Sanders Rebukes Billionaire Effort to Get Harris to Dump Antitrust Champion Khan

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has spoken out against the billionaire effort to oust Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, a Biden administration appointee who has cracked down on large corporations throughout her tenure.

In a post on social media on Thursday, Sanders said that the recent, brazen push by billionaires to influence Vice President Kamala Harris to dump Khan from her hypothetical presidential cabinet is yet another show of the corrupting influence of money in politics.

“Here’s why we have to overturn Citizens United & end Big Money in politics: Billionaire Reid Hoffman donated $7 million to the Harris campaign. Now, he wants her, as president, to fire an outstanding members [sic] of the Biden Administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan,” Sanders said in a post on social media on Thursday. “Not acceptable.”

In recent days, billionaires and large Democratic donors have been speaking out against Khan, who represents a threat to corporate interests.

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman — a venture capitalist deeply enmeshed with corporate interests — came out publicly against Khan in an interview with CNN this week, likening Khan’s efforts to rein in corporate abuses as a “war” on corporate power. Hoffman, who campaign filings show has donated $7 million to Harris’s campaign, outright said he “would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.”

In comments to CNN, Sanders criticized “the arrogance of Mr. Hoffman” and said that Khan was one of the best FTC chairs in history. “Billionaires should not be telling candidates who to be keeping on or not,” he told the outlet. “This concerns me because Lina Khan is doing a great job and I would hope and expect that the VP, if she wins, keeps her on.”

Another billionaire, Barry Diller, chairman of holding company IAC, also brazenly announced that he would mount a lobbying effort against Khan for her crackdowns in an interview with CNBC. Diller has pledged to donate the maximum amount to Harris’s campaign, called Khan a “dope” and said that he would lobby Harris to dump Khan.

Many other similar missives from donors have come anonymously, with one donor telling The New York Times that Harris is open to the idea. The Harris campaign has said that it has not had discussions about Khan’s future so far — though Wall Street donors have been pushing Democrats to drop Khan for months.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has also spoken in favor of Harris keeping Khan, saying in a statement that “Chair Khan has done an excellent job as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s broader competition agenda and should of course continue her work lowering costs, protecting workers, and supporting entrepreneurs — it’s a big reason the economy is growing strong as we saw with today’s GDP data,” referring to Thursday’s news that the U.S. GDP is growing at a 2.8 percent annual rate.

The replacement of Khan on the cabinet would be a major loss for backers of the antitrust movement; her appointment by Biden as FTC chair was lauded as a significant step forward for the administration’s purported efforts to take on increasing corporate power.

Under Khan, the FTC has taken on some of the largest corporations in America, including tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, pharmaceutical giants like Amgen, and other giants like Kroger. It also created a new rule banning employers from including noncompete clauses in worker contracts, a move that the agency said would raise worker wages by $300 billion annually.