Facebook filed a petition Wednesday to have recently appointed Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan recused from the antitrust case against the company.
The tech giant said Khan had “consistently made public statements” accusing Facebook of monopolistic behavior that constitute a violation of antitrust law and that she has already made up her mind regarding the company’s guilt in the pending antitrust case.
“When a new Commissioner has already drawn factual and legal conclusions and deemed the target a lawbreaker, due process requires that individual to recuse herself from related matters when acting in the capacity of an FTC Commissioner,” Facebook wrote in the petition.
Facebook’s motion follows a similar request by Amazon, which petitioned for Khan’s recusal from its antitrust investigation, based on her past comments and criticism of its actions.
DEMOCRATIC TOP REGULATOR SAYS BREAKING UP BIG TECH COULD A GOOD, ‘CONSERVATIVE’ SOLUTION
Khan won a wide following in the tech policy world as a student at Yale Law School in 2017 with an article called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” She argued that the traditional benchmark of whether a company had a monopoly, higher prices, did not account for what she called anti-competitive behavior on the part of the tech giants.
The House is considering a bipartisan package of anti-Big Tech bills aimed at reining in companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
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The bills would give the FTC greater resources and authority to regulate and even break up tech giants, including Facebook.
