Industry lawyer likely to get FTC consumer job

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission is expected to appoint an industry lawyer who has represented Facebook, Uber and Equifax to lead the agency’s consumer protection bureau tasked with policing those companies.

The lawyer, Andrew Smith, would recuse himself from any potential investigations or enforcement involving dozens of companies he has worked for over the past two years while at Covington & Burling in Washington, including many banks, lenders, credit-reporting agencies and technology companies, according to two people familiar with his proposed appointment but were not authorized to speak publicly.

Those recusals would force Smith to step aside from his bureau’s most prominent inquiries: the investigations into incidents at Facebook and Equifax that leaked the data of tens of millions of people. He also would not be involved in enforcing an FTC settlement with Uber over a data breach.

Joseph Simons, the FTC’s chairman, has put Smith’s appointment up for a vote, causing debate among the five commissioners, one person close to the FTC said. Such appointments are typically perfunctory votes. Four of the commissioners, including Simons, were sworn in this month. Simons and the two other Republican commissioners are expected to approve Smith’s appointment, the person said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate’s consumer protection subcommittee, said Smith has the wrong résumé to run the nation’s top consumer protection office.

“It isn’t the specific clients. It’s the culture and mindset that’s important. He’s on the wrong side of these issues,” Blumenthal said. “I can imagine worse choices, but not many.”

Blumenthal said Smith’s appointment was particularly concerning given that, for a congressional hearing on the Equifax breach last fall, the trade group representing credit reporting agencies chose Smith to testify on behalf of the industry.