBS and its local stations.³ Transaction conditions can be legitimate; the concern here is the use of license-transfer approval to secure commitments about CBS news coverage.¹⁸³²¹

The order left the FCC's news-distortion case involving CBS open and said the transfer did not prejudge it.³ Commissioner Anna Gomez dissented, describing the Paramount proceedings as unprecedented pressure and the newsroom controls as never-before-seen.¹⁷ Gomez also accused the FCC of pressuring Paramount to broker a private legal settlement; the majority order identifies the settled lawsuit as Trump's case against Paramount and CBS News, while treating it as unrelated to the merger review.¹⁷³

Trump backed a second broadcast deal in his own words. Judge Troy Nunley's April 2026 opinion recounts that, with an FCC licensing proceeding still pending, Trump urged regulators to approve Nexstar's broadcasting deal to "knock out the Fake News" and that Carr publicly signaled agreement.²² On September 17, 2025, Carr had publicly thanked Nexstar for pulling Jimmy Kimmel's program.²³²⁴ A September 23 letter from senators to Nexstar and Sinclair quoted Carr warning that broadcasters could act against Kimmel or face additional FCC work, and reported that Trump praised the suspension.²⁴ Carr denied threatening station licenses and defended local stations' right to reject network programming they found unsuitable.²⁵

On March 19, 2026, the FCC's Media Bureau, acting under delegated authority without a full Commission vote, approved Nexstar's purchase of TEGNA and waived the national ownership cap; its order imposed no Paramount-style promise about newsroom viewpoint.²⁶ The order accepted local-news, retransmission-rate and employment commitments.²⁶ No bargain trading the Kimmel decision for the waiver is documented; the sequence is.²³²⁶ Nor did FCC permission end the antitrust dispute: on April 17, 2026, Judge Nunley issued a preliminary injunction barring further integration and requiring TEGNA to remain independently managed.²² At that preliminary stage, Nunley found sufficient evidence supporting the Clayton Act claims and found that the merger would diminish local-news quality and raise consumer bills through increased retransmission fees.²²

A Fraud Campaign Froze Clean-Energy Financing

In February 2025, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his effort to recover $20 billion in grants under a program Congress had created.²⁷²⁸ The grants had already been awarded to eight nonprofits.²⁷²⁸ On March 2, EPA's acting deputy administrator referred the grants to the agency's acting inspector general.²⁹ The referral's first named indicator was a Project Veritas video of a former EPA official likening the funding process to throwing gold bars off the Titanic.²⁹

EPA terminated the grants on March 11, nine days after the referral, citing fraud, waste, program integrity and misalignment with agency priorities.⁴³⁰ On March 18, Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order and said EPA had offered no evidence supporting the sudden terminations or showing that it followed the proper procedures.³¹

The administration had a substantial defense. Congress repealed the program and rescinded unobligated balances in July 2025.²⁸ EPA cited earlier inspector-general testimony warning of fraud risk and gaps in monitoring and accountability; those were warnings about risk, not findings of fraud by the eight recipients.³² In September 2025, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled for EPA, treating the dispute as contractual and emphasizing executive authority over the funds.³³ But the grant rule permits priorities-based termination only within an award's terms and applicable law, and these grants' December 2024 terms had removed agency priorities as a termination ground.³⁴³¹³³ In December, the full court vacated the panel's judgment.³⁵

On August 4, 2026, the full D.C. Circuit upheld the preliminary block on the terminations.³⁶ Six judges found that canceling the grants and clawing back the money solely over a policy disagreement likely violated Congress's mandatory appropriation; four would have lifted that block, largely because Congress had repealed the program.³⁶ The ruling was preliminary, not a final judgment that the grants could never be terminated.³⁶

Winning that ruling did not make the money available.³⁷ On August 7, the court extended a stay on disbursement through November 9, 2026.³⁷

Climate United, one of the eight recipients, put numbers on the cost of delay in its October 8, 2025 impact report.³⁸ It had closed or committed more than $742 million in financing, and the vast majority of the committed transactions had not been disbursed before the February freeze.³⁸ It said it had selected twenty-two projects serving Native communities, from fishing-boat electrification to home-efficiency upgrades, and could not provide their funding because the funds were frozen.³⁸

Criminal Referrals and a Closed Investigation

William Pulte became director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency after Trump's nomination and bipartisan Senate confirmation.³⁹ Five criminal referrals by Pulte are documented, and all five named officials outside Trump's administration: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, Representative Eric Swalwell and, twice, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.^540414243 The published letters cover James, Schiff and Cook's first referral; Cook's lawyer describes her second, and Swalwell's complaint describes his.^540414243

The legitimate defense is that suspected mortgage fraud should be reported: Congress requires the regulated mortgage companies to report it to the FHFA director, and Pulte said he used public documents.⁴⁴⁴² The Supreme Court presumes that prosecutors act properly absent clear evidence to the contrary, while recognizing constitutional constraints on selecting targets.⁴⁵ And these four cannot be called his only targets: FHFA's January 2026 court answer admitted making referrals without supplying the total number.⁴⁶

