Pai, FCC, Refuse Lawful Requests From NY AG In Order To Repeal Net Neutrality

We knew it would be bad. Very bad. We knew it when we saw Jeff Sessions nominated as Attorney General, when Scott Pruitt went to the EPA, when Tom Price went to HHS, and when Ryan Zinke went to Interior. Others, who we expected to be a somewhat ameliorating force despite still being horrible in their own right, such as Steve Mnuchin, John Kelly, and Rex Tillerson, have proven to be totally incompetent (Mnuchin), actual true Trump believers (Kelly), or far worse than could be imagined (Tillerson). And others who were complete idiots, such as Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos, have proven to be just exactly that and have been largely impotent because of it. But I don't believe anyone thought that Ajit Pai would be able to rival all of them when he ascended to the head of the FCC after Tom Wheeler's departure.

Yes, it was always clear that Pai would lead an assault on net neutrality. After all, he originally led the fight against it.  But I don't think most people expected he would bend the rules as egregiously as he did in order to let Sinclair Broadcast Group purchase Tribune Media and force Boris Epshteyn propaganda down the throats of 75% of the American public. In order to allow that, Pai had to allow UHF channels to be included in the total number of stations in order to keep Sinclair under the statutory limits of ownership. At the same time, Pai also was able to change the cross-ownership rules that limited one owner's control of a newspaper and a radio and TV station in one town. While that might have been expected of Pai and the new FCC, the decision also now allows one owner to control two of the top four TV stations in a single market, a further gift to Sinclair.

When you look at Trump's assaults on a free press, especially the decision to try to force ATT to divest itself of CNN, Pai has become a far more nefarious persona than might have been imagined. But I don't think anyone expected Pai to simply flout the rule of law in the manner of the Trump administration in general. But it is apparently what he is doing when it comes to the suspicious comments collected by the FCC regarding net neutrality.

Apparently, hundreds of thousands comments that supported the rollback of net neutrality were bogus and actually used stolen identities to pose as pro-repeal individuals. One estimate is that the number of fake comments number in the millions and almost 100% of them supported repeal.

Some of those people whose identities were used to generate these fake comments lived in New York and so NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation. But Schneiderman's efforts have largely been stymied by the FCC itself. The AG has made nine requests for records from the FCC asking for logs and other data about the comments and the comment process itself, which is required by law. The FCC has rebuffed all those requests.

Schneiderman finally went public with his frustration, writing the comment process "has been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed. In doing so, the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue."

But not even that public rebuke managed to humble the FCC whose spokesman retorted "This so-called investigation is nothing more than a transparent attempt by a partisan supporter of the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed Internet regulations to gain publicity for himself." This is the Trump administration's answer to a lawful request from a sitting state Attorney General. It is simply an astounding statement that the law does not apply to them and is indicative of the attitude of the entire Trump administration.

Of course the reason Pai and the FCC are desperately ignoring Schneiderman is that the Commission is intent on ramming through a vote to repeal net neutrality in the next few weeks. Schneiderman's investigation into the corruption of the comment process has a small chance to not so much derail the vote as to delay it. And, as with everything that the Trump administration does, the more time and sunlight on what they are doing, the stronger the opposition grows.

Yes, we knew it would be bad. But I don't think that we ever thought that Trump's lawlessness and total disrespect for the rule of law would filter down to the FCC. But, under Ajit Pai, it apparently has.