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President-elect Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s legal team asked<\/a> the Supreme Court to halt a law requiring TikTok to be sold to an American company or shut down by January 19, the day before his inauguration. In a petition<\/a> filed on Friday, the legal team argued that the incoming president should have the opportunity to \u201cresolve the issues at hand through political means\u201d once he takes office.<\/p>\n While the brief did not directly address the legal question at hand\u2014whether banning the platform for the some 170 million Americans who use it violates their First Amendment rights to free speech\u2014it noted that \u201cat this juncture,\u201d Trump \u201copposes banning TikTok in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n The Supreme Court agreed<\/a> to hear the case earlier this month after a bipartisan measure\u2014the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act\u2014passed Congress and was signed into law by President Joe Biden<\/strong>. The law cites national security concerns and would require TikTok\u2019s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell to an American company or face a ban.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government \u2014 concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,\u201d the brief, signed by Trump\u2019s counsel and his pick for US solicitor general, D. John Sauer<\/strong>, reads.<\/p>\n TikTok\u2019s legal team<\/a> and the Biden administration<\/a> also submitted briefs for the court to consider in the weeks leading up to oral arguments on January 10. TikTok argued that Congress signing the law was an \u201cunprecedented attempt to single out petitioners and bar them from operating one of the nation\u2019s most significant speech venues\u201d and was \u201cprofoundly unconstitutional.\u201d They added that the government \u201chas banned an extraordinary amount of speech\u201d and \u201cgets facts wrong when it bothers to provide them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Biden administration held that the law \u201caddresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government\u2019s control of TikTok, a platform that harvests sensitive data about tens of millions of Americans and would be a potent tool for covert influence operations by a foreign adversary.\u201d<\/p>\n Another brief<\/a>, filed on behalf of users of the service, acknowledged the ongoing geopolitical tension between China and the US, yet argued that allowing the law to take effect amounts to a \u201csuppression of Americans\u2019 speech\u201d and \u201cflies in the face of our history, tradition and precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s more recent support for the application is a shift from when, while still president in 2020, he unsuccessfully attempted to ban the platform, citing national security concerns. Federal courts halted<\/a> his efforts.<\/p>\n Despite expressing disdain for the Chinese-owned app, he isn\u2019t the only government leader who has used it to reach voters and campaign. According to an analysis<\/a> by NBC News, 23 members of Congress who voted for the TikTok ban have verified accounts, and many of them use the platform to \u201ccampaign, defend their beliefs and curate their public image \u2014 even as they argue that the app poses a threat to American users.\u201d<\/p>\n As Vanity Fair<\/em>\u2019s Gabriel Sherman<\/strong> reported<\/a> in March, Trump\u2019s shift could be influenced by his complicated relationship with billionaire and mega-donor Jeff Yass<\/strong>. Yass, via Susquehanna International Group, put a few million dollars into ByteDance in 2012\u2014an investment now worth some $40 billion, according<\/a> to the Financial Times<\/em>. The billionaire had previously urged Trump not to run and donated millions of dollars to his primary opponents, but with the former president\u2019s electoral popularity and the growing threats to TikTok, Yass invited Trump to speak at a Club for Growth donor retreat at The Breakers in Palm Beach in March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n