US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief on Friday urging the Supreme Court to block legislation that would ban TikTok if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance, a day before the January 20 inauguration. Is.
“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the Court should consider staying the statutory deadlines to allow further relief to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote. Wrote to give them “the opportunity to pursue a political solution”.
US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief on Friday urging the Supreme Court to block legislation that would ban TikTok if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance, a day before the January 20 inauguration. Is.
“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the Court should consider staying the statutory deadlines to allow further relief to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote. Wrote to give them “the opportunity to pursue a political solution”.
Trump fiercely opposed TikTok during his first term from 2017-21 and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.
Republicans expressed concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government could access US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.
US officials have also raised concerns over the video-sharing app’s popularity among young people, alleging that its parent company is beholden to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims the company and the Chinese government have rejected. Has been denied.
Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government taking a share of the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went a step further – signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.
However, Trump has now changed his stance.
“Now (that) I think about it, I’m all for TikTok, because you need competition,” he recently told Bloomberg.
“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”
Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and part of his Meta Tech empire, was one of the social media networks that banned Trump following the attacks by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
This ban was imposed due to concerns that he would use the platform to promote more violence.
The restrictions on major social media platforms were later lifted.
In a brief filed on Friday, Trump’s lawyers made it clear that the President-elect has not taken a position on the legal merits of the current case.
“President Trump does not take a position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” John Sawyer wrote in the amicus curiae — or “friends of the court” — brief.
“Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment until January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus allowing the incoming administration of President Trump Provides an opportunity to pursue a political solution to the questions on this issue.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
