TikTok Plans To Sue White House Over ‘National Security’ Ban

NPR News, the closest thing we have to a CCP mouthpiece in the US, has gotten a rare scoop: TikTok owner ByteDance is planning to sue the Trump Administration over its executive order barring TikTok & Tencent’s WeChat from the US market by mid-September.

The lawsuit, which will be filed in an American court (the Southern District of California, to be exact), alleges that Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional because it didn’t allow TikTok enough time to respond, while also alleging that Trump’s claims that TikTok is a “national security threat” are “baseless”.

TikTok is planning to sue the Trump administration, challenging the president’s executive order banning the service from the United States.

The video-sharing app hugely popular with the smartphone generation TikTok will file the federal lawsuit as soon as Tuesday, according to a person who was directly involved in the forthcoming suit but was not authorized to speak for the company. It will be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, where TikTok’s American operations are based, the person said.

NPR has learned that the lawsuit will argue that the president’s far-reaching action is unconstitutional because it failed to give the company a chance to respond. It also alleges that the administration’s national security justification for the order is baseless, according to the source.

“It’s based on pure speculation and conjecture,” the source said. “The order has no findings of fact, just reiterates rhetoric about China that has been kicking around.”

The White House declined to comment on the expected litigation, but defended the president’s executive order. “The Administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and safety, and our economic and national security,” according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.

Fortunately, the American legal system prioritizes the ‘rule of law’, so much so that it’s one of the few jurisdictions in the world where foreign companies can sue the domestic government and stand a reasonable chance of winning. They can’t say the same about courts in China.