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The Federal Trade Commission said it will meet the deadlines for its Amazon Prime deceptive practices case, hours after requesting a delay due to resource constraints.
An attorney for the federal agency made the about face Wednesday afternoon, saying he “was wrong.”
“The commission does not have resource constraints and we are fully prepared to litigate this case,” Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, wrote in a letter. “Please be assured that the FTC will meet whatever schedule and deadlines the court sets.”
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson confirmed that Cohen’s initial delay request was wrong.
“I have made it clear since Day One that we will commit the resources necessary for this case,” Ferguson told CNBC. “The Trump-Vance FTC will never back down from taking on Big Tech.”
An FTC spokesperson confirmed the agency is no longer requesting a delayed start date for the trial. Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attorneys for the FTC made the initial delay request during a status hearing earlier on Wednesday before Chun in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Chun had set a Sept. 22 start date for the trial.
Earlier Wednesday, Cohen had asked for a two-month continuance on the case due to staffing and budgetary shortfalls.
The FTC’s unusual reversal comes amid a push by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce spending. DOGE, which is led by tech baron Elon Musk, has slashed the federal government’s workforce by more than 62,000 workers in February alone.
Cohen had said that the FTC “lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team.”
Chun asked Cohen how the FTC’s situation “will be different in two months” if the agency is “in crisis now, as far as resources.” Cohen responded by saying that he “cannot guarantee if things won’t be even worse.” He pointed to the possibility that the FTC may have to move to another office “unexpectedly,” which could hamper its ability to prepare for the trial.
“But there’s a lot of reason to believe … we may have been through the brunt of it, at least for a little while,” Cohen said.
John Hueston, an attorney for Amazon, disputed Cohen’s delay request.
“There has been no showing on this call that the government does not have the resources to proceed to trial with the trial date as presently set,” Hueston said. “What I heard is that they’ve got the whole trial team still intact. Maybe there’s going to be an office move. And by the way, both in government and private sector, I’ve never heard of an office move being more than a few days disruptive.”
The FTC sued Amazon in June 2023, alleging that the online retailer was deceiving millions of customers into signing up for its Prime program and sabotaging their attempts to cancel it. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing, calling the FTC’s claims “wrong on the facts and the law.”
“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” former FTC Chair Lina Khan said at the time.
The FTC brought a separate case against Amazon in September 2023 accusing it of wielding an illegal monopoly. The agency alleged that Amazon prevents sellers from offering cheaper prices elsewhere through its anti-discounting measures. That case is set to go to trial in October 2026.
In the time since the FTC filed its cases, Khan has been replaced as the head of the FTC by Ferguson, a Trump appointee. Tech companies, which are the target of several regulatory agencies, have sought to curry favor with Trump, including Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. He attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, and Amazon was among several tech companies to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
— CNBC’s Eamon Javers contributed to this report.
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