Live: FCC Chair Ajit Pai testifies before Senate Commerce Committee
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is testifying at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Thursday. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET.
Pai may be asked about the commission's actions regarding the issue known as "net neutrality," an Obama-era policy the FCC scrapped under President Trump. The issue gained widespread attention in May 2017, when John Oliver asked his viewers to comment on the FCC website about repealing the policy during his "Last Week Tonight" show.
Shortly after, the FCC's online commenting system experienced an outage. The FCC immediately said a cyberattack was the cause, blaming a former FCC official left over from the Obama administration.
But last week, the FCC's Office of Inspector General concluded the agency was not victim of a distributed denial of service – or DDoS – attack in May 2017.
Senators may ask Pai to answer for the conflicting messages during Thursday's hearing.