GOP Commissioners' CPAC Appearance Didn't Violate Ethics Rules, FCC General Counsel Tells Lawmakers
Appearances of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Mike O’Rielly at the American Conservative Union's February Conservative Political Action Conference (see 1802230037) were “consistent with a long tradition” of commissioners “contributing to robust debate on issues of…
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importance to the agency and nation,” said FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson last week in a letter to House Commerce Committee Democrats. House Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., raised concerns in March (see 1803260040). The Project on Government Oversight cited O’Rielly calling for re-election of President Donald Trump as a potential violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts government officials' partisan political activity (see 1802270035). On the advice of FCC lawyers (see 1803020033), Pai turned down a musket presented in connection with the National Rifle Association's Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award, awarded at CPAC for his role in the rollback of 2015 net neutrality rules and in dealing with the hostile fallout. The commissioners’ “ability to accept prominent speaking engagements like this one helps promote transparency and accountability and encourages public participation and interest in Commission rulemakings, without contravening applicable ethics obligations,” Johnson told lawmakers. He cited commissioners’ appearances in recent years at events sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Progressive Policy Institute, Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society to illustrate a ‘tradition of bipartisan participation in a broad array of legal and public policy conferences” that “does not, and has never been understood to, violate applicable ethics rules.” Participation in CPAC “is not political activity, as defined by the Hatch Act,” so “there was no need for any Commissioner to abide by the limitations that the Act places on the use of appropriated funds, official staff, or agency resources in connection with such activity,” Johnson said. The lawmakers “asked the Commissioners legitimate questions and expected them to respond, not to hide behind their lawyer,” Pallone said in a statement. “The general counsel did not provide any legal reason why the Commissioners could not respond, and we still expect the Commissioners to answer our questions.”