Washington, D.C. – U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is under investigation by a congressional panel that will explore charges she has abused her power while in office.
The inquiry announced Thursday by House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is an outgrowth of consistent concerns about Khan's conduct as head of the federal corporate regulatory body.
The committee will look into charges that Khan abused her power and showed disregard for the rule of law during her time in the agency's top position. It will also consider whether her conduct has violated federal ethics standards. These concerns were brought to a head earlier in the year when now-former FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson announced in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal that she believed Khan's handling of the business before the commission was undermining its integrity.
The inquiry had been opened, Comer said, with a request for “documents and information to shed light on Commissioner Wilson's allegations and determine the extent to which the Commission has deviated from its mission to protect America's consumers.”
In addition to Wilson's complaints, critics have repeatedly accused Khan of holding a profound anti-business bias and pushing an agenda that is contrary to the best interests of U.S. workers and consumers. Several published reports have alluded, for example, to efforts apparently undertaken by her to persuade foreign regulators to block several U.S. corporate mergers and acquisitions she did not have the votes on the FTC or the authority to prevent.
Comer said he was concerned “whether the FTC under Chair Khan has become a rogue agency” that under her leadership has bulldozed procedural safeguards and, without the consent of Congress, expanded the commission's regulatory authority, according to a release issued by the committee Thursday. It will also consider whether what he called “departures from prior norms” are the result of undue influence exerted by the White House upon a statutorily independent agency.
Created by an Act of Congress in 1914 as a progressive reform under Woodrow Wilson, the FTC is an independent regulatory body composed of four commissioners – two Democrats and two Republicans – and a chairman, all of whom are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Khan has been a source of controversy since her nomination. Concerns about her conduct began accelerating after Wilson, in her op-ed, complained of the chairman's “willful disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction, her defiance of legal precedent, and her abuse of power to achieve desired outcomes.”
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