When the Federal Trade Commission files its long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Amazon – possibly as soon as this week – it will come only after FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan has prepared the ground with the help of a wave of publicity financed by some of the deepest pockets in progressive politics.
The Tech Transparency Project, funded by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, praises Khan and accuses Amazon and Google of trying to “weaken the hand of Biden’s regulators and prevent bipartisan action on tech in Congress.” The American Economic Liberties Project, backed by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, says in a “factsheet” on its website that Khan has steered the FTC into a “new era of more effective, modern, and democratic enforcement to better protect consumers, workers, and independent businesses.”
Since Khan became chair of the FTC in 2021, AELP has dedicated 28% of its website posts and news releases to praising or defending Khan and the FTC, with headlines such as “FTC Stands Up For Anesthesiology Patients in Texas” and “Under Chair Khan, the FTC Is Reinstating the Rule of Law as Congress Intended.”
The vocal support from groups such as AELP and Tech Transparency is ironic because they were highly critical of outside groups getting involved in FTC policy just a couple years ago. In a March 2021 post, Tech Transparency accused free-market oriented George Mason University of “inculcating a farm team of future FTC officials and lawyers with industry-friendly views.”
Khan has since stocked the agency with like-minded hires of her own from academia and non-profits who share her vision of using the FTC and antitrust policy to break up companies they believe are too big. Khan made her mark with a 2017 article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” that described “the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance” and proposed steering antitrust law away from a focus on the prices consumers pay toward broader concepts of labor markets and even public discourse.
Khan’s supporters aren’t afraid of engaging in public discourse of their own. Tech Transparency is an offshoot of the Campaign for Accountability, which drew $500,000 from Soros’s Open Society Foundation in 2021 and also receives money from the Democratic Party-affiliated entity ActBlue. It recently posted a lengthy article criticizing Amazon for funding influential supporters in Washington including public affairs executive Robert Bork Jr., son of antitrust icon Robert Bork, Judge Douglas Ginsburg and former GMU official Joshua Wright, whom Tech Transparency accused of “behind-the-scenes dealings at the FTC.”
Inside the FTC today are high-profile hires including Elizabeth Wilkins, who joined as director of the Office of Policy Planning in February 2022 and advocates using antitrust law to promote “worker power.”
Khan also hired Sarah Miller as Special Advisor in March. A University of Chicago graduate, Miller previously ran AELP, which she founded in 2020 with backing from Omidyar and the Open Society Foundations. Before founding AELP, Miller worked with Khan at the Open Markets Institute, where Khan was legal director. The progressive nonprofit supports breaking up large tech companies such as Amazon and Google and received $200,000 from the Omidyar network to build “upon the legacy of Lina Khan” and “broaden the focus of antitrust law solely from consumer welfare to include societal impacts like income inequality and unemployment.”
After Miller left AELP for the FTC this year, her husband Faiz Shakir took over as Interim Executive Director. Shakir earned $342,000 as campaign manager for Bernie Sanders and was a staffer to Sen. Harry Reid before that. He still works for More Perfect Union, which puts out videos with titles like “Americans Broadly Support the UAW Strike” and “The U.S. Is Finally Taking On Big Pharma.” More Perfect Union received $500,000 from Open Society in 2021.
This constellation of nonprofits largely sprang up during the Trump administration, advocating a stronger role for the FTC in using antitrust law to break up companies they believe have too much power over markets and public discourse. When Republicans controlled the White House, these groups criticized the involvement of private organizations and industry figures in FTC policymaking. But they were quick to change their tune when Biden won the presidency.
“Open Markets Applauds President Biden’s Choice to Nominate Lina Khan for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission” was the headline on an Open Markets story when Khan was appointed to the FTC in March 2021. Pictured with a pile of law books in her arms, Khan was described “a deeply wise and ethical person” with “a unique and far-ranging understanding of the dangers posed by the concentration of private power, and of the tools Americans can use to fix the problem.”