Lina Khan, a progressive in charge of the Federal Trade Commission, appears to have lied to Congress about her resume and qualifications, leading to at least one Republican calling for her resignation.
The FTC chair has been accused of operating a “rogue agency” after a resignation letter from the agency’s last remaining Republican called Khan out for her “disregard for the rule of law and due process.” Now, a report from Matthew Foldi at The Spectator reveals that Khan isn’t even who she said she was when she was up for nomination.
Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, claims Khan “lied to Congress, lied by omission to Congress and misrepresented herself as a lawyer while lacking the appropriate law license.”
In the first instance, Hageman references a hearing where Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers asked Khan if she had ever ignored the advice of the FTC’s Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO), to which Khan replied “no.” That, Hageman claims, is a lie under oath.
Taking issue with Khan’s long history of activism against Facebook, the FTC’s DAEO wrote to “recommend Chair Khan recuse to avoid an appearance of partiality concern” because “there is a reasonable appearance [of] concern with her participation in this matter.” Khan “rejected” the advice, according to Bloomberg; Hageman writes that Khan’s answer to Rodgers was therefore likely “false, deceptive, misleading or some combination of all three.”
But wait, there’s more.
Hageman accuses Khan of lying to Senate-side Republicans in two main forms. The first allegation is résumé inflation. In documents Khan submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee, she claimed she had worked as a “legal fellow” at the FTC that she now chairs.
However, Hageman alleges that “[she] did not possess that title” and it is a position that does not, and never has, existed. The truth is, her ally, FTC commissioner-turned Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra brought her on board as a law clerk, not a legal fellow. Internal emails obtained by Hageman show that FTC staff knew that Khan is “not your typical ‘law clerk,’” because of her close ties to Chopra.
And still more. She apparently was starring in her own version of the show Suits, lying about her law credentials.
Hageman also writes that Khan appeared to be in “violation of District of Columbia law” while she was working as majority counsel on the Judiciary Committee, because she spent much of that time operating without a DC law license. Hageman notes this is all the more curious because Khan passed the New York Bar in 2017, but spent approximately one year as counsel without having a law license.
But it’s the lengths that Khan and her mentor – the current head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra – have gone to in order to increase the regulatory state that are perhaps most shocking in all this. As noted above, she was given the position of “legal fellow” – which does not officially exist – by Chopra, who appears to have been grooming her for the job she now has.
Chopra is no stranger to us here at RedState. We’ve covered his big government shenanigans before.
He’s been called out by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for using his agency to attack and defame the financial sector, including endorsing the idea that antitrust actions and litigation are how you beat inflation. It’s the kind of rhetoric that Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, and others in the Democratic Party love to hear. But some of his views are so extreme that even Larry Summers and other progressive economists criticize his rhetoric and actions.
And this is the guy who hired Lina Khan to the FTC and then basically fast-tracked her to be his replacement when he left for the CFPB. She is clearly a disciple of the ultra-progressive regulatory state, and she and Chopra did everything they could to ensure she got the job – including lying to Congress.
That should be a big red flag for what Khan will ultimately try to do to the country through her position, much as Chopra is doing with the CFPB. She has already tried by going after technology giants and losing – once in actions against Facebook parent company Meta, and more recently in trying to prevent a merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard.
And, as Foldi also points out in his piece at The Spectator, Khan is a close ally of Warren. That, in and of itself, should be disqualifying for most rational people. But we’re dealing with Washington D.C.’s bureaucratic state, not rational people.
