FTC asks judge to delay Amazon trial due to resource constraints
[March 13, 2025] HALELUYA
HADERO
The Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge on Wednesday to delay
a trial in a case accusing Amazon of using deceptive practices in its
Prime subscription program, citing staffing and budgetary challenges at
the government agency.
Jonathan Cohen, a lawyer for the FTC, made the request before U.S.
District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing the legal proceedings from a
2023 lawsuit the commission filed against the e-commerce giant in
Washington state.
“Our resource constraints are severe and really unique to this moment,”
Cohen said during a status hearing on Wednesday. “We have lost employees
in the agency, in our division and on the case team.”
When the judge asked if the agency’s challenges were due to recent cuts
in the federal government, Cohen said it was, adding that some employees
chose to leave the FTC following the “Fork in the road” email sent by
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in January. Staff
members who resigned for other reasons also have not been replaced due
to a government hiring freeze, he said.
The Amazon trial had been scheduled to start in September. The FTC is
seeking to relax some of the deadlines in the case and a delay akin to a
two-month continuance. The agency does not want to “move the trial back
more than a couple of months,” Cohen said.
Currently, the agency's legal team is “racing at considerable cost” to
meet a late April deadline for discovery while at the same time dealing
with restrictive rules on purchasing court documents and travel, Cohen
explained.
Other factors could hamper staffers' preparations for the trial, he
said. In April, FTC employees will have to spend time packing up and
vacating their office building so they can potentially move into “an
abandoned USAID facility,” Cohen said.
Chun, the judge, asked how “things are going to be different in two
months” with the issues the agency is experiencing.
Cohen responded by saying he “cannot guarantee if things won’t be even
worse.”
“But there are a lot of reasons to believe ... we have been through the
brunt of it, at least for a while,” he said.
During the hearing, John Hueston, an attorney representing Amazon,
pushed back on the agency's request. He said most of the FTC attorneys
assigned to the Amazon case were still employed by the agency.
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The Federal Trade Commission building is seen in Washington on Dec.
8, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
 Even in the case of staff turnover,
the government still lacks the grounds to seek a delay since changes
in legal teams happen often, Hueston argued. Amazon executives and
trial lawyers already cleared their schedules for a September trial,
and the company has wanted to clear its name for more than two
years, he said.
“We really want to keep the date" for the trial, Hueston said.
The lawsuit, which was brought under former FTC Chair Lina Khan,
alleged Amazon had enrolled consumers in the Prime program without
consent and made it difficult for them to cancel their
subscriptions.
The agency filed the case months before it submitted an antitrust
lawsuit against the retail and technology company, accusing it of
having monopolistic control over online markets. Attorneys for that
case, which is scheduled to go to trial in October 2026, presented
economic arguments in court last week.
Like other tech companies, Amazon has been attempting to forge
friendlier ties with President Donald Trump, who repeatedly
criticized the company during his first term.
In December, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he was “optimistic”
about Trump's second term. The same month, the company said it would
donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Bezos, along with
other tech leaders, was also a guest at the inauguration.
This week, Amazon's Prime Video service began streaming “The
Apprentice,” the long-running TV show that boosted Trump's profile
before he ran for president. The company is also working on a
documentary that offers an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes look”
into the life of first lady Melania Trump.
Meanwhile, Bezos has made changes to The Washington Post, which he
owns, that some critics have cast as favorable to Trump.
Before the election, Bezos defended the newspaper’s decision not to
endorse a presidential candidate as “right” and “principled.” He
rejected speculation that he ordered the non-endorsement to protect
his business interests.
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