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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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