Billionaires on the Attack

In July, just days after President Joe Biden dropped out and Harris began campaigning, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, openly called for Khan’s removal while also backing Harris. Hoffman donated millions to Democrats this election cycle, including $6 million to Future Forward, a super PAC that supported both the Biden and Harris campaigns, and worked to rally Silicon Valley leaders behind the vice president.

Hoffman has a personal stake in Khan’s fate: in 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for more than $26 billion and has since taken a position on Microsoft’s board of directors. Microsoft is facing a Federal Trade Commission probe for acquiring another Hoffman-founded company, Inflection AI.

Hoffman’s attack on Khan was followed by a similar reproach from media executive Barry Diller, also a Harris supporter whose companies were also reportedly facing an FTC investigation. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign’s billionaire surrogate Mark Cuban said Khan was “hurting more than she’s helping.”

Cuban walked those comments back a few weeks later.

Although Khan was a Biden appointee — and a major pillar of his legacy — Harris refused to defend her against attacks from Hoffman, Diller, and others. Her campaign paid no lip service to Khan’s wins against corporate America, and Harris never appeared with her, despite Khan campaigning with downballot Democrats.

Some critics felt this was a mistake; recent polling data indicate that antitrust actions, including taking on Big Tech or Big Pharma, are popular across the aisle, and they certainly are among the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

Now, the news of the Federal Trade Commission’s Uber probe raises questions about Harris’s abandonment of Khan and whether President Joe Biden will take steps to reappoint Khan to the agency, allowing her to potentially serve under president-elect Donald Trump.

A Corporate-Tied Consiglieri

Before becoming Uber’s top lawyer, West made his career in the Justice Department, working his way up to associate attorney general. In 2014, he departed public service for the private sector.

West first took a job with soda giant PepsiCo, working as its vice president of government affairs and general counsel. In 2017, he left PepsiCo to become Uber’s general counsel. By 2020, he was making $12.3 million in annual compensation at the company.

When Harris announced her presidential bid, West took leave from his role at Uber to serve as her campaign adviser, reportedly becoming one of her strongest influences and most important confidants.

“He should never have been brought into the campaign, especially given the tension between [Democrats] and labor [advocates],” said Hal Singer, a professor of economics at the University of Utah. “[Harris] needed to forcefully articulate how she was going to assist labor, including misclassified workers. That couldn’t happen with Tony at the helm of policy. That Uber was under investigation by the FTC just makes the conflict worse.”

West brought with him close ties to Silicon Valley. As campaign adviser, West participated in fundraisers with a number of billionaires who have called for Khan to be ousted from a potential Harris administration, including Hoffman and Cuban — all while Harris’s campaign adopted pro-business talking points to court Wall Street.

At the same time, it’s now clear that Federal Trade Commission investigators were looking into Uber One.

The rideshare company has been in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission before, reaching a $20 million settlement with the agency over allegedly misleading drivers about their wages in 2018, before Khan’s tenure. The agency has since brought a similar claim against rival rideshare company Lyft.

Uber has spent more than $4.3 million since January 2023 lobbying Congress and regulators on “issues related to worker classification and possible anticompetitive activities that could limit consumers access to app-based technologies,” among other issues, disclosures show.

In November 2021, Uber launched Uber One, a consumer-facing subscription service that allows app users to pay a monthly membership fee in exchange for rideshare and food delivery perks. While federal regulators have not brought any action yet as a result of the investigation, Bloomberg’s report indicates that the agency’s probe stems from customer complaints about being enrolled in Uber One without their consent and how difficult it is to cancel the subscription.

Early settlement talks between the Federal Trade Commission and Uber’s lawyers, according to Bloomberg, had so far been unsuccessful.

“It’s unsurprising that West’s Uber was being investigated by the FTC, because I think there has never been a day in the life of Uber in which it wasn’t bending or breaking the law in pursuit of growth or profit,” Hauser said. “Oligarchs can sincerely advocate for right-wing populism on social issues, but it is nearly impossible for them to identify with working people on economic issues.”

Khan’s term technically expired in September, but she has continued to head the agency. If reappointed and confirmed to the role before Biden leaves office in January, Khan could remain a commissioner for the next seven years. Trump could try to remove Khan, but Hauser said the move would likely trigger a legal battle over a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that restricts a president’s ability to fire the commissioners because Congress created the agency.