The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday asked a federal judge that Amazon, accusing Amazon of using misleading practices at his major membership program, citing staffing and budgetary challenges in a government agency to delay a test in a case.
Jonathan Cohen, a FTC lawyer, requested the US District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing legal proceedings from the 2023 trial, which was filed by the Commission filed against the e-commerce legend in the state of Washington.
“Our lack of resources is serious and really unique for this moment,” Cohen said during a status hearing on Wednesday. “We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and in the case team.”
When the judge asked whether the federal government had the challenges of the agency due to the recent cuts, Cohen said that some employees selected that some employees selected the FTC after the “thorn in the road” email sent by the department of Elon Musk in January. He said that the members of the staff resigned for other reasons have also not been replaced due to the government’s work, he said.
The Amazon test was scheduled to begin in September. The FTC case is trying to relax some time limit and delay for two months of continuity. Cohen said that the agency “does not want to transfer the trial back more than a few months.”
Currently, the agency’s legal team is “racing at considerable costs” to complete the April deadline for discovery, while at the same time to deal with court documents and restrictive rules on travel, Cohen explained.
Other factors may obstruct the preparation of employees for testing, he said. In April, FTC employees would have to spend time to packing and vacate their office building so that they can potentially go to “an abandoned USAID facility”, Cohen said.
Judge, Chun, asked, “Things are going to be different in two months” with issues that the agency is experiencing.
Cohen replied that he cannot “guarantee what things would not be worse.”
“But there are lots of reasons to believe … we through its flaws, at least for some time,” he said.
During the hearing, John Houston, a lawyer representing Amazon, pushed back at the agency’s request.
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