President-elect Donald Trump is considering replacing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan with Andrew Ferguson.
Trump has not made a final decision and is set to meet with Ferguson this afternoon, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss the potential nomination. A decision could come soon.
If selected, Ferguson won’t need Senate confirmation since he is already on the commission.
Ferguson, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is well-known in Republican circles. He previously did stints as chief counsel for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and was the former solicitor general for Virginia. Ferguson was also a senior special counsel for incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Grassley told POLITICO on Tuesday that he reached out to Trump’s transition team about the benefits of picking Ferguson.
“He’s already a member of the commission, and he worked so hard for me,” Grassley said of his endorsement. “He headed up our judicial nominees for the Supreme Court — that’s a tough job. And I know his work ethic is very strong, he’s a strong person of convictions and he’s going to see that the law’s enforced.”
Asked about Ferguson’s potential pick, Graham told POLITICO, “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.” He declined to elaborate on any recent conversations, saying “I just want to lay low right now, don’t want to screw it up.”
Other contenders may still be in the mix. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee, told POLITICO he recommended his former staffer Mark Meador for an FTC role “one way or another.”
Meador is “one of several who I think could be considered for the chair role,” Lee said.
Lee stressed that whoever is named to the FTC “ought to see the same way as the incoming administration” and particularly dovetail with the ideology of Gail Slater, Trump’s recent pick to head the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, which frequently works — and occasionally clashes — with the FTC on antitrust matters.
“That’s one of the reasons I point them to Mark Meador,” Lee added. “Birds of a feather.”
Ferguson has taken a tough line on tech platforms in recent weeks, which is in line with several of other top Trump picks so far, including Brendan Carr, the incoming chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
“The FTC must protect Americans’ freedom of speech online,” Ferguson wrote in a statement early in December. “If platforms or advertisers are colluding to suppress free speech in violation of the antitrust laws, the FTC must prosecute them and break up those cartels.”
