Senators Say FCC Boss Ajit Pai Being 'Evasive' on Net Neutrality

13 Senators wrote to the FCC this week complaining that agency boss Ajit Pai is refusing to clearly justify his attacks on net neutrality. In the letter to Pai's office, the Senators accuse Pai of "repeated evasive responses to our inquiries" and an "outright refusal to respond to some of the members of this Committee." Pai's been under repeated, heavy fire since his December 17 decision to dismantle extremely popular net neutrality rules at Comcast, Verizon and AT&T's behest.

“While we appreciate your continued willingness to testify before our Committee, we are concerned that you have been unable to give complete responses to verbal questions, questions for the record, or oversight letters from our members,” states the letter from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

"We take our oversight responsibilities very seriously, and we expect witnesses before the Committee and recipients of our letters to treat their responses the same way," they wrote.

Evasive tap dancing has been Pai's general rule of thumb since the repeal, which relied on flimsy lobbyist data to justify the elimination of the consumer protections. And it's not just net neutrality; the agency head is also being investigated by the nonpartisan FCC Inspector General for corruption, amidst allegations he has been gutting decades-old media consolidation rules specifically to help Sinclair's $3.9 billion merger with Tribune.

There's numerous questions Pai hasn't been willing to fully answer on net neutrality, including why the agency appears to have made up a DDOS attack in an apparent attempt to try and downplay heavy traffic to the FCC website in the wake of a report by HBO Comedian John Oliver (aka the "John Oliver effect"). Pai has also been cagey about why his agency did little to nothing when it was revealed that a third party had been flooding the repeal's public comment period with utterly bogus support for Pai's proposal.

While it's unlikely Pai is planning to be forthcoming anytime soon, multiple looming lawsuits and investigations headed the FCC's way may ultimately reveal more insight into these and other questions.