Last year, Congress passed a law banning TikTok in the U.S. unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, sold its stake in the platform to a non-Chinese company within nine months, or twelve if a sale was in progress. The Supreme Court upheld the law unanimously and TikTok disappeared from U.S. app stores.
But when he took office, Trump told the Department of Justice not to enforce the law for 75 days while his administration reviewed it. He also told Bondi to tell companies they can continue to carry the TikTok app “without incurring any legal liability,” no matter what the law says.
The letters she wrote, newly available through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, suggest Trump can ignore the law because of his “unique constitutional responsibility for the national security of the United States, the conduct of foreign policy, and other vital executive functions.” The law banning TikTok— that Congress passed, President Joe Biden signed, and the Supreme Court upheld 9–0— had to give way, she wrote, to Trump’s “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.”