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WASHINGTON, D.C. – America First Legal (AFL) has submitted a public comment in support of X Corp.’s petition asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reopen and set aside, or substantially modify, a 2022 consent order imposed during the Biden Administration. AFL urges the FTC to grant the petition in full and terminate the weaponization of regulatory power against free speech.
AFL’s comment demonstrates that the 2022 FTC enforcement action was politically motivated and part of a broader Biden-era effort to weaponize the FTC and control American speech:
The timeline is unmistakable: Elon Musk signed the agreement to acquire Twitter on April 25, 2022. Exactly one month later, on May 25, the Department of Justice and FTC filed the complaint alleging violations of the 2011 order. The twenty-year consent decree was entered the very next day—May 26—negotiated with the prior management before Musk took control. After the acquisition, the FTC unleashed what the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government called an “aggressive campaign” against X. Within months, the agency issued more than a dozen letters containing over 350 specific demands on personnel decisions, internal communications involving Elon Musk, Twitter Blue, office equipment sales, and interactions with journalists—many with “little to no nexus” to privacy or data security. The FTC specifically weaponized the order to demand that X identify journalists granted access to the “Twitter Files,” naming Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Abigail Shrier—an unmistakable attempt to chill protected speech and editorial independence. FTC staff also improperly pressured the independent assessor Ernst & Young, signaling in advance the findings they expected and threatening significant consequences if those findings were not delivered.
This pattern of abuse confirms that the FTC was deployed as a political instrument to punish X for embracing free speech. AFL therefore urges the Commission to grant X’s petition, vacate the order, disclose the undisclosed enforcement policies that enabled this weaponization, and restore the agency to its proper role of consumer protection rather than speech control.
AFL has been a leader in the fight to expose and dismantle the federal government’s censorship infrastructure. AFL uncovered the Biden Administration’s collusion with Big Tech to suppress Americans’ online speech through landmark FOIA litigation, served as counsel for Representative Jim Jordan and 44 other Members of Congress as amici in Murthy v. Missouri, and directly investigated the FTC’s own conduct–filing an Inspector General request into whether agency leadership abused its authority and retaliated against Twitter after the release of the Twitter Files, submitting a Senate Ethics complaint regarding congressional pressure on the FTC, filing FOIA requests targeting the agency’s demands about journalists, and suing the FTC in federal court for concealing records of its campaign against X.
Additionally, AFL’s comment argues that:
The company that entered the consent order no longer exists, and the order no longer serves its intended regulatory purpose. The FTC has used the order’s broad investigative authority in ways that threaten First Amendment protections, including inquiries unrelated to consumer privacy. The order imposes costly and unnecessary compliance burdens that hinder American leadership in artificial intelligence. The FTC should disclose the policies underlying its enforcement decisions rather than rely on undisclosed standards. The order grants the FTC sweeping subpoena-like investigative powers that are inconsistent with principles of transparency, fairness, and due process. The FTC Act requires actual or likely substantial consumer harm before imposing this type of enforcement action, yet no such consumer harm existed here.
“The Biden Administration implemented a whole-of-government approach to censor opposing views, silence American speech, and crush those it viewed as political opposition,” said Gene Hamilton, President of America First Legal. “This FTC consent order, in particular, is an egregious example of the ideologues in the Biden Administration using the levers of federal power to advance a political agenda totally detached from the law. The FTC should grant X’s petition, disclose the policies underlying its enforcement decisions, and end a consent order that threatens free speech, due process, and the principles of a transparent government.”
Read the full comment here.
Find more of AFL’s public comments here.
Learn more about AFL’s government accountability work here.
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