• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 12, 2023

The House Judiciary Committee is demanding information from Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan regarding the agency's ongoing probe of Twitter.

In a letter sent to Khan on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the committee was investigating the FTC's “abuse of its statutory authorities.”

Jordan wrote that the committee was issuing a subpoena because the agency failed to voluntarily provide information requested by lawmakers.

An FTC spokesperson said the agency has offered to brief Jordan's staff multiple times about the investigation into Twitter's compliance with a consent decree over alleged privacy failures.

That decree prohibits the company from misrepresenting its privacy practices, among other terms. The settlement stemmed from allegations that Twitter misled users by asking for their phone numbers and email addresses for security purposes, but harnessing the data for ad targeting.

Around two weeks after Musk purchased the company and immediately began firing people -- including the former head of safety -- the FTC said it was “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

Soon afterwards, the FTC reportedly asked Twitter for information regarding material shared with journalists who reported on the so-called “Twitter Files” -- which involved the company's prior editorial decisions, including the brief suppression of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Khan reportedly said in a March 27 letter to Jordan that the agency was investigating whether Twitter disclosed users' private communications to the journalists, in violation of the earlier consent decree.

Jordan characterized that response as "pretextual at best," writing that the FTC's requests for information went beyond the scope of the consent decree.

The subpoena comes around one month after the committee released a staff report that accused the FTC of “harassing” Twitter due to Musk's decision to reinstate accounts of prominent conservatives.