TikTok Strikes Back at Trump Admin's Executive Order, Threatens Legal Action
Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
TikTok shot back at President Trump's executive order, signed Thursday night, that will ban U.S. transactions with the company on September 20, raising the specter of legal action.
The order cites national security concerns that the Chinese-owned company shares data with the Chinese government. Trump also signed a similar order against social media app WeChat. The TikTok order also cites censorship by the Chinese Communist Party and alleges that it could use the app for future disinformation campaigns.
"We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process," TikTok posted in a blog Friday morning.
"For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses."
Now the Culver City-based subsidiary of Beijing-based ByteDance appears ready to respond.
"We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly — if not by the Administration, then by the US courts," the statement said.
Trump's executive order formalizes the timeframe that Microsoft has to complete its purchase of TikTok. The Seattle-based firm is reportedly interested in acquiring TikTok's global business, not just its operations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as previously reported.
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Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
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