The Federal Trade Commission building can be seen in Washington.
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Jose Luis Magana/AP
Federal lawyers have begun to launch surprising disclosures on AA’s calls about major government lawsuits against Amazon.
FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen asked federal judges earlier this week to delay the trial, and the Federal Trade Commission is in “disastrous circumstances.”
Some people on the case team have resigned after accepting the Doge team’s “Fork in the Road” offer, he says, and employment is frozen. Agent staff will have to open FTC offices because “something happened” to the lease and may be moved to a previous USAID facility. Their travel card limit has been reduced to $1. And they need to buy legal transcripts at the cheapest and slowest speed. This could mean waiting several weeks for the documents to properly prepare the court deadline.
“The agency has experienced a very strict resource shortage in terms of both money and personnel,” Cole told Seattle District Judge John Chun on Wednesday.
The crisis is one of the FTC’s most high-profile lawsuits against Amazon. The Biden administration has been blaming the retail giants for “deceiving” people and paying for key memberships that are difficult to deliberately cancel. The trial was scheduled to begin in September.
Amazon’s lawyers opposed the rescheduling and said they saw “signs of trouble” at the FTC, and said the lawyer would turn into a “Doge or no doge” case. Judge Chun asked the FTC to write a delayed request.
However, within hours, federal lawyers reversed the course.
“I was wrong,” Cohen wrote to the judge in a letter. “The Commission is free of resource constraints and is ready to sue this case. The FTC must ensure that the court meets the schedule and deadlines set by the court.”
The FTC did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. However, in a statement to the Associated Press, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson said Cohen was wrong, adding that the FTC “commits the resources needed for this case” and “will never step back from acquiring big technology.”
Editor’s Note: Amazon is one of NPR’s latest financial supporters.
