FCC Commissioner refuses to block Elon Musk from buying Twitter

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr on Wednesday rejected a call to block entrepreneur Elon Musk from buying Twitter.

"Yesterday, the Open Markets Institute issued a release that called for the FCC, FTC, and DOJ to block Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter," the FCC wrote in a press release.

The Open Markets Institute argued that the deal is illegal and federal agencies can block the purchase through antitrust laws and other legislation such as the Telegraph acts of 1860 and 1866. 

The institute said Musk's takeover of Twitter "poses a number of immediate and direct threats to American democracy and free speech."

Commissioner Carr dismissed the position.

"The FCC has no authority to block Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and to suggest otherwise is absurd," he said. "I would welcome the full FCC making it clear that we will not entertain these types of frivolous argument."

Carr even praised Musk's purchase in an interview Tuesday with Fox Business.

"There was a pivot point in this country that I think came around 2016 when people started to reach the view, particularly among the hard left, that the free exchange of ideas is incompatible with the outcomes that they want to see at the ballot box," Carr told reporter Maria Bartiromo.

"I’m hopeful that Elon Musk is going to bend Twitter’s content moderation toward a greater embrace of free speech," he said.

Musk has promised that his platform will be neutral and allow for the free exchange of ideas. 

"For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally," he tweeted Wednesday.