The 11th- and now 12-hour drama swirling around TikTok has fired up the ire of Republican Senators, who met at DC’s Jefferson Hotel yesterday for a Sunday brunch and a follow-up dinner hours later.
Sources in attendance tell Fox Business that the Senators expressed solidarity, stating that the national security risk posed by the Chinese-owned social media app is “about as serious as it can get.” There is concern President Donald Trump “doesn’t understand the legislation and might not be prepared for the strong insistence he’ll hear from the Republican side” that the “divest or ban” law must be followed.
Fox Business has learned that top GOP Senators, including Tom Cotton (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tom Tillis (R-NC), and Rick Scott (R-FL), attended events hosted by billionaire Frank McCourt Jr. and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary. McCourt and O’Leary lead a team that has submitted a reported