Wheeler Rebuffs Invitation To Testify before House Oversight Ahead of FCC Net Neutrality Vote
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has summoned FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to Capitol Hill Wednesday, hours after the House Communications Subcommittee kicks off a hearing on net neutrality and the day before the FCC votes on Wheeler’s net neutrality proposal. Wheeler denied the request to appear. Chaffetz began an investigation into White House influence over net neutrality earlier this month and now hopes to grill Wheeler directly on his concerns.
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Wheeler “responded to the Congressmen in a letter that he's unable to testify next Wednesday but wants to work with both Congressman Chaffetz and” ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., “to find a future date on which he can appear before the Committee,” an FCC spokeswoman told us Friday. The open hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday in 2154 Rayburn, and a Chaffetz spokeswoman told us Wheeler was the only witness invited.
Friday was also the deadline for the many documents that Chaffetz requested detailing communications between the White House and the FCC regarding the net neutrality rulemaking process. The committee hadn't received that response by our deadline, the committee spokeswoman said, saying it was possible the agency would supply the documents by the close of business. The FCC didn’t comment on its plans to submit documents.
Chaffetz sent a letter to Wheeler Friday demanding copies of unredacted emails between Wheeler and White House officials from last year. A Freedom of Information Act request from Vice News yielded many emails, released Friday, which were heavily redacted.
“The e-mail exchanges are relevant to the Committee’s investigation, and they were covered by my document request,” Chaffetz told Wheeler in the Friday letter. “Therefore, please produce unredacted copies of these e-mails to the Committee as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 p.m. on February 23, 2015. Specifically, please produce the April 24, 2014, e-mails between and among you and Jeff Zients, John Podesta, and Jason Furman; the April 29, 2014 e-mails between and among you and Tom Power; the May 14, 2014, e-mails between and among you and Larry Strickling; and the April 29, 2014, e-mail from you to Mr. Zients, Mr. Furman, Mr. Power, and Mr. Podesta sent at 7:52 p.m. with the subject line ‘Open Internet Update,’ and the attachment.”
The officials all worked for President Barack Obama's administration at the time of the email exchanges. Controversy has brewed for weeks about the extent to which Obama influenced Wheeler’s decision-making in his net neutrality order, now circulating and set for an agency vote Thursday. The Senate Homeland Security Committee and House Commerce Committee raised this concern in investigations they announced this month. Documents detailing White House/FCC net neutrality communications are due to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Monday.
Chaffetz is also worried about the FCC’s preservation notice for its documents. Chaffetz had asked the FCC in his Feb. 6 letter to preserve three categories of documents and “it is my understanding that the Commission’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) issued a staff-wide preservation notice, but that notice did not cover two out of the three categories identified in the preservation request,” he said in a different letter sent to Wheeler Wednesday. He cited a Feb. 13 meeting between FCC OGC attorneys and bipartisan Oversight Committee staffers who worried about the scope of the preservation request. “The Commission’s lawyers refused to provide the notice, but did not assert a privilege -- or cite any legal basis whatsoever -- to justify withholding it," he said.
Hill Republicans will have many chances to dig into Wheeler in the days ahead. Not only is House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., leading the net neutrality hearing Wednesday, he's also speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington March 2. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., will speak at the Newseum at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, just before the FCC meeting.