Ajit Pai knew DDoS claim was false in January, says he couldn’t tell Congress

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaks during an FCC oversight hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

The Federal Communications Commission chairman has known that his agency's claims about being hit by DDoS attacks were false for more than six months, but he says he could not correct the record publicly because of an internal investigation that didn't wrap up until this month.

The FCC Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its report on the matter last week, finding that the FCC lied to Congress when it claimed that DDoS attacks caused a May 2017 outage that temporarily prevented net neutrality supporters from filing comments opposing Pai's plan to kill net neutrality rules. The false claims were made primarily by former Chief Information Officer David Bray, and Bray's false statements were sent to Congress in attachments to letters that Pai wrote to lawmakers.

At an FCC oversight hearing held today by the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) pressed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on his failure to correct those false statements until this month.

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