U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024.
Cheney Orr | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause implementation of a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. on Jan. 19 if the app is not sold by its Chinese parent company.
The court is due to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” wrote D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for U.S. solicitor general. “Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”
The law at the heart of the suit is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a bipartisan measure passed by Congress and subsequently signed into law by President Joe Biden in April.
The law would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban.
Earlier this month, the court decided to hear the case and fast-tracked the schedule for briefing and oral arguments. However, the court punted on TikTok’s request to pause implementation of the ban, leaving just nine days after oral arguments for them to issue an opinion or indefinitely block the law.
Trump, in his court filing, suggested he could negotiate a political resolution to the matter before the court needs to rule.
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” Sauer wrote.
Trump previously met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in December, hours after the president-elect expressed he had a “warm spot” for the app.
The Justice Department and TikTok also submitted briefs in the case on Friday, mainly rehashing arguments they made before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
That court upheld the law, concluding that the government’s national security justifications for banning the app, including concerns that the Chinese government could access data about American users and manipulate content on the app, were legitimate.