FTC Chair Lina Khan under fire for allegedly ignoring Congress, wasting taxpayer cash

Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan faced mounting congressional scrutiny Thursday over allegations she has ignored lawmakers and wasted taxpayer money in pursuit of her personal agenda.

The House Judiciary Committee grilled the Biden appointee, whose tenure at the FTC has driven away many employees and all GOP commissioners, amid questions about the politicization of the regulatory agency’s actions.

Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, ripped Ms. Khan at the hearing for bypassing Congress and allegedly harassing the social media platform Twitter with requests for information since Elon Musk’s takeover.

“Chair Khan has no interest in providing information to the people’s representatives in the Congress, to the people on this committee, when we ask for it,” Mr. Jordan said. “To date, the FTC has not fully complied with a single request for documents from this committee and, because of her mismanagement, not even her own staff is impressed with Chairman Khan’s leadership.”

Ms. Khan said she is faithfully executing her official duties and is satisfied with her agency’s work.

“The FTC is firing on all cylinders, fighting every day to protect the American people from unlawful business practices,” Ms. Khan said. “These efforts reflect the extraordinary work of our agency’s staff whose talent and dedication are second to none.”

More than 120 employees left the FTC within a year of Ms. Khan’s 2021 confirmation and the agency’s work has since deteriorated, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That committee is probing Ms. Khan’s work, alongside the judiciary panel and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Energy and Commerce Committee chairwoman, requested information from the FTC in a letter on Wednesday with Mr. Jordan that said lawmakers were concerned Ms. Khan failed to enforce the law and safeguard taxpayer resources.

Ms. Khan has pursued Big Tech companies with limited success and has thus far failed to block mergers pursued by Microsoft and Facebook’s parent company, Meta. Earlier this week, a federal judge stopped the FTC’s effort to squash Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard.

Some Republicans think Ms. Khan is deliberately picking fights she expects to lose in court and wasting taxpayers’ cash in the process.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, California Republican, questioned whether Ms. Khan was intentionally losing cases in hopes of persuading Congress to overhaul antitrust law in support of a liberal agenda to tilt the courts in her favor.

He cited Ms. Khan’s zero successes in four tries to block businesses’ mergers.

“You’re actually bringing the cases,” Mr. Kiley said. “You’re losing because you don’t have the authority that you want from Congress, so this is how you think you’re going to persuade Congress to give you more authority — is by exceeding the authority that you now have?”

“Congressman again, we only bring lawsuits where we believe there is a law violation given the facts in the law at hand,” Ms. Khan said. “We fight hard when we believe that there is a law violation, and unfortunately things don’t always go our way.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, said Ms. Khan was pushing her personal policy agenda at the FTC that companies should need to be less competitive to merge.

“My problem here today is that you’re a bully,” Mr. Issa said to Ms. Khan. “You have half a billion dollars to spend and you choose to spend it promoting a policy that when you were a [congressional] staffer sitting behind us you seemed to be very much into.”

Democrats criticized Republican lawmakers’ treatment of Ms. Khan. Rep. Hank Johnson, Georgia Democrat, said Republicans were engaged in bigotry against Ms. Khan, a woman of Asian descent.

“When we treat a witness who looks like you with the politics of personal destruction and when we only attack witnesses who look like you with allegations of incompetence and a lack of ability to lead their agency, it’s indicative of the need for this committee to reflect what the American people look like,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Issa interjected that the same Judiciary Committee had similarly grilled a “very White man of a greater age,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, on Wednesday. Mr. Issa said Mr. Johnson had made a racial slur against Mr. Issa and other Republicans.

Mr. Johnson said he did not intend to suggest Mr. Issa was singularly responsible but that the entire committee was acting inappropriately.

While Republicans and Democrats sparred, the FTC’s aggressive pursuit of technology companies has not stopped. The FTC sent ChatGPT-maker OpenAI a lengthy demand this week for records about artificial intelligence risk, according to reports on Thursday.