WASHINGTON – During a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt(Mo.) questioned Gigi Sohn, who has been nominated to serve as Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, about information she withheld at a previous hearing relating to the settlement reached between Locast, where she served as a board member, and television networks that successfully sued for copyright violations. Blunt also questioned Sohn about omitting her involvement with Locast in a recusalletter she signed last month.
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Following is a Transcript:
BLUNT: Last time you were here, I asked you specifically how your actions as a public interestadvocate shouldn’t bear on your ability to appear as a neutral regulator. Your response was, the quote was, “the context is very important. The tweets were made in my role as a public interest advocate, part of my job.” And then you say, in terms of your recusal,that it’s not part of—you’re not recusing yourself because of the Locast, but because of your public advocacy. I’m a little confused about how you draw the line there. Why did you decide that the recusal would be for this one topic if it was part of your workas a public interest advocate as opposed to part of your service on the Locast board?
SOHN: That’s a good question, senator. And, to be honest with you, if I had to do it allover again, I probably would have mentioned something about Locast in that letter because, clearly, that’s what I was addressing, was the nexus between the Locast litigation and this 12-year-old petition for rulemaking. The reason I referred to the petitionfor rulemaking was because it was precedent. It was precedent. It was Chairman Kennard’s precedent. So I limited it to that. But thinking about it now, I wish I had said something about the Locast. But, clearly, I mean, there’s no reason given what transpiredat the hearing and what was raised with the QFRs for me to just sort of out of the blue voluntarily recuse because of a 12-year-old petition. It was clearly related to the Locast by my service on the Locast board. And, just as a reminder, I did not have torecuse because of my service on the Locast board. So I just wanted to—like I said, I probably should have made it broader. I didn’t, but clearly, that’s what I was addressing. I think everybody knew that. I wish I had been more specific.
BLUNT: Based on your testimony, I think Senator Wicker and Senator Cantwell have both receivedletters from U.S. Telecom, which would be AT&T and Verizon and others, and cable group NCTA have written letters expressing that, based on the rationale for your recusal offer, that you should be recused from all those issues. Is it your view that those letterswere written—didn’t get your exact quote, but I did get my friend Senator Blumenthal’s quote—”to deadlock, disarm, and disable the FCC?” Is that why there’s opposition to your participating in these issues?
SOHN: I think there are certain very large companies who would like to see the FCC continueto be deadlocked. They’ve been opposing my—it’s no secret. They’ve been opposing my nomination since the very beginning, and they saw an opportunity because I did not mention Locast in that letter. Again, even though it’s clearly obvious to anybody who’s beenfollowing the saga of my confirmation—or my hopeful confirmation, my nomination—that that’s what it was tied to. So they were just—they were being opportunistic, and I understand that. But, again, their rationale, if you take it to its logical extreme, there’sno limiting principle, and nobody with any knowledge who’s ever spoken about these issues would ever be qualified to be an FCC commissioner. And that is perverse, Senator Blunt. I really think it’s perverse, and I’m not sure that anybody on this dais, regardlessof your party, would like that.
BLUNT: Well, you know, it’s clear that you’re extremely talented and knowledgeable andexperienced in telecom law. What is not so clear to me is why you couldn’t be more forthcoming in that first hearing. And your comments today about the agreement that none of this would be disclosed seems to me that what you did say was misleading at bestand maybe not intentionally so. But there wasn’t much information in the answer you gave, but there was information in the question that you didn’t walk away from. So we had every reason to believe that that settlement was $32 million as opposed to whateverthe settlement was. And then I think I read somewhere that the actual exchange of money was much less than the settlement amount. Do you regret your answers the first time you were here to that question,?
SOHN: Senator, if I had told—if I talked about the $700,000 in that, in that exchange, in that QFR, I would have been violating the confidentialityof the settlement agreement. That I would have regretted. I answered the questions and the QFRs to the best of my ability and within the confines of the settlement agreement. Let me mention one other thing, if I may. I offered to you and to Senator Wickerto get copies of the settlement agreement from the parties. I was not—since I was not a party to the lawsuit, I could not give you that settlement agreement. Senator Wicker waited, his staff waited over, almost a month, to get a copy of that settlement agreement.And we could have had this conversation. And I did meet with you, Senator Blunt, and I appreciated that. But a lot of folks did not meet with me, unfortunately. We could have talked about it and gone through it because I would have been able actually to talkabout it with you one-on-one. I just couldn’t put it down in writing.