Cook's lawyer said documents given to her lenders contradicted the allegations, and that Trump's attempted removal of Cook was based on Pulte's first referral.⁴² Cook's lawyer also accused Pulte of ignoring reported similar mortgage representations by Trump administration officials and Pulte's relatives; that was counsel's allegation, not a finding resolving whether the referrals were selective.⁴² On October 7, 2026, Trump signed a memorandum establishing a committee to investigate Cook's mortgage statements and recommend whether there was cause to remove her from the Federal Reserve.⁴⁷ He ordered a closed White House hearing for November 5, with the evidence provided beforehand and a chance for Cook to submit statements and respond with counsel.⁴⁷

James was indicted.⁴⁸ Reuters reported that her prosecution followed a September 2025 social-media post in which Trump named her and demanded action from then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.⁴⁹ On November 24, 2025, a federal judge dismissed the indictment without prejudice because the interim U.S. attorney's appointment violated the appointment statute and the Constitution; the dismissal addressed the prosecutor's authority, not James's innocence.⁴⁸ The Justice Department appealed, and Reuters reported in September 2026 that the Fourth Circuit would hear its bid to revive the prosecution.⁵⁰⁴⁹ Swalwell's suit against Pulte ended by stipulation on March 20, 2026, without a merits ruling.⁵¹

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an investigation ended at a company connected to Trump's son. On August 19, 2025, Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta closed an investigation of Credova that had begun in February 2021.⁶ Credova's parent, PublicSquare, had added Donald Trump Jr. to its board in December 2024.⁶⁵² Its proxy reported about $3.1 million in 2024 compensation for him, most of it the accounting value of stock awards, not cash paid.⁵² The CFPB also asked a court to erase Townstone's $105,000 penalty and refund the money, citing two Trump executive orders.⁵³⁵⁴ Judge Franklin Valderrama, a Trump appointee, rejected the request on June 12, 2025, noting that the investigation and lawsuit began in Trump's first term; his ruling did not decide Townstone's speech-based defense.⁵⁵⁵⁶

Paoletta defended the closure: he said the earlier investigation targeted firearms commerce, and alleged that staff raised their settlement demands on the day Trump Jr.'s board appointment was announced.⁶ He also said staff demanded that Credova allow firearm returns to nonlicensees despite ATF advice requiring returns to licensed recipients.⁶ He also alleged that the New York attorney general improperly influenced the investigation.⁶ He invoked the executive order against politicized debanking that Trump had signed twelve days earlier, and credited Trump and Acting Director Russell Vought's campaign against weaponization.⁶⁵⁷ That order did not instruct the CFPB to close the Credova investigation.⁵⁷ The letter does not prove that the family connection caused the decision.⁶⁵² What is proven is the benefit: an investigation ended at the subsidiary of a company with a financial relationship to the President's son.⁶⁵²

Regulatory Power Became a Political Instrument

Trump designated Carr and Ferguson, nominated Pulte, publicly backed the Nexstar transaction and signed the Cook inquiry memorandum himself.^7392247 In late August 2026, he threatened to report Kristen Welker of Meet the Press to the FCC for "rebuke or punishment" because, he said, she had described his candidate endorsements as having mixed results.⁵⁸

The evidence differs by agency. At the FTC, a judge found likely retaliation against Media Matters.² At the CFPB and FHFA, the evidence is of a different kind: Credova's closure gave relief to a family-connected company, and Pulte's referrals led to prosecution and presidential removal efforts.^6524842

The strongest constitutional defense is presidential control of executive policy and agency discretion over enforcement. The Supreme Court struck down firing protections for the CFPB and FHFA directors and, in June 2026, for FTC commissioners, while reserving questions about other officials.⁵⁹⁶⁰⁶¹ It ordinarily shields nonenforcement decisions from judicial review, while reserving constitutional claims.⁶² Its criminal-immunity decision restricts inquiry into presidential motive but separately recognizes Congress's impeachment process.⁶³ Those rulings protect the President's control of these agencies.⁵⁹⁶⁰⁶¹ Congress can separately judge whether that use of presidential control warrants impeachment.⁶³⁶⁴

Congress has treated selective use of government as an impeachment issue: in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted Nixon's second article, charging misuse of confidential IRS information and discriminatory tax investigations in violation of citizens' constitutional rights.⁶⁵ Other impeachment charges failed: the House took no action on the 1933 Federal Reserve charges and rejected the 1939 Labor Department charges after a unanimous adverse committee report; Belknap was acquitted after a jurisdiction dispute, and Johnson by one vote.⁶⁶⁶⁷⁶⁸

The charge is politicized regulation: newsroom promises secured with licensing power, enforcement that chilled a critic, grants attacked on policy grounds, and investigative relief for a company connected to the President's family.^3236652 The consequences survived even where courts intervened: Media Matters dropped stories, and Climate United could not fund the community projects it had selected.²³⁸ These uses of power belong in an impeachment case because they ask whether officials exercised the public trust for the public, and whether the President's documented appointments, endorsements and directives make him answerable for that pattern.^6469747