FTC Chairman Orders Appointees to Cut Ties With ABA After Criticism
FTC political appointees are prohibited from holding leadership roles in the American Bar Association, participating in ABA events or renewing ABA memberships, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced Feb. 14.
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The new policy comes after ABA issued multiple statements critical of the Trump administration. In a statement Feb. 10, ABA condemned the administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” and attempts at “wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress.” ABA issued another statement Feb. 11 in response to “recent remarks of high-ranking officials of the administration that appear to question the legitimacy of judicial review” and officials' calls for judicial impeachments.
Ferguson said in a letter to FTC staff Friday that federal antitrust enforcers and the private antitrust bar have “enjoyed a cozy relationship facilitated” by ABA’s Antitrust Law Section. “The ABA’s long history of leftist advocacy and its recent attacks on the Trump-Vance Administration’s governing agenda, however, have made this relationship untenable." He accused the ABA of issuing a “breathless screed leveled against President Donald J. Trump’s swift and tireless delivery on his promises to the American people to confront our existential immigration crisis and end waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.”
ABA didn’t immediately comment.