Who Is Ajit Pai? Everything You Need To Know About Trump’s Pick To Lead The FFC

President Donald Trump has selected Ajit Pai, a Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission and former Verizon lawyer, to serve as chairman of the regulatory agency, Politico reported Friday.

Pai does not face an upcoming Senate confirmation hearing, as he was unanimously confirmed to his commissioner seat after former President Barack Obama nominated him in 2012 at the request of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Kentucky).

As one of four commissioners leading the agency along with Chairman Thomas Wheeler, Pai vocally fought the FCC’s rules protecting net neutrality, the notion that internet service providers ought to give web surfers access to any legal content without favoring one source over another, in February 2015.

“I’ve not been shy about expressing my views on a great many subjects,” Pai told Politico at the time. “The role of a minority commissioner is to present the ideas of the loyal opposition, to represent the views of those opposed to the majority and to provide a road map to the courts, the Congress and the American public to see a different point of view.”

Critics of net neutrality argue it gives the government greater power over the internet by essentially turning it into a public utility.

Pai, a Harvard University graduate who attended the University of Chicago Law School, has about a decade of experience in the public sector. He served as an attorney in the Justice Department and deputy chief counsel to then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Jeff Sessions—Trump’s pick for Attorney General, widely known for his history of racist comments—among several other positions in both government bodies.

But Pai is no stranger to the private sector. He’s worked as a lawyer for Verizon Communications and a partner at the Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block LLP, whose claim to fame came from helping to break up AT&T’s telecommunications monopoly in the mid-1980s