FOX Business’ Charlie Gasparino reports on legal experts saying the TikTok employee’s lawsuit has a low chance of winning.
President Trump on Friday ordered Chinese tech firm ByteDance to disinvest all U.S. assets, including the popular TikTok app, within 90 days.
In the order, the Trump administration said there was “credible evidence” to indicate that ByteDance could “take action that threatens to restrict U.S. national security.” The president has in recent days threatened to ban TikTok from operating in the US unless it is sold to a US company.
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In addition to the rejection, Trump ordered ByteDance to destroy all US user data within the 90-day window. The Foreign Investment Commission can check the company to confirm that the data was deleted as necessary.
Trump’s order seeks to cancel the purchase of ByteDance from Musical.ly, the app that eventually became TikTok, following a review by The Committee on Foreign Investment.
ByteDance must notify the Foreign Investment Commission in writing before completing any sale of TikTok and its other US assets.
“As we have said before, TikTok is loved by 100 million Americans because it is a home for entertainment, self-expression and connection,” the company said in a statement. “We are committed to passing on to families and bringing meaningful careers to joy for those who have been creating on our platform for many years.”
The order appeared to extend Trump’s impressive deadline for a deal. Earlier this month, Trump issued an order that would exclude transactions between U.S. entities and TikTok, effectively shutting down the app if ByteDance does not sell its U.S. business within 45 days.
The Trump administration has long argued that TikTok puts Americans’ privacy data at risk.
“We are shocked by the recent executive order, which was issued without any proper process,” TikTok said in a statement on August 7. “For almost a year, we have been working in good faith with the US government to come up with a constructive solution to the concerns expressed.”
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Microsoft has emerged as a leading candidate to buy TikTok. Apple has denied public interest in taking over the social media platform.
Trump has signaled that he would approve if Microsoft bought TikTok.
The spat of TikTok with the Trump administration is one of several ongoing legal issues for the embattled platform.
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The company is suing a federal class action lawsuit in which parents based in several states claim that TikTok steals data from underage users and sends it to servers in China, NPR reported. TikTok has denied crimes.
In a custom submission late Friday night, lawyers claimed that TikTok had shared users’ history data with data from Facebook and Google without their permission.
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