Trump urges US Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban
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| Trump asks US supreme court to pause ban-or-divest law for TikTok |
US President-elect Donald Trump has urged the US Supreme Court to postpone an upcoming TikTok ban while he works on a "political solution".
His lawyer filed a legal brief with the court on Friday, saying Trump "opposes a ban on TikTok" and "wants the ability to resolve existing issues through political means after taking office".
On January 10, the court is scheduled to hear arguments on a US law that would require TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media company to an American firm or face a ban on January 19 - the day before Trump takes office.
US officials and lawmakers had accused ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government - which the firm has denied.
Those allegations from the app, which has 170 million users in the US, led Congress to pass a bill in April, which President Joe Biden signed into law, that included a requirement for divestment or a ban.
TikTok and ByteDance have filed multiple legal challenges against the law, arguing that it threatens US free speech protections, but have had little success. With no potential buyers found so far, the companies' last chance to derail the ban is through the US high court.
While the Supreme Court previously declined to act on a request for an emergency injunction against the law, it agreed to allow TikTok, ByteDance and the US government to plead their case until January 10 - just days before the ban was set to take effect.
Trump met with TikTok CEO Shu Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.
In his court filing on Friday, Trump said the case "reflects an unprecedented, new and difficult tension between free-speech rights on the one hand and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other".
While the filing said Trump "takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute", it added that pushing back the January 19 deadline would give Trump "an opportunity to seek a political resolution" to the case without resorting to the courts.
The US Justice Department has argued that alleged Chinese ties to TikTok pose a threat to national security - and several state governments have raised concerns about the popular social media app. Nearly two dozen state attorneys general, led by Montana's Austin Knudsen, have urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law requiring ByteDance and TikTok to be sold or banned. In early December, a federal appeals court rejected an effort to overturn the law, saying it was the result of “broad, bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.” Trump has publicly said he opposes the ban, though he supported it during his first term as president. In an early December press conference, he claimed, “I have a warm heart for TikTok because I beat young people by 34 points,” though most young voters supported his opponent, Kamala Harris. “Some people say TikTok had something to do with that,” he added.