President Donald Trump has illegally fired two of the five commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission. The commissioners were Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the Democrats on what is supposed to be a bipartisan commission that oversees the FTC. And that will allow Trump to tremendously weaken the FTC, which oversees consumer protection and competition laws.
Bedoya told Gizmodo in an interview that he was at his daughter’s gymnastics class on Tuesday when he learned he’d been fired.
“I got an email from the White House claiming that it was firing me but, of course, only the president can fire me and only the president can fire me for cause, which the email itself basically said they had none,” said Bedoya.
Under the law, presidents can only fire FTC commissioners in the case of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.” As Bedoya says, there’s no indication Trump’s stooges even tried to allege any of those things as a pretext for firing him.
Bedoya was quick to note that the danger of his firing wasn’t really about one person on the commission. It was about the larger picture, which will allow Trump to do any number of things that will harm the country.
“A lot of people are hearing the news and thinking of me,” Bedoya said, “they should be thinking about the billionaires over President Trump’s shoulder at his inauguration because what this does is throw open the door for corruption.”
Those billionaires at Trump’s inauguration included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Apple CEO Tim Cook all of whom donated at least $1 million to his inauguration fund. Some of those same guys even attended church with him on the day of the inauguration. And that’s not even counting Elon Musk, the billionaire currently taking a chainsaw to the U.S. federal government in a wildly illegal power play.
“Our job is to look at a merger and decide if it is legal or illegal, if it’s going to raise prices on consumers, lower wages for workers, screw over small businesses, and it’s our job to do that impartially and independently free of political pressure,’ said Bedoya.
Antitrust enforcement is a big part of the FTC’s mission and if Trump is able to allow any merger that benefits his wealthy friends, that means consumers are going to be harmed.
“What I fear is that when the next you know mega grocery store merger comes around it’s not going to matter if it raises prices on consumers because the only thing that will matter is what billionaire donor has the president’s ear and what strings he can pull with him,” said Bedoya.
Bedoya told Gizmodo that he’s not going to show up at the FTC office anymore, even though his firing was completely illegal, but he is going to be taking action in court. He’s also going to be testifying in Colorado at state-level committee hearings, a coincidence in timing where he presumably will have a forum to talk about what’s just happened.
But for now, Bedoya just wants people to know about the companies that seem to be cutting deals with President Trump in broad daylight. That’s where the focus should be as he dismantles the government and purges anyone who isn’t in his back pocket.
“We are the agency that enforces the law against the likes of Amazon, Meta, OpenAI and of course X,” Bedoya said, referring to Musk’s social media company which was previously known as Twitter.
“I think it’s really important that people pay attention to the fact, for example, that Amazon cut a deal with the First Lady to feature her in a documentary on her life that would result in $28 million of payments to her. And that Amazon also recently licensed The Apprentice for tens of millions of dollars,” Bedoya said.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, one of the three Republicans left on the commission, defended Trump’s illegal actions in a statement posted online.
“President Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch and is vested with all of the executive power in our government,” Ferguson wrote. “I have no doubts about his constitutional authority to remove Commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability for our government.”
Incredibly, many people really thought Trump would be cracking down on large corporations and Big Tech in particular. But that always seemed like a situation where Lucy had set up the football and was fully prepared to yank it away. Now that Trump has yanked away the football, people should be able to tell that this administration is always going to be looking out for the billionaires.