US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay an upcoming TikTok ban while he works on a “political resolution”.
His lawyer filed a legal brief on Friday with the court that says Trump “opposes banning TikTok” and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office”.
On 10 January, the court is due to hear arguments on a US law that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media company to an American firm or face a ban come 19 January – a day before Trump takes office.
US officials and lawmakers had accused ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government – which the firm denies.
Those allegations of an app that has 170 million users in the US led Congress to pass a bill in April, which President Joe Biden signed into law, that included the divest or ban requirement.
TikTok and ByteDance have filed multiple legal challenges against the law, arguing that it threatens American free speech protections, with little success. With no potential buyer materialising so far, the companies’ final chance to derail the ban has been via the American high court.
While the Supreme Court has 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 cases on 10 January – just days before the ban is due to take effect.
Trump had met with TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.
In his court filing on Friday, Trump said the case represents “an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other”.
While the filing said that Trump “takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute”, it added that pushing back the 19 January deadline would grant Trump “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution” to the matter without having to resort to the court.
The US justice department has argued that alleged Chinese links to TikTok present a national security threat – and multiple state governments have raised concerns about the popular social media app.
Nearly two dozen state attorney generals led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen have urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law compelling 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 extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and successive presidents.”
Trump has publicly said he opposes the ban, despite supporting one in his first term as president.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he claimed at a press conference earlier in December, although a majority of young voters backed his opponent, Kamala Harris.
“There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” he added.
