House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan on Wednesday in an effort to obtain documents and communications related to the FTC’s investigation of Twitter.
Jordan alleged in a cover letter accompanying the subpoena that the FTC overstepped its bounds by making “inappropriate and burdensome” demands of Twitter after Elon Musk took ownership of the company last year.
Jordan said the subpoena was necessary for the committee to conduct oversight of the FTC’s actions because Khan’s compliance with his prior requests for documents and communications on the matter had been “woefully insufficient.”
The Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Jordan also chairs, published the subpoena cover letter:
#BREAKING: @Jim_Jordan Subpoenas FTC for Information on Actions Against Twitter pic.twitter.com/RbPyLBxqld
— Weaponization Committee (@Weaponization) April 12, 2023
The subpoena comes after both Jordan and Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) contacted Khan a month ago about a report Republicans released revealing extensive demands the FTC had made of Twitter that the Republicans said amounted to a “harassment campaign” against Twitter and Musk.
“The strong inference” from the FTC’s sweeping demands “is that Twitter’s rediscovered focus on free speech is being met with politically motivated attempts to thwart Elon Musk’s goals,” the report stated.
Elon Musk speaks at a conference, April 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
The report found that the FTC had packed more than 350 demands into a dozen letters in a ten-week span beginning in October 2022, after Musk completed his purchase of the company.
The demands included, per the report:
- The names of all journalists given access to the Twitter Files
- Every communication in email, Slack, and elsewhere “relating to Elon Musk”
- An explanation for Musk’s firing of former FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who allegedly had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 and who, according to Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, “vett[ed] the first batch of ‘Twitter Files’” without Musk’s knowledge
- Approximately 60 requests about Twitter Blue, including a demand to know when Musk “first conceived of the concept” of it
- Information about whether Twitter was “selling its office equipment”
The report showed that the FTC had attributed its demands, at least in part, to past legal settlements it made with Twitter that dated back to 2011, when the FTC first discovered the company had misled users about its privacy policy. Twitter settled with the FTC again in 2022, prior to Musk taking over, because of another privacy violation.
When Musk bought Twitter, he made massive staff cuts and saw resignations from top security officials, which likely only compounded the company’s already rocky relationship with the FTC. He also initiated what became a chaotic rollout of Twitter Blue during which impersonations of well-known figures cropped up, deepening concerns about the company.
Jordan wrote in the subpoena cover letter, however, that “the FTC’s requests to Twitter were not limited to the scope” of the legal settlements, contending that the FTC using the settlements to justify its demands of Twitter was therefore “pretextual at best.”
The subpoena, which was reviewed by Breitbart News, ordered Khan to produce the requested documents and communications to the Judiciary Committee by April 26.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.