Man Charged With Threatening to Kill Ajit Pai's Kids Over Net Neutrality Repeal

The Department of Justice has arrested a man they say made death threats against Federal Communications Commission boss Ajit Pai and his family in the wake of the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality regulations.

According to the DOJ affidavit, Pai received three threatening emails in December, shortly after his agency voted to repeal the popular consumer protections. One of those emails expressly threatened the lives of Pai’s children. The threats resulted in Pai canceling his scheduled appearance at CES in January. The first email allegedly attempted to blame Pai for several suicides after the net neutrality repeal. The second email listed the names and addresses of three preschools located near Pai’s Arlington, Virginia home, and said, "I will find your children and I will kill them." According to a press release issued by the DOJ, Markara Man, 33, of Norwalk, California, has been charged with “threatening to murder a member of the immediate family of a U.S. official with the intent to intimidate,” and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The affidavit highlights how it wasn’t particularly difficult for the FBI to track down Man’s identity through his emails, which were reportedly sent from a backup Gmail account.

Federal law enforcement officers confronted Man at his home in May. He admitted sending the emails because he was “angry” about the repeal of net neutrality regulations and wanted to scare Pai.

Pai has arguably become one of the least popular people on the internet after his agency ignored factual data, countless internet experts, and the will of the public in the lead up to the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules. The rules, which were technically eliminated back on June 11 after December’s vote, have broad, bipartisan support among consumers. Pai’s office has come repeatedly under fire for hampering a law enforcement investigation into identity theft and fraud during the repeal’s public comment period. Emails obtained by a freedom of information request also suggest Pai’s office appears to have made up a DDOS attack, allegedly in a bizarre effort to downplay massive public opposition to the repeal. Separately, Pai is also facing a corruption investigation by his own agency’s nonpartisan inspector general amid allegations he neutered decades-old media consolidation rules explicitly to aid Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media. Pai has also taken heat for killing efforts to bring more competition to the cable box, eroding programs designed to help bring broadband to the poor, and for protecting the business interests of prison phone monopolies he used to represent as a lawyer. He has routinely been criticized by consumer groups for being one of the least consumer-friendly agency heads in FCC history.

While the lion’s share of opposition to Pai’s policies has been civil, his office (and several smaller news organizations) have often singled out isolated instances of racism and threats to imply that net neutrality supporters are unhinged or unreasonable. In reality, Pai has provided critics with plenty of hard data to help fuel civil opposition to FCC policies without resorting to such behavior—especially on the net neutrality front, where countless FCC missteps are likely to play a starring role in looming net neutrality lawsuits.