Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Net Neutrality Narrative Is False
The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the internet was refuted by an Inspector General investigation whose findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
A core Republican talking point during the net neutrality battle was that, in 2015, President Obama led a government takeover of the internet, and Obama illegally bullied the independent Federal Communications Commission into adopting the rules. In this version of the story, Ajit Pai’s rollback of those rules Thursday is a return to the good old days, before the FCC was forced to adopt rules it never wanted in the first place.
“On express orders from the previous White House, the FCC scrapped the tried-and-true, light touch regulation of the Internet and replaced it with heavy-handed micromanagement,” Pai
said Thursday prior to voting to repeal the regulations.
But internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request show that the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General—acting on orders from Congressional Republicans—investigated the claim that Obama interfered with the FCC’s net neutrality process and found it was nonsense. This Republican narrative of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the internet, then, was wholly refuted by an independent investigation and its findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama
released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
This statement kicked the Obama-is-taking-over-the-internet talking point into overdrive (fringe conservative groups
had already been calling net neutrality “Marxist” in emails to Republican mailing lists).
In early December 2014, the FCC, then led by Tom Wheeler, announced it would delay tackling net neutrality until 2015. Conservatives attributed this delay to Obama’s meddling, and pointed to a
Wall Street Journal article noting that there were “unusual, secretive efforts inside the White House, led by two aides,” that led to the FCC adopting the regulations.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called in Wheeler to discuss the FCC’s relationship with the White House. Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said
Obama’s statement caused Wheeler to “radically alter course,” asked Wheeler if the FCC had secret meetings with the White House, and demanded that the FCC’s Inspector General investigate: “I think there’s enough smoke here that it’s really worth looking at,” he said.
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, Motherboard obtained a summary of the Inspector General’s report, which has not been released publicly and is marked “Official Use Only, Law Enforcement Sensitive Information." After reviewing more than 600,000 emails, the independent office found that there was no collusion between the White House and the FCC: “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.” This document is embedded below.