President Donald Trump is preparing to nominate Melissa Holyoak, a Republican on the Federal Trade Commission, to be the US Attorney for Utah, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
An announcement could be made in the coming weeks but the exact timing is unclear, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discussing personnel plans.
Holyoak’s departure would leave the antitrust and consumer protection agency with just two commissioners, Chairman Andrew Ferguson and his fellow Republican Mark Meador. The five-member, traditionally bipartisan body was thrown into upheaval earlier this year when Trump fired its two Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.
The pair maintain their firings were illegal and are currently challenging their removal in court, though Bedoya formally resigned this week in order to take another job.
The FTC can typically conduct official agency business with just two commissioners. However, if a court were to rule that Slaughter and Bedoya were illegally fired, that could affect the ability for the commission to have a quorum with just two members.
The decision to nominate Holyoak is not final until an announcement has been made, the people said.
Holyoak, the White House and the FTC did not respond to requests for comment.
Holyoak and Ferguson were first nominated by former President Joe Biden and they joined the FTC last year as minority commissioners. Before that she served as the solicitor general of Utah, where her cases included leading a group of states suing Alphabet Inc.’s Google for alleged antitrust violations involving its app store.
Since joining the FTC, Holyoak has pushed for the agency to study how tech platforms and financial institutions engage in practices like deplatforming, in which a company suspends or deletes user accounts because of what they post.
She was also opposed to Biden’s FTC Chair Lina Khan’s rulemaking on banning non-compete clauses in employment contracts, making it easier to cancel recurring subscriptions and increasing required notifications when an individual’s health information is exposed.
Before becoming Utah’s top appellate lawyer, Holyoak worked for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate-funded think tank whose donors include Google and Meta Platforms Inc. as well as the Charles Koch Institute and The 85 Fund, a charitable organization run by influential conservative activist Leonard Leo.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
