Republican FTC commissioner resigns over ‘lawlessness’ under Biden appointee’s leadership

Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Christine Wilson said Tuesday that she was quitting the agency over “continuing lawlessness” under the leadership of President Biden’s appointed chair, Lina Khan.

Ms. Wilson, who was appointed by former President Trump, wrote in an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal that she had concerns about due process, the rule of law, and the ethics of Ms. Khan. 

The FTC is a federal regulator, charged with protecting consumers from deceptive business practices and unfair competition, that is led by commissioners appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Ms. Wilson was the sole Republican remaining on the commission.

Ms. Wilson wrote that as an antitrust lawyer, she advised clients to make a noisy exit so people would remember their objections and she was opting to do the same now.

“Although serving as an FTC commissioner has been the highest honor of my professional career, I must follow my own advice and resign in the face of continuing lawlessness,” Ms. Wilson wrote. “Consider this my noisy exit.”

As an example of the kind of conduct Ms. Wilson found objectionable, she cited the FTC’s challenge to Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality platform Within Unlimited.

Earlier this month, a federal judge denied the FTC’s effort to prevent the acquisition, saying that the federal regulator failed to prove the Big Tech acquisition would kill competition. The FTC subsequently decided not to appeal, with its own in-house review set to proceed this week.

Meta petitioned the FTC for Ms. Khan to recuse herself from the in-house case and the FTC shot down Meta’s request earlier this month.

Ms. Wilson wrote that Ms. Khan’s decision not to recuse herself showed Democratic commissioners were spurning federal ethics obligations and due-process considerations because Ms. Khan had argued before joining FTC in favor of preventing Meta from making any future acquisitions.

“Since Ms. Khan’s confirmation in 2021, my staff and I have spent countless hours seeking to uncover her abuses of government power,” Ms. Wilson wrote. “That task has become increasingly difficult as she has consolidated power within the office of the chairman, breaking decades of bipartisan precedent and undermining the commission structure that Congress wrote into law.”

Ms. Khan, with fellow FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, issued a brief statement that did not address Ms. Wilson’s specific complaints.