(Reuters) – WASHINGTON (Reuters) – According to documents filed with the agency, Amazon.com filed a petition on Wednesday seeking for FTC Chair Lina Khan to recuse herself from antitrust concerns involving the online retailer. Amazon requested Khan’s recusal from all matters relating to Amazon in its filing, citing her former activity as an antitrust advocate, public statements, and work for a congressional panel.
“A reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can assess the company’s antitrust defenses with an open mind, given her extensive track record of detailed declarations about Amazon, and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust statutes,” Amazon stated in its filing. “In fact, doing so would necessitate her renouncing years of publications and remarks that have served as the bedrock of her professional career.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon is being investigated by the agency as part of a larger investigation into Big Tech. It’s also looking at Amazon’s potential acquisition of MGM, a major Hollywood studio in the United States. Khan argued in a 2017 article for the Yale Law Journal that present antitrust law, which focuses on prices and the short term, fails to capture the harms caused by corporations like Amazon, such as predatory pricing.
She also worked for the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust committee, which issued a major report detailing what it claimed to be anti-competitive behavior by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Alphabet’s Google./n
