by Kyle Becker at beckernews.com
On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, a notoriously activist official, faced scrutiny from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) in her first appearance before the committee.
The Congressional hearing commenced with Jordan criticizing Khan’s tenure at the agency, labeling it a “disaster.” Jordan specifically highlighted the investigation into billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, arguing that it constituted an overreach by the FTC.
Khan was grilled relentlessly by members of the committee, including Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY), who appeared to show instances of Khan’s ethical violations, including an issue regarding her license to practice law “in good standing.”
In a disturbing turn of events, it has been further revealed that the FTC under President Joe Biden’s administration reportedly sought action from Ernst & Young (EY) to penalize Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase. EY, one of the Big Four accounting firms, expressed concerns that failing to comply with the government’s request could potentially result in retaliation.
The chilling news is consistent with the Biden administration’s record of retaliation against and intimidation of political dissidents. It was shared by the House Judiciary Committee’s official Twitter account on Thursday.
“The FTC was so ‘adamant’ with EY, conveying that ‘this is absolutely what you will do and this is going to occur, and you’ll produce a report at the end of the day’ that would be negative about Twitter, that senior EY leaders feared that, if EY resigned as the independent assessor, ‘the FTC [would] take [] exception to [EY’s] withdrawal and create [] ‘other’ challenges for EY over time,” stated the Motion for Protective Order in the court case United States v. Twitter.
On Thursday, Twitter had filed a motion with a federal court seeking to either terminate or modify a 2011 FTC order that governs the company’s handling of user information.
“This motion asks the Court to rein in an investigation that has spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias, and to terminate a misfit consent order that no longer can serve any proper equitable purpose,” the motion said. “As detailed below, the FTC has engaged in conduct so irregular and improper that Ernst & Young (‘EY’)—the independent assessor designated under a consent order between Twitter and the FTC to evaluate the company’s privacy, data protection, and information security program—’felt as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it had started.’ Recent sworn testimony details how the FTC, through a series of interactions with EY immediately after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, attempted to co-opt EY’s independent assessment in order to generate evidence of ‘deficiencies in Twitter’s privacy and information security
program’.”
Thus, the Biden administration allegedly was leaning on EY to generate non-compliance issues in reference to the 2011 FTC order or potentially be retaliated against.
The initial agreement, which settled charges against Twitter for inadequate user data protection, mandated an independent assessment of its security program for a decade and prohibited the platform from misleading consumers about its privacy practices for 20 years.
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