Amazon has asked that the FTC's new chairman Lina Khan to recuse herself from antitrust investigations of the company, due to her past criticisms of the company's business. It will be up to the other members of the Commission to decide whether she participates in any eventual votes over Amazon, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Khan made her name as a competition expert in part based on a paper published in the Yale Law Journal about Amazon, which examined the company's competitive tactics and called for regulatory intervention to break up the disruptive market power of the e-commerce giant. She also worked on the Congressional investigation into large internet platforms that called for structural separation of the companies. She now leads a FTC with a majority of Democrat appointees, at 3-2 in favour of her party.
"Given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon, and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws, a reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can consider the company’s antitrust defenses with an open mind," Amazon said in a 25-page motion filed with the FTC.
Amazon is part of a wide-ranging investigation by the FTC into big tech companies and the impact of their many acquisitions. According to the WSJ, the FTC is also taking responsibility for examining Amazon's planned acquisition of MGM.
Khan gets the first opportunity to address the request for her disqualification, but past FTC practices suggest the rest of the commissioners would likely have a say. Under FTC rules, if the commission brings an enforcement or rule-making proceeding involving Amazon and Khan chooses to participate, the other commissioners would decide on Amazon’s motion.
According to the paper, there are few recent cases of such a motion proving successful. However, certain past FTC cases have been overturned in court after a judge found a commissioner should have withdrawn due to prior work that may have prejudiced the outsome.
