A lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission has withdrawn his comments about a lack of resources and staff turnover hampering the agency’s preparations for a lawsuit over Amazon’s Prime program.
FTC attorney Jonathan Cohen asked a federal judge at a hearing Wednesday to delay the September trial and relax deadlines in the case, citing budget and staffing shortages.
“I want to clarify the comments I made today: I was wrong,” Cohen wrote in the letter. “The Commission is not resource-constrained, and we are fully prepared to litigate this case.”
In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Thursday, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson also said “the attorney was wrong.”
“I have made it clear from Day 1 that we will devote the resources necessary to this case,” Ferguson said, adding that the FTC “will never shy away from taking on Big Tech.”
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the agency’s reversal of the decision.
Cohen made his original comments while seeking to postpone a trial stemming from a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit accusing Amazon of enrolling consumers in its Prime program without their consent and making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions.
With the request coming amid cost-cutting efforts driven by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the judge questioned whether budget and staff reductions at federal agencies had affected the FTC’s preparedness.
Cohen stated that some employees decided to leave the FTC following the administration’s “fork in the road” email in January. Staff members who resigned for other reasons also have not been replaced due to the government hiring freeze, he stated.