UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Federal Trade Commission

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20580

Office of the Chair 

July 26, 2023

The Honorable Jim Jordan 

Chairman 

Committee on the Judiciary 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Washington, D.C. 20515 

Dear Chairman Jordan:  

During my tenure as FTC Chair, I and my leadership team have actively and extensively 

cooperated with you and your Committee staff in dozens of requests for documents, briefings, 

and testimony. We have done so because we take seriously the responsibility of Congress to 

provide effective oversight over federal agencies on behalf of the American people. We also take 

seriously our mandate from Congress to police illegal mergers, prevent unlawful 

monopolization, and protect the American public from a broad range of unfair or deceptive acts 

and practices—efforts that I was grateful for the opportunity to discuss with your Committee in a 

lengthy hearing on July 13, 2023.

It has come to my attention that over the last month, your staff has begun a campaign to 

intimidate and harass nearly two dozen career civil servants who work across a broad range of 

enforcement and other operational areas of this agency, many of whom have decades of 

experience and diligently served both Republican and Democratic administrations. This effort 

seems designed to obstruct and chill the agency’s critical work and raises grave concerns.

As you know, on June 28, 2023, the Committee demanded transcribed interviews with 23 

agency career employees with roles in antitrust enforcement, consumer protection enforcement, 

congressional relations, and administrative functions. As a general matter, it is extraordinarily 

rare for career civil servants to be asked to provide transcribed interviews as part of 

congressional oversight. Nonetheless, we have engaged in good faith with your Committee to 

identify members of the career senior executive service who could be available to meet with the 

Committee. 

Despite our cooperation, the Committee has, without explanation, rejected our offer to 

begin transcribed interviews with the most senior career supervisors on the Committee’s list, 

who we explained would likely be in the best position to answer the broad, vague, and imprecise

requests from the Committee. The Committee responded to this offer by demanding, again 

without explanation, that mid-level career civil servants come first and threatened compulsory 

process if the FTC did not immediately comply with these demands. 
2

Not only has your Committee demanded FTC career staff participate in these interviews 

on a date unilaterally dictated by the Committee, but in an extremely unusual step, the 

Committee sought them without providing the agency any details about the specific purpose of 

these interrogations. As the Committee knows, a necessary foundation for any transcribed 

interview is establishing the need for information from any particular individual. The Committee 

has refused to identify this need and lay the proper foundation for these unprecedented requests.

In response to your extraordinary demands, FTC Office of General Counsel sought 

details in a good faith effort to continue to provide information as part of our commitment to 

congressional oversight. Our agency follows rules intended to protect ongoing and future law 

enforcement matters that could be jeopardized if non-public information is released in the public 

domain. This is a concern we have expressed repeatedly to you given your Committee’s prior 

release of confidential information concerning law enforcement matters.

Nonetheless, beginning on Monday, July 24, your Committee staff decided to initiate a 

targeted campaign of intimidation by directly contacting career employees who they knew to be 

represented by counsel, demanding they “contact the committee promptly to schedule your 

appearance” without the benefit of existing legal counsel. This conduct violated D.C. Rules of 

Professional Conduct Rule 4.2, which makes clear that represented parties must be contacted 

through their counsel.

To be clear, these employees are aware of the Committee's requests and know that they 

could voluntarily choose to share information or concerns with the Committee at any time 

without the agency’s involvement. We have also conveyed to your Committee staff multiple 

times that senior executive service and political appointees stand ready to meet with Committee 

staff.

The intimidation and harassment of career civil servants in violation of Rule 4.2 of the 

Professional Rules of Responsibility is the latest in a series of concerns we have raised with your 

staff regarding breaches of conduct and violations of ethical rules. 

For example, the FTC has repeatedly expressed concerns about a former FTC official 

now employed by the Committee participating in Commission oversight matters. As you know, 

no person, including former employees, can use Commission nonpublic information in the 

performance of official duties without Commission authorization.1 Despite knowing that these

rules prohibit work that presents these conflict-of-interest concerns, this Committee staff member 

has repeatedly engaged with the Commission on matters in which he actively participated and 

received nonpublic information while at the Commission.  

Instead of addressing this serious ethics issue, a member of your senior staff called the 

Commission, requesting that we stop raising our legitimate concerns—and intimating that our 

failure to do so could be met with retaliation by the Committee. Let me be clear: to the extent a 

former Commission employee on your staff has revealed confidential or privileged information 

of the Commission, a former client, that conduct is a serious breach of the Rules of Professional 

Responsibility. 

1 5 C.F.R. § 2635.703(a).
3

  

The Committee’s conduct makes it difficult to conclude that these efforts are intended to 

ensure that the agency fulfills its Congressional mandate to check unfair methods of competition

and protect the American people from unfair or deceptive practices. 

  

Our work has benefited from effective partnerships across the political spectrum, from 

continuing to litigate the antitrust case against Facebook brought under the Trump 

Administration, to working with a bipartisan group of state Attorneys General to prevent Corteva 

and Chinese-owned Syngenta from harming American farmers, to scrutinizing how pharmacy 

benefit managers may be raising drug prices and muscling independent pharmacies out of 

businesses, to suing unscrupulous data brokers that track and sell Americans’ intimate location 

data. I believe we have much we could cooperate on, from concerns about technology 

companies’ control over communications platforms to protecting honest American 

manufacturers from losing business to firms who falsely claim their products are made in the 

U.S.A. 

  

I, my leadership team, and the agency as a whole stand ready to respond to legitimate 

questions or concerns the Committee may have about this work or other aspect of the agency’s 

activities. But efforts to intimidate or harass career civil servants as a response to policy 

disagreements with senior leadership raises grave concerns. We remain committed to faithfully 

discharging our statutory obligations and enforcing the law without fear or favor. 

Sincerely,

Lina M. Khan

Chair, Federal Trade Commission