You might remember that when HBO comedian John Oliver originally tackled net neutrality on his show in 2014, the FCC website crashed under the load of concerned consumers eager to support the creation of net neutrality rules. When Oliver revisited the topic last May to discuss Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai's myopic plan to kill those same rules, the FCC website crashed under the load a second time. That's not a particular shock; the FCC's website has long been seen as an outdated relic from the wayback times of Netscape, hit counters, and awful MIDI music. But then something weird happened. In the midst of all the media attention Oliver was receiving for his segment, the FCC issued a statement (pdf) by former FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, claiming that comprehensive FCC "analysis" indicated that it was a malicious DDoS attack, not angry net neutrality supporters, that brought the agency's website to its knees: "Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCCs comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC." But the FCC's claims were seen as suspect by numerous security experts, who say the crash showed none of the usual telltale signs of an actual DDOS. And reports subsequently emerged indicating that the "analysis" the FCC supposedly conducted never actually occurred. When media outlets began noticing that something fishy was going on, the Trump FCC issued a punchy statement accusing the media of being "completely irresponsible." No evidence was ever provided to journalists or lawmakers that pressured the agency for hard data proving the claims. Fast forward to this week, and new internal FCC e-mails obtained via FOIA request show that yes, the FCC did routinely try to mislead the public and the press with repeated claims of DDOS attacks that never actually happened: "The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurrednot to the reporters whove requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers whove demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened."