FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Andrea Beaty, [email protected]
Via Baseless Attacks On Khan, House Republicans Continue to Serve their Monopolist Funders
In response to today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty said:
“Today’s hearing further proved that Republican’s attacks on Lina Khan and her leadership are blatant attempts to weaken antitrust enforcement to the benefit of the corporations that fund the Republican Party. Members, including Jim Jordan, focused on baseless allegations in an attempt to delegitimize the work the FTC is doing to crack down on anti-competitive and harmful practices that monopolistic companies use to amass economic power and squeeze profits out of consumers and workers.”
“One such baseless attack, the claim that Khan acted unethically in choosing to participate in the FTC’s Meta case, was thoroughly disproven by not only leading Democrats, but also Republican Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck. As Reps Buck, Jayapal, Neguse, and Bush pointed out, the only lapse in ethics came from the ethics official who suggested Khan recuse. Ethics official Lorielle Pankey owns Meta stocks, while Khan owns none from Meta or its competitors.”
According to research from the Revolving Door Project first reported in the Wall Street Journal, Lorielle Pankey owned up to $50,000 in Meta stock when she sent the memo calling for Khan’s recusal, and has owned the assets since at least 2019.
Republicans also focused on the FTC’s so-called “harassment” of corporate executives, including Twitter owner Elon Musk, whose company is under a consent decree with the FTC regarding its past illegal abuse of consumers’ privacy.
Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser said:
“Lina Khan set the FTC back on track, returning economic power into the hands of consumers, workers and small businesses through agency actions such as rulemaking against noncompetes, junk fees, and click to cancel. But yet another hallmark of her success has been the enemies she’s made – including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. Reining in monopolies entails drawing the ire of monopolists and their advocates – and clearly, Khan is hitting a nerve.”
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