Two people from Elon Musk’s DOGE, Gavin Kliger and Emily Bryant, were seen this week at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They are now named in the FTC’s internal directory under the Office of the Chairman with their own agency emails.
According to reports, an FTC spokesman named Joe Simonson said that DOGE’s job is to “root out waste, fraud, and abuse.”
One of the DOGErs (the Bobs) taking the lead at FTC cuts is Gavin Kliger, same guy who helped dismantle CFPB and all around charming individual https://t.co/EG5xXwkFPb… https://t.co/afEo6niMfb
— Luke Goldstein (@lukewgoldstein) April 4, 2025
It’s unclear what DOGE will go after now that it is under the hood of the FTC. Fewer than 1,200 people are working for this agency, whose job it is to protect consumers and uphold antitrust laws.
A few people who were on probation were let go earlier this year. Andrew Ferguson, the head of the FTC, has already made it clear that he thinks governing agencies should report to the president instead of being independent like they have been in the past.
Dems say that DOGE should not have access to FTC data
The government has access to a huge amount of private data on companies it studies and examines, such as evidence for Meta’s upcoming antitrust trial. In fact, one source says that the FTC keeps a lot of its case records on-site, while papers it gets through discovery are stored on a platform called Relativity.
In addition, the FTC keeps a close eye on Musk’s businesses. For example, X has been under a consent decree with the agency for a long time because of how Twitter treated user data badly before Musk bought the social network.
Musk recently supported the idea of taking away the FTC’s power to implement antitrust laws and putting that power in the Department of Justice. However, the Department of Justice has already worked with the FTC to decide which antitrust cases to pursue.
According to Dems, the only winners of DOGE’s attack on the FTC are Trump’s billionaire besties like [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and especially Musk. This is because Musk stands to gain access to confidential financial information about every company ever investigated by the FTC.
This includes auto manufacturers, aerospace firms, internet providers, tech companies, and banks that directly compete with their own companies.
Musk is not the only one against the FTC. Apparently, Trump has tried to fire Dems who work at the FTC. In one of Trump’s attempts to fire two Democratic FTC commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter recently said that the agency has some of the most commercially sensitive financial data of businesses throughout the economy.
Also, during a panel at the American Bar Association on Thursday, she said it would be “very illegal” and concerning if other market participants accessed such data.
Americans are worried that FTC will not be able to protect them
Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s appointee, promised to undo Lina Khan’s anti-monopoly legacy when he was chair.
When news came out that DOGE employees had snuck into the FTC, Trump’s massive new tariffs were still causing economic chaos around the world. This made people even more worried that U.S. companies would use the tariffs as a reason to raise prices and make more money.
The corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, Emily Peterson-Cassin, called the workers “Musk’s minions.” On Friday, she said that DOGE is once again raiding a federal watchdog tasked with protecting working Americans from Wall Street and Big Tech.
Peterson-Cassin said, “The FTC has worked to stop monopolistic mergers that would have led to higher grocery prices and is now gearing up to go to court against Meta’s social media monopoly.”
She added, “It’s no surprise that at this moment, while the economy is in freefall and fraud is on the rise, DOGE is choosing to raid the federal watchdog that protects everyday Americans and threatens corporate monopolies and grifters.”
On Thursday, Ferguson promised on social media that the FTC would be watching closely while he is in charge to ensure that companies don’t see Trump’s tariffs as a green light for price fixing or any other unlawful behavior.
However, Trump firing Dem commissioners has hurt the agency. This caused a lot of anger and has already made it harder for the FTC to go after big businesses.
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