Cybersecurity Policy Report, DoJ Assured U.S. Firms That Trump Could Ignore TikTok ‘Divest-or-Ban’ Law, (Jul 7, 2025)

By Tom Leithauser

Newly disclosed letters from Attorney General Pam Bondi claim that President Trump can ignore the TikTok ‘divest-or-ban’ law, and President Trump over the weekend said a deal to acquire TikTok’s U.S. business was imminent.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, President Trump said his team intended to ask Chinese authorities to allow a U.S.-based group to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations from ByteDance Ltd. He didn’t name the potential buyer or buyers.

“We pretty much have a deal,” Mr. Trump said. “Now we’re going to go and ask—I think we’re going to start Monday or Tuesday—asking and talking to China perhaps President Xi [Jinping] or one of his representatives. But we pretty much have a deal on TikTok. But we think we probably have to get it approved by China. Not definitely, but probably.”

President Trump recently gave ByteDance another 90 days to find a qualified buyer for TikTok’s U.S. business to comply with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act of 2024 (CPR, June 20).

The act—adopted by wide bipartisan majorities, signed by former President Biden, and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court—gave ByteDance until last Jan. 19 to sell TikTok’s U.S. business to a qualified buyer—one without ties to the Chinese government.

But Mr. Trump has disregarded the law by giving ByteDance three extensions to comply while he and his team try to find a U.S.-based buyer—or buyers—for TikTok’s U.S. assets.

Because the law would impose steep monetary penalties on any U.S. company that supports the delivery of TikTok’s service in the U.S., AG Bondi promised several U.S. businesses that the Department of Justice would not pursue enforcement actions against them, according to documents released over the weekend pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by The New York Times and a private investor.

“Article II of the United States Constitution vests in the President the responsibility over national security and the conduct of foreign policy,” AG Bondi noted in letters sent in April to Apple, Inc., Google LLC, Akamai Technologies, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Microsoft Corp., T-Mobile US, Inc., Oracle Corp., and several other U.S. companies that do business with TikTok.

“The President previously determined that an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform would interfere with the execution of the President's constitutional duties to take care of the national security and foreign affairs of the United States,” AG Bondi wrote.

“The Attorney General has concluded that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (the ‘Act’) is properly read not to infringe upon such core Presidential national security and foreign affairs powers,” Ms. Bondi assured the companies.

The companies that received the letters were told that they had “committed no violation of the Act” and “may continue to provide services to TikTok ... without violating the Act, and without incurring any legal liability.”

DoJ “is also irrevocably relinquishing any claims” against the companies “for the conduct proscribed in the Act” during the extensions that President Trump granted by executive order, AG Bondi said.

“Finally, because the Act vests authority for investigations and enforcement of the Act only in the Attorney General, the Department of Justice intends to take all necessary actions to implement the President’s Executive Orders and guard the Attorney General’s exclusive authority to enforce the Act, to include filing amicus briefs, statements of interests or intervening in litigation,” she added.

Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, called Ms. Bondi’s assertions “astonishing.”

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “is crystal clear,” Mr. Rozenshtein said in a post on the Lawfare blog.

“It provides a specific, narrow 90-day extension mechanism contingent on a divestment process; it cannot plausibly be read to authorize a free-floating presidential power to suspend the law for foreign policy reasons,” he said.

“Let’s be clear: The executive branch is asserting that if a president determines that a duly enacted statute is inconvenient for the conduct of foreign affairs—and that’s assuming this is about a good-faith view of foreign policy, and not, say, the financial interests of a major campaign donor with a massive stake in TikTok’s parent company—he can simply set it aside,” he said.

“Today it’s a social media app; tomorrow it could be any number of sanctions, trade, or immigration provisions that a president unilaterally decides to ignore based on some generic assertion of foreign affairs authority,” he added.

Mr. Rozenshtein also warned that the assurances given to TikTok’s U.S. business partners were not iron-clad. The promises of non-enforcement “are on shaky legal ground and represent a risky bet for the companies relying on them,” he added. “A future administration would likely not be bound by these pronouncements.”

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