So he’s actually the judge who basically works for the Federal Trade Commission. However, in America, judges, no matter what government agency they work for, must rule independently. Whether this actually happens is another matter, of course, but as far as I’ve learned from the US attorneys I follow, it seems to work well in the FTC case.

It’s also the case that if the same FTC judge says “Guys, this doesn’t stand a chance, stop it” that the FTC can still say “Yeah, but wait a minute, you work for us, we figure out what we’re going to do and we’re not going to continue, we’re just going to continue what we’re doing!”.

However, the problem with the FTC is that the case escalates further and they end up in general court. The truly independent judges who work for the justice system and the Federal Trade Commission have no control over that at all.

Conversely, if an FTC judge says “Yeah, MS/ABK, we won’t do that, the FTC is right” that MS/ABK can be appealed and the case will escalate to general court again.

I understand that there is a very good chance that the FTC court itself, like the injunction judge, will say that the FTC does not have a case here, and therefore the FTC will lose in its court in its court. It seems to happen often.