Billionaire lobbying Harris to remove trade chief has companies she's investigating: CNN

Another billionaire calling for the removal of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan owns companies under active investigation by the consumer watchdog.

Barry Diller, chairman of the travel site Expedia and the conglomerate IAC, has said in recent interviews that he would donate the maximum to Kamala Harris' campaign and lobby her to replace Khan, but he backed away from a previous remark calling the FTC chair a "dope" who opposed "almost anything" business leaders wanted to do, reported CNN.

“I said ‘she’s a dope.' She isn't," Diller told CNN. "She’s smart but I believe overreaches in disrupting sensible business combinations."

The FTC has multiple ongoing investigations into some of IAC's subsidiaries, some of which include the media brands Angi, People and Care.com, but it's not clear what companies are under active investigation.

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Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn who donated $10 million to the Biden-Harris campaign, has also called for Khan's removal, saying she is “waging war on American business."

The FTC has gained a reputation for blocking mergers under Khan's leadership, but the agency reviews fewer than 2 percent of deals annually and blocks fewer than 1 percent of them.

An alliance of more than 20 consumer groups has called on Harris to "publicly signal" support for Khan, who was credited last week by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as a major factor in economic gains under President Joe Biden.