Two top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling for an investigation into the three Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission over their involvement with this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology’s ranking member, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., requested the investigation from the Office of Special Counsel into FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and commissioners Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr’s participation in CPAC, which occurred in February.
Pallone and Doyle asked the three Republican commissioners in March to answer questions about their involvement in CPAC after questioning whether they “acted appropriately as leaders of an independent agency.”
But the two Democrats said that rather than receiving individual answers from the commissioners, they received a letter from the FCC general counsel instead.
“Rather than respond to these serious issues, the chairman and the commissioners had the general counsel write a blanket post hoc analysis they treated as an excuse to avoid congressional oversight,” Pallone and Doyle wrote. “Even so, the general counsel’s letter is misleading and incomplete, ultimately raising more questions than it answers.”
The Democrats said the letter from the FCC’s general counsel “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding” of the application of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their offices to campaign for or against political candidates.
Pallone and Doyle said this “misunderstanding” may “help explain a recent increase in political activity among the Republican FCC commissioners.”
“These actions raise serious concerns about whether the chairman and the commissioners may have knowingly violated ethical restrictions,” the pair wrote.
During their appearance at CPAC, Pai was presented with an award from the National Rifle Association, which included a Kentucky handmade long gun. Pai was not given the gun on stage, and he later declined the award on the advice of the FCC’s ethics officials.
O’Rielly, meanwhile, made comments about Trump’s potential re-election during the panel. When asked about how the FCC can avoid “regulatory ping pong” after every election cycle, O’Rielly said “what we can do is make sure as conservatives that we elect good people to both the House, the Senate, and make sure that President Trump gets re-elected.”
The comment sparked claims he violated the Hatch Act, and the Office of Special Counsel later concluded O’Rielly did.
But the Republican commissioner refuted the finding, saying his “answer was meant to relay the point that the only way to retain that current outcome was to maintain the current leaders in government.”
