The Biden government said on Wednesday that it was reviewing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban TikTok in the U.S., while the Chinese-owned video app continued negotiations on its future.
In a lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers said the new government had begun to review whether TikTok was the national security threat that Trump alleged.
The former president issued several executive orders that would have prevented Americans from accessing TikTok, but the efforts have drawn legal challenges and have not yet taken effect.
In court cases, the Justice Department highlighted the rules of the Commerce Department and an executive order that would restrict further downloads of Apple’s TikTok and Google’s app stores.
The Commerce Department “plans to conduct an assessment of the underlying registry that justifies these prohibitions,” the document said.
The lawyers in the justice department asked two judges from the United States court of appeals to suspend review of previous decisions that prevented the restrictions from coming into effect. “A review of the prohibitions in question here can restrict the issues raised or eliminate the need for a review of this court entirely,” they said.
The move is the latest development in a contentious and protracted debate about TikTok’s presence in the United States and its ownership structure. In addition to pressure from executive orders to close the app, the U.S. Foreign Investment Committee, or Cfius, last year ordered TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app.
Trump originally gave his approval to a preliminary agreement that would have created a new United States-based entity called TikTok Global, with Oracle overseeing US user data and taking a stake in the company alongside other American investors.
Both sides contested the terms of the deal, drawing a rebuke from Trump and leaving negotiations in limbo as the former president turned his attention to the campaign for the U.S. presidential election.
The Biden government has made it clear that it will review all China-related actions that Trump took in his last months in office, including those related to TikTok.
Jen Psaki, press secretary for the White House, said on Wednesday that the government was “comprehensively assessing” any risk to the personal data of American citizens, including TikTok users. Psaki said there was an ongoing and “rigorous” Cfius process related to the application.
TikTok said it does not share US user data with the Chinese government. ByteDance declined to comment on Wednesday’s court documents.
A December deadline for ByteDance to restructure TikTok’s US operations was approved without a resolution, although people informed of the discussions said at the time that the committee did not plan to take any immediate action against the Chinese company.
Biden signaled that he will maintain an aggressive stance towards China on everything from Beijing’s efforts to crack down on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong to the crackdown on Uighurs in northwestern Xinjiang.
But the government was less clear about how to assess technology-related issues that affect the national security of the United States and emphasized that it is taking a “patience” approach when formulating policies.