A recent report claims that the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok plans to sue the Trump administration over an executive order banning the app from the United States.
A recent report from NPR claims that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok plans to sue the Trump administration after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the app from the United States. The lawsuit will reportedly be filed in the U.S.District Court for the Southern District of California where TikTok’s American HQ is based. The lawsuit may be filed as early as Tuesday, according to NPR sources.
The lawsuit reportedly alleges that President Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional as it failed to give the company time to respond, it further alleges that the administration’s justification of national security concerns is baseless. “It’s based on pure speculation and conjecture,” NPR’s source said. “The order has no findings of fact, just reiterates rhetoric about China that has been kicking around.”
The White House did not comment on the possible litigation but White House spokesman Judd Deere defended the executive order, stating: “The Administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and safety, and our economic and national security.”
In a statement about the executive order that bans any transaction between a U.S. citizen and TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, TikTok commented: “We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process. The text of the decision makes it plain that there has been a reliance on unnamed ‘reports’ with no citations, fears that the app ‘may be’ used for misinformation campaigns with no substantiation of such fears, and concerns about the collection of data that is industry standard for thousands of mobile apps around the world.”
Breitbart News recently reported that U.S. tech giant Microsoft will move forward with plans to purchase the U.S. operations of TikTok. Twitter is also reportedly interested in taking over Tiktok’s U.S. operations and is competing with Microsoft to take over the platform, which is wildly popular with teenagers.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com