Facebook on Wednesday requested for the recusal of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan from the FTC’s antitrust case in opposition to the corporate, a step that would imperil the company’s lawsuit in opposition to it.

A distinguished critic of Big Tech who was sworn in as FTC chair in June, Khan beforehand labored for the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, which issued a report in October that spelled out what it stated was anti-competitive conduct by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google.

“Chair Khan has consistently made well-documented statements about Facebook and antitrust matters that would lead any reasonable observer to conclude that she has prejudged the Facebook antitrust case brought by the FTC,” a Facebook spokesperson stated in an announcement.

“To protect the fairness and impartiality of these proceedings, we have requested that Chair Khan recuse herself from involvement with the FTC’s antitrust case against Facebook.”

The FTC declined touch upon the recusal petition. Two weeks in the past Amazon, which is beneath investigation by the FTC, additionally requested for Khan to be recused.

The FTC sued Facebook in December, alleging the social media big broke antitrust regulation in shopping for photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp. A US decide in June dismissed the grievance and gave the company a roadmap for rewrite it with a deadline of July 29 to refile it.

In its petition to the FTC, Facebook requested that Khan not be permitted to take part in deciding whether or not and the way the FTC case in opposition to Facebook ought to proceed.

Since the 2 present Republican commissioners voted to oppose the FTC lawsuit in opposition to Facebook in December, Khan’s recusal would depart two Democrats to vote for a brand new lawsuit. A tie vote implies that the matter wouldn’t go ahead.

In the petition Facebook argued that Khan’s work for the Open Markets Institute, a political advocacy group, and her educational writing and tweets confirmed she had already reached authorized conclusions that Facebook was accountable for violating antitrust legal guidelines.

When requested by Republican Senator Mike Lee throughout her April Senate affirmation listening to if she ought to recuse herself from investigations associated to Facebook and different Big Tech firms, Khan stated she had not one of the monetary conflicts or private ties which might be the premise for recusal beneath federal ethics legal guidelines. She stated on the time she would search the steerage of FTC ethics officers if the difficulty arose.

© Thomson Reuters 2021