Race to replace FTC chair Lina Khan pits antitrust hawks against candidate softer on Big Tech: sources

The race to replace Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission is coming to a head, pitting antitrust hawks against a top candidate who is seen taking a softer approach to Big Tech enforcement, sources told The Post.

Populist allies of President-elect Donald Trump have pushed for a crackdown on Google and other Siliicon Valley firms — including Vice President-elect JD Vance who in the past has praised Khan, the 35-year-old trustbuster appointed in 2021 by President Biden.

Other top Republicans, however, favor a more business-friendly approach to enforcement that will clear the way for dealmaking and acquisitions.

A top contender is Melissa Holyoak, a Republican FTC commissioner who also is the former Republican solicitor-general of Utah.

Holyoak, who took heat during her FTC vetting process over her previous ties to Silicon Valley, would be expected to allow for dealmaking so long as consumers are protected, sources said.

Holyoak is one of a trio of hopefuls that also includes Andrew Ferguson, her fellow sitting Republican on the FTC, and former DOJ and FTC official Mark Meador, who served as an antitrust policy adviser for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“I’d call Melissa the slight favorite,” one source close to the transition team told The Post.

However, anti-monopoly watchdogs have ripped Holyoak over her previous five-year stint as an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank that has received funding from Google, Meta and Amazon and which “advocates abolishing antitrust law,” according to its website.

“There’s a big divide between Big Tech and Little Tech. She is very much seen as the preferred choice of Big Tech,” the source close to the transition team said. “That is definitely the biggest thing working against her. I could see that closeness with Meta and Google ultimately derailing her.”

As for Meador, the Financial Times recently cited concerns among unnamed “Wall Street and Big Tech executives” who reportedly fear that he would continue the same practices as Khan and Kanter.

Lee, the influential top Republican on the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, told the FT that he was confident that either Holyoak and Meador would “continue to hold Big Tech accountable” if they were picked.

Ferguson is the former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Concerns that Ferguson’s ties to McConnell — who has had a difficult relationship with Trump over the years — could hurt his chances to land the top FTC gig are overblown, according to Mike Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations to under then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.

“He worked for McConnell, but he’s a hard-charging, Trump supporting ‘America First’ populist,” Davis said. “Andrew has proven that at every job he’s held, whether it was in the Senate where he confirmed Trump’s judges, in the Virginia attorney general’s office when he brought the groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit against Google, and on the Federal Trade Commission, where he’s held Big Tech accountable.”

As current commissioners, Ferguson and Holyoak have already been confirmed by the Senate and would not need to go through the process again.

That gives them an easier path to take over as acting chair and eventually the permanent pick.

Conversely, Meador would first have to be confirmed as an FTC commissioner — a lengthy process that would likely see Trump appoint Holyoak or Ferguson as acting chair until it could be completed.

Holyoak’s team believes that she has a “very good shot” to be named acting FTC chair following Khan’s departure, a second source familiar with the situation said.

Khan and DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter are set to leave their posts after Trump’s inauguration after taking a hard-charging approach to enforcement that infuriated Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Multiple sources described the situation as fluid and couldn’t rule out the possibility that Trump would nix all three frontrunners and pick someone else.

Other recent picks, such as attorney general nominee Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent, are expected to have input on the FTC selection as well.

“If President Trump picks Holyoak as acting or permanent FTC chair, it’s an indication that he’s throwing in the towel against Big Tech,” one former Capitol Hill staffer who tracks antitrust issues told The Post. “Lobbyists, executives and lawyers for Big Tech companies will rejoice far and wide.”

Earlier this year, The Post obtained emails that showed a chummy relationship between Holyoak and her former colleagues at CEI, including exchanging legal advice on notable cases such as the Apple v. Epic Games antitrust battle.

During one exchange with Holyoak, CEI boss Kent Lassman wrote of the FTC that “burning it to the ground is too good for it.”

A source close to Holyoak pushed back on the criticism, noting that she faced off in court against Google, TikTok and Facebook during her time in Utah and has never represented any of the companies in private practice.

Holyoak has also pushed for the FTC to crack down on de-platforming and censorship by Big Tech companies, most recently in a concurring statement related to an FTC action against online sneaker retailer GOAT earlier this month, the source added.

In Utah, Holyoak played a role in negotiating the terms of Google’s $700 million settlement with a coalition of US states over anticompetitive Android app store practices — a deal that some critics blasted as being too lenient.

A key piece of Trump’s antitrust agenda took shape Wednesday after he nominated Gail Slater, an Oxford-educated lawyer and top Vance aide, to serve as the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general on antitrust.

Slater had also been seen as a top contender for FTC chair prior to her selection. Anti-monopoly watchdogs lauded the move as a sign that Trump wants a crackdown on firms like Google and Apple to continue.

In his Truth Social post announcing the pick, Trump said “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector” and added that the DOJ antitrust division would continue a crackdown on bad actors “under Gail’s leadership.”

One tech policy executive who requested anonymity said Holyoak’s nomination as FTC chair would be a boon to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, who is currently being sued by the FTC — even as its rivals, Google and Apple, are being sued by the DOJ.

“Meta is fine with Gail at DOJ and Melissa heading FTC because they’ll have a bulldog going after their enemies [Apple and Google] at the DOJ and a lapdog ending their prosecutions by the FTC,” the tech policy executive said.

Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not return requests for comment.

She previously said that decisions about Trump’s nominations “will be announced when they are made.”

Holyoak and Slater declined to comment. Meador did not return a request for comment.