Warren, Blumenthal, Booker, Jayapal Call on Amazon and Facebook to Cease Coordinated Efforts to Discredit FTC Chair Khan
Internet Giants’ Attacks Are “Illogical and Inconsistent” with Federal Ethics Law
“Efforts to sideline Chair Khan appear to be nothing more than attempts to force an FTC stalemate that would allow you to evade accountability for any anti-competitive behavior”
Washington, D.C. - United States Senators Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) along with
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), sent a letter to Amazon Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) Andy Jassy and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling on
them to cease their efforts to force Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina
Khan to recuse herself from federal antitrust matters involving their
companies.
The companies have attempted to bully Chair Khan into recusal, citing federal
ethics and conflicts of interest laws. However, as the lawmakers wrote
in their letter, “Chair Khan has no ... conflicts that would require
recusal…There is no basis for her recusal under the current federal ethics
statute or FTC precedent. Your efforts to sideline Chair Khan appear to be
nothing more than attempts to force an FTC stalemate that would allow you to
evade accountability for any anti-competitive behavior.”
Federal ethics laws clearly define the conflicts of interest that would require
recusal: “any arrangement concerning prospective employment (or) a
financial interest,” and Office of Government Ethics regulations contain
additional guidance on these potential conflicts, calling for recusal
when “a particular matter involving specific parties is likely to have a
direct and predictable effect on the financial interest of a member of his
household, or knows that a person with whom he has a covered relationship is or
represents a party to such matter.” Chair Kahn testified in her Senate
confirmation hearing that "​I have none of the financial conflicts or
personal ties that are the basis for recusal under federal ethics laws, and I
would be approaching these issues with an eye to the underlying facts and the empirics
and really be following the evidence.”
The letter comes after Amazon
and Facebook
both recently filed
petitions to the FTC urging newly
appointed Chairwoman Lina Khan to recuse herself from multiple ongoing
antitrust matters involving their companies, claiming she lacks
objectivity due to her past
criticisms of their business practices. Prior to Chair Khan’s appointment
in June 2021, federal regulators were already in the throes of investigating
anticompetitive practices among tech platforms, including Facebook and
Amazon, under the Trump Administration. It remains to be seen whether the FTC
will decide to handle such matters through in-house administrative proceedings
or through federal court. If the latter occurs, then Chair Khan would
be “handing over the ability to rule on the outcome of the case to a
federal judge” – likely rendering these recusal requests moot, particularly in
cases in which the FTC launched its prosecution before Chair Khan’s tenure.
“Despite this uncertainty, both of your companies have engaged in a coordinated
attack to discredit Chair Khan on ethics grounds, even – in the case of Amazon
– going so far as to request immunity from any future antitrust
investigations,” the lawmakers wrote.
In December 2020, Senator Warren reintroduced the Anti-Corruption
& Public Integrity Act to padlock the
government-to-lobbying revolving door, strengthen federal ethics rules and
enforcement, and restore the American public's faith in democracy, which has
been at “historic lows” for over
a decade.
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