Trusts Busters

While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox".
On March 22, 2021, Joe Biden announced that he was nominating Khan to be a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission to a term ending Sept. 26, 2024. On June 15, 2021, her nomination was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 69 to 28. Khan was confirmed with bipartisan support, mainly attributed to her "influential anti-Amazon views" being widely reflected in Congress. Biden then appointed her chairperson of the FTC. Upon taking office, Khan became the third Asian-American to serve on the FTC, after Dennis Yao (who served from 1991 to 1994) and her former boss Rohit Chopra (who served from 2018 to 2021.
Following her appointment as chairperson, both Amazon and Facebook filed petitions with the FTC seeking her recusal from investigations of the companies, suggesting that her past criticism of the companies left her unable to be impartial. However, according to legal scholar Eleanor Fox, the standard for recusal is very high and unlikely to be met for Khan. Senator Elizabeth Warren and other supporters of Khan argued that the recusal demands amount to an attempt by these companies to intimidate Khan in order to curtail regulatory scrutiny. According to leaked documents, the FTC's Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO), Lorielle Pankey, did not believe Khan had violated any ethical standards, but still recommended that she recuse herself from the case with Meta Platforms to avoid the appearance of bias; this recommendation was rejected by Khan and the FTC. The official who made the recommendation was later revealed to have owned Meta stock at that time, prompting concerns about Pankey's own conduct. In response, Khan and the FTC released a unanimous statement in support of Pankey. Earlier in February 2023, Republican FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson announced her plan to resign from the agency citing her opposition to Khan's leadership, including her refusal to recuse from the FTC lawsuit against Meta. In July 2023, Republicans had her testify before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Democrats on the committee defended Khan and the actions of the agency, arguing that she was taking steps that protected user privacy