US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay the impending ban on TikTok while he works on a “policy resolution”.
His lawyer filed a legal memo in court on Friday saying Trump “opposes the TikTok ban” and “seeks the opportunity to resolve the issues through political means once he takes office.”
On Jan. 10, the court is due to hear arguments under a US law that requires TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media company to a US firm or face a ban on Jan. 19, the day before Trump takes office.
US officials and lawmakers have accused ByteDance of ties to the Chinese government – which the company denies.
Those claims about an app that has 170 million users in the U.S. prompted Congress to pass a bill in April that President Joe Biden signed into law that included the deprivation or ban requirement.
TikTok and ByteDance have filed numerous legal challenges to the law, arguing that it threatens American free speech protections, with little success. Since no potential buyer has yet emerged, the companies' last chance to overturn the ban is through the US Supreme Court.
While the Supreme Court 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 January 10 – just days before the ban takes effect.
Trump met with the CEO of TikTokShou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.
In his court filing Friday, Trump said the case presents “an unprecedented, new and difficult tension between free speech rights on the one hand and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other.”
While the filing said Trump “does not take any position on the merits of this dispute,” it added that delaying the January 19 deadline would give Trump “an opportunity to seek a political resolution” to the matter without having to to resort to court.
The US Department of Justice has argued that alleged Chinese ties to TikTok pose a national security threat – and multiple state governments have expressed concern about the popular social media app.
Nearly two dozen attorneys general, led by Austin Knudsen of Montana, urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law requiring ByteDance and TikTok to quit or be banned.
Earlier in December, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt to repeal the legislation, saying it was “the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.”
Trump has publicly said he opposes the ban, despite supporting one during his first term as president.
“I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok because I won the youth by 34 points,” he said at a press conference earlier in December, even though a majority of young voters supported his opponent Kamala Harris.
“There are people who say TikTok has something to do with it,” he added.