The Justice Department conveniently moved to drop a years-long fraud lawsuit against a corporation months after its founder donated to President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
The whole story involving the DOJ’s lawsuit against Dish Network began in 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ran an auction for bandwidth that could be used to provide wireless Internet services.
“To promote competition, the FCC issued a 25 percent discount called ‘bidding credits’ to ‘very small businesses’ which averaged below $15 million in revenue over the previous three years,” according to The American Conservative.
“Between 2011 and 2014, Dish’s revenue ranged from $13.5 to 15 billion. Nonetheless, Dish, with backing from BlackRock, financed two ostensibly small companies Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless, which went on to win the auctions, with discounts worth over $3 billion,” The American Conservative reported earlier this year.
Coleman Hopkins on how the Biden administration is going soft of Democrat donors for @amconmag:https://t.co/N4BoYfnIUn
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) March 7, 2024
Though Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless claimed they were independent of Dish Network, an FCC inquiry later found “persuasive…evidence” that the companies served “as arms of Dish,” which had “de facto control.”
And so in 2020, then-FCC chair Ajit Pai revoked the credits, and then the Vermont National Telephone Company, which lost the auction to Dish Network, filed a qui tam suit against the company.
“Qui tam lawsuits are a type of whistleblower lawsuit that is brought under the False Claims Act, a law that rewards whistleblowers in successful cases where the government recovers funds lost to fraud,” according to the law offices of Phillips & Cohen LLP.
Here’s the key: “Both the Justice Department and FCC supported the lawsuit, noting there was ‘a substantial interest in any discovery produced in this case that relates to Defendants’ alleged failure to disclose material facts to the Commission,’” according to The American Conservative.
Now fast-forward to last month, when, right as Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen and reps from BlackRock were set to testify under oath, something extraordinary happened.
“This was delayed; just as the trial was set to begin, the Justice Department informed the parties and the FCC that it would seek to dismiss the case and let Dish and its shell companies off with no penalties,” The American Conservative notes.
But why? That is the question.
The New York Post notes that “Ergen and his wife donated more than $113,000 to President Biden’s re-election campaign late last year,” i.e., only months before the case was dropped.
DOJ moved to dismiss $3.3B fraud suit against Dish after chairman donated $113K to Biden https://t.co/0GCcpozdp4 pic.twitter.com/5uflwshwEP
— New York Post (@nypost) March 22, 2024
But there’s more.
“This past January, Dish nabbed a $50 million grant from the administration to help expand 5G coverage nationwide — the ‘largest award’ of its kind, the company crowed — through a $1.5 billion fund created by the CHIPS and Science Act,” according to the Post.
“On Jan. 12, two days after the $50 million award was announced, attorneys at the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Dish — and ‘tried to bully’ Vermont Telephone, which filed the fraud claim, ‘into an unethical settlement’ by threatening to have the suit dismissed, according to lead attorney Bennett Ross,” the Post notes.
The move angered the Vermont National Telephone Company, prompting their attorneys to accuse the DOJ of political interference.
“[I]t appears that the effect — if not the purpose — of the DOJ’s rush to seek dismissal of this case is to protect Mr. Ergen from being questioned under oath,” Ross wrote in a Feb. 8 letter to the DOJ attorneys handling the case.
“We do not believe it is a coincidence that Mr. Ergen, his wife (who also is scheduled to be deposed next week), and DISH’s Political Action Committee collectively contributed in excess of $5 million to Democratic candidates and causes between 2008 and 2022,” he added.
“With the upcoming election, this case looks like just the latest example of the DOJ’s two-tiered justice system under which the well-heeled, politically connected are treated one way, while everyone else is treated differently,” he concluded.
Yet there’s still more.
The American Conservative notes that Dish Network has been in a feud with SpaceX, a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk — a man whom the Biden administration appears to be no fan of.
‘Do not wish good things for me’: Elon Musk explains why he thinks the Biden administration could be out to get him https://t.co/IeJ9xaY67t pic.twitter.com/Lb2Hb14c8L
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) September 17, 2023
In fairness, the FCC ultimately ruled with SpaceX, meaning a defeat for the Dish Network. However, because “the Biden Administration has almost universally sided against Elon Musk’s businesses over the last year,” one anonymous senior FCC official suspects the DOJ may “sidestep the FCC to harm [SpaceX].”
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Author: Vivek Saxena
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