FTC Names General Counsel and Heads of Consumer Protection and Competition Bureaus

The Federal Trade Commission has a new general counsel and two new heads of bureaus.

FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson announced the appointments Monday (Feb. 10).

The new director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection is Christopher Mufarrige, a consumer protection lawyer who served in the first President Donald Trump administration as senior adviser to the director and deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most recently served as FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak’s chief of staff and attorney adviser.

“The Bureau of Consumer Protection, with Chris at the helm, will work every day to protect the American consumer from fraud and to safeguard children when they are online,” Ferguson said in a Monday press release.

The new director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition is Daniel Guarnera, who served as a trial attorney and counsel to the assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division during the first Trump administration and most recently served as chief of the Civil Conduct Task Force at the Antitrust Division.

“He has tremendous experience litigating antitrust cases in critical markets, including agriculture and Big Tech,” Ferguson said of Guarnera in another Monday press release. “Few lawyers in America have as much experience taking on Big Tech as Dan. He also has experience using the antitrust laws to promote competition in labor and healthcare markets — two of my top priorities.”

The new general counsel of the FTC is Lucas Croslow, who most recently served as deputy solicitor general of Virginia. Before that, Croslow served as a senior Senate staffer for the confirmations of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and as a lawyer in private practice.

“The commission will receive top-notch legal advice with Lucas Croslow as its general counsel,” Ferguson said in a third Monday press release.

The FTC is likely to continue to bring enforcement actions against tech companies that are alleged to have made false, fraudulent or overstated claims about artificial intelligence, Duane Pozza, a former FTC assistant director who is now a partner at law firm Wiley Rein, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January.

“The new leadership at the FTC remains concerned about deception in the marketplace,” Pozza said.