Amazon filed a petition on Wednesday asking for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan to be recused on antitrust issues associated to the web retail large, in line with paperwork filed with the company.

Amazon mentioned in its submitting that it was requesting Khan’s recusal from all issues associated to Amazon due to her earlier work whereas at an antitrust advocacy group, public statements and work for a congressional subcommittee.

“Given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon, and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws, a reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can consider the company’s antitrust defences with an open mind,” Amazon mentioned in its submitting. “Indeed, doing so would require her to repudiate the years of writings and statements that are at the foundation of her professional career.”

The FTC declined remark.

The company is investigating Amazon as a part of a sequence of probes underway into Big Tech. It can be probing Amazon’s deliberate buy of the US film studio MGM.

Khan wrote a chunk for the Yale Law Journal in 2017 which argues that present antitrust legislation, which focuses on costs and the quick time period, fail to seize harms performed by firms like Amazon, together with predatory pricing.

She additionally labored for the House Judiciary antitrust committee, which wrote a large report that spelled out what it mentioned was anti-competitive conduct by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google.

© Thomson Reuters 2021