A coalition of Democrats urging Facebook and Amazon to drop their requests for FTC

A coalition of Democrats is urging Facebook and Amazon to drop their requests for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan to recuse herself from matters related to the companies.

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), along with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), slammed the tech giants’ requests for Khan’s recusal as an attempt to “bully” regulators and “avoid accountability.”

“The real basis of your concerns appears to be that you fear Chair Khan’s expertise and interpretation of federal antitrust law. To argue that federal ethics laws preclude Chair Khan from exercising her expertise is illogical and inconsistent with the plain language of the relevant statutes and with FTC ethics officials’ interpretations of recusal requirements,” they wrote in a letter sent Wednesday.