[2] After weeks of wrangling, which included the issuance of subpoenas and court injunctions, the committee obtained the telegrams and discovered that the utilities had spent over one million dollars to lobby for the bill's defeat.
They also found money had been spent to send over five million fake letters and telegrams to senators, supposedly from concerned citizens, opposing the bill.
Critics of Black's lobbying committee in leading newspapers, such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, described his investigative methods as both “inquisitorial” and “terroristic” and charged that his goal was to intimidate and silence anti-New Dealers.
Most controversially, Black, with the full backing of the Roosevelt administration, persuaded the FCC to order Western Union and other telegraph companies to provide access to copies to several million telegrams sent during the period of February 1 to September 1, 1935.
The committee also uncovered previously unrevealed links between the Farmers Independence Council of America, a group believed to be a nonpartisan opponent of President Roosevelt's efforts to reform agriculture, and the American Liberty League, which strongly opposed the New Deal.
[9] Singling out what he regarded as unfair attacks on FDR by the Gannett and Hearst publications, the Chicago Daily Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer Minton responded by introducing legislation to make it "illegal to publish information known to be false.
[12] When Reynolds asked his manager, Dr. Glenn Frank, who was also president of the University of Wisconsin, to help him answer the questions, Minton and his fellow Democratic senators began to shout him down.
As Frank began to explain that the money from the corporations was for advertising in the magazine, Minton beat his gavel and yelled, "This committee doesn't intend to permit you to use this as a forum to air your Republican views.