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Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission was supposed to be the next great trustbuster. But on the course of her rise to the nation’s top antitrust law office, Khan allegedly misrepresented her credentials throughout her career and stands accused of lying to Congress.
Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, levied a series of accusations to Khan in a barrage of Questions for the Record obtained by The Spectator. Hageman’s most sensational claims are that Khan lied to Congress, lied by omission to Congress and misrepresented herself as a lawyer while lacking the appropriate law license.
In the first instance, Hageman references a hearing where Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers asked Khan if she had ever ignored the advice of the FTC’s Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO), to which Khan replied “no.” That, Hageman claims, is a lie under oath.
Taking issue with Khan’s long history of activism against Facebook, the FTC’s DAEO wrote to “recommend Chair Khan recuse to avoid an appearance of partiality concern” because “there is a reasonable appearance [of] concern with her participation in this matter.” Khan “rejected” the advice, according to Bloomberg; Hageman writes that Khan’s answer to Rodgers was therefore likely “false, deceptive, misleading or some combination of all three.”
One of the reasons why progressives are so enamored with Khan — her anti-Big Tech history — could prove to be a substantial problem. Prior to helming the FTC, Khan was a fierce critic of Facebook, and argued that Facebook should never be allowed to acquire another company. During Khan’s time as FTC chair, Meta tried to do just that, attempting to acquire a virtual reality startup.
Khan’s insistence on sitting as a judge on the FTC’s Meta trial was so controversial that one of her Republican colleagues resigned because of it, citing “continuing lawlessness” under Khan and Khan’s “disregard for the rule of law and due process.” A federal court subsequently struck down Khan’s suit.
Hageman accuses Khan of lying to Senate-side Republicans in two main forms. The first allegation is résumé inflation. In documents Khan submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee, she claimed she had worked as a “legal fellow” at the FTC that she now chairs.
However, Hageman alleges that “[she] did not possess that title” and it is a position that does not, and never has, existed. The truth is, her ally, FTC commissioner-turned Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra brought her on board as a law clerk, not a legal fellow. Internal emails obtained by Hageman show that FTC staff knew that Khan is “not your typical ‘law clerk,’” because of her close ties to Chopra.
Those ties have continued. Khan’s first chief of staff, director of Bureau of Consumer Protection, director of the Bureau of Competition and first chief technologist were all previously on Chopra’s staff, leading some to speculate that he has kept close tabs on his former employees.
Hageman also writes that Khan appeared to be in “violation of District of Columbia law” while she was working as majority counsel on the Judiciary Committee, because she spent much of that time operating without a DC law license. Hageman notes this is all the more curious because Khan passed the New York Bar in 2017, but spent approximately one year as counsel without having a law license.
Hageman writes that “in the District of Columbia people are prohibited from holding themselves out as engaged in the practice of law without first obtaining a license to do so.”
“Lina Khan lied to Congress on an issue of great importance,” Hageman told The Spectator. “She has no moral authority to lead an agency such as the FTC. She should resign.”
A spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment on Hageman’s allegations.
Under Khan, the FTC has suffered a series of embarrassing legal setbacks, failing in both federal court cases Khan has tried. In addition to her Meta failure, Khan recently suffered another legal blow when a federal court denied her request for a preliminary injunction to stop Microsoft from purchasing Activision Blizzard.
Beyond her 0-2 record in federal courts, Khan has chosen a curious set of foes, previously reported by The Spectator. She is currently preventing a merger of healthcare companies that could expand access to early detection of cancer screenings. Unlike Meta and Microsoft, neither Illumina nor Grail, the healthcare companies trying to merge, could be described as big businesses.
“Destroying the medical breakthrough that Illumina and Grail are trying to offer for the reasons she has stated could be the biggest mistake a federal regulator has ever made,” California congressman Darrell Issa told The Spectator. “For her to swing at Microsoft and hit a cancer patient and still think that she is on target shows how dangerous she is.”
Khan is a longtime ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose presidential aspirations were notoriously stymied after the Massachusetts senator was found to have misreported about her race and ancestry. Could Khan’s haziness on vital details of her biography also prove to be her undoing?
