STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI Re: Joint Application of Securus Investment Holdings, LLC, Securus Technologies, Inc., T-NETIX, Inc. and SCRS Acquisition Corporation for Grant of Authority Pursuant to Section 214 of the Communications Act of 1934, as Amended, and Sections 63.04 and 63.24 of the Commission’s Rules to Transfer Indirect Ownership and Control of Licensees, WC Docket No. 17-126; Securus Technologies, Inc., et al., File No.: EB-IHD-17-000225128 This action could have occurred months ago. Yet one of the Applicants chose to misrepresent facts to the Commission. A lack of candor with the Commission is a very serious matter, and there must be a strong deterrent to such misconduct. So as we approve this transaction from which we find no competitive harms, we also have a consent decree with Securus that both punishes its untruthfulness and serves as a strong deterrent to others who would mislead the agency. I believe the purpose of this misrepresentation was to speed the approval of this transaction. But it ended up having the opposite effect. Those doing business in front of the agency should take note of that fact. They should also note that while Applicants urged quick approval to avoid incurring fees, in the companion decree Securus will pay a civil penalty of $1.7 million because of their lack of candor, a particularly large amount for this type of violation. Lastly, it’s important to understand that none of the conditions that it’s been suggested we impose here are transaction-specific — that is they having nothing to do with remedying a transaction-specific harm. And as the standard of review in this document makes clear, a transaction is not an opportunity to apply extraneous conditions upon a licensee.