Obama didn’t force FCC to impose net neutrality, investigation found

Ajit Pai still thinks Obama’s call for net neutrality rules amounted to an order.

Jon Brodkin – Dec 19, 2017 12:38 pm | 98

Then-President Barack Obama and Tom Wheeler, his nominee for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in May 2013. Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has been saying for years that the FCC imposed net neutrality rules in 2015 largely because then-President Barack Obama ordered the commission to do so.

Obama publicly called on the FCC to reclassify broadband providers as “Title II” common carriers and impose the rules in November 2014, three months before the FCC vote did just that. But an investigation last year by the FCC’s independent Inspector General’s (IG) office found “no evidence” of improper use of power by the White House when then-Chairman Tom Wheeler led the net neutrality vote, a newly released document shows.

“We found no evidence of secret deals, promises or threats from anyone outside the Commission, nor any evidence of any other improper use of power to influence the FCC decision-making process,” the IG’s August 2016 report said of Obama’s role in the decision to classify broadband providers as common carriers and impose net neutrality rules.

Instead, Obama’s statements “were made known in the record, in full view of all,” the report said.

Motherboard published the IG’s report yesterday after obtaining it via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The report doesn’t disprove Pai’s claim that the Obama White House pushed the FCC to adopt its Title II net neutrality rules. When he led last week’s vote to eliminate the rules, Pai said the regulations had been adopted “on express orders from the previous White House.”

Republican lawmakers claimed that the “White House bowled over FCC independence” in a report released in March 2016. Pai lauded the report at the time.

But Pai’s claim—also detailed in his February 2015 dissent—is based primarily on Obama’s public statement and how the FCC changed course after Obama spoke out. No one disputes that Obama urged the FCC to impose the rules. But the IG’s report says there was nothing improper about Obama’s public statement and supported Wheeler’s contention in 2015 that “There were no secret instructions from the White House.”

FCC must act impartially

The FCC IG’s office conducted its investigation after being urged to do so by lawmakers.

“Because the FCC is an independent regulatory agency, it is to remain free from undue influence,” the IG report said. “The Commission must, from the very nature of its duties, act with entire impartiality.”

The IG’s office reviewed 600,000 emails before deciding that no further investigation was warranted. The IG’s report did not dispute any of the factual claims made in the Senate report, but it also found no evidence of anything improper:

Upon conclusion of our review of the documents described above, we were satisfied that nothing we found refuted the factual ﬁndings in the Senate Staff Report, and more importantly, nothing we found in the complete, unredacted record evidenced any undue influence that would have militated in favor of a more comprehensive investigation, including interviews.

After Obama’s statement in favor of strict net neutrality rules, then-FCC Chairman Wheeler said, “[A]s an independent regulatory agency we will incorporate the President’s submission into the record of the Open Internet proceeding. We welcome comment on it and how it proposes to use Title II of the Communications Act.”

The IG’s report said that “one could reasonably challenge the Chairman’s claim,” as Republican Senate staffers did in their report. But the IG said its “investigation has found no evidence to refute” Wheeler’s statement.

Pai himself has faced questions from Democratic lawmakers about his independence from the Trump White House. Pai told lawmakers that he has “restored” the agency’s independence from the White House and that the commission’s decisions are now “being guided by the facts and the law, not by political pressure applied by the White House.”