US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay an upcoming ban on TikTok while he works on a “policy resolution”.
His lawyer filed a legal brief with the court on Friday saying Trump “opposes the TikTok ban” and “seeks the opportunity to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
On Jan. 10, the court is scheduled to hear arguments on a U.S. law that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media company to a U.S. company or face a ban on Jan. 19, a day before the Trump took office.
US officials and lawmakers had accused ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government – something the company denies.
These allegations about an app that has 170 million users in the United States led Congress to pass a bill in April, which President Joe Biden signed into law, that included the divestment or ban requirement.
TikTok and ByteDance have filed several legal challenges against the law, arguing that it threatens U.S. free speech protections, with little success. With no potential buyers having materialized so far, the companies’ last chance to derail the ban lies before the US high court.
While the Supreme Court previously declined to grant a request for an emergency injunction against the law, it agreed to allow TikTok, ByteDance and the US government to argue their case on January 10, just days before the entry into force of the ban.
Trump met with TikTok CEOShou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.
In his court filing Friday, Trump said the case represented “an unprecedented, new and difficult tension between the right to free speech on the one hand and the foreign policy and national security concerns of the other.”
While the filing says Trump “takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” it adds that pushing back the Jan. 19 deadline would give Trump “the opportunity to pursue a political solution” to the issue without having to go to court. .
The U.S. Department of Justice has argued that China’s alleged ties to TikTok present a national security threat — and several state governments have raised concerns about the popular social media app.
Nearly two dozen state attorneys general, led by Austin Knudsen of Montana, urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law forcing ByteDance and TikTok to divest or be banned.
Earlier in December, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt to overturn the legislation, saying it was “the culmination of far-reaching bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.”
Trump has publicly stated that he opposes the ban, although he supported one during his first term as president.
“I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he said during a press conference in early December, even though a majority of young voters supported his opponent, Kamala Harris.
“There are those who say TikTok has something to do with it,” he added.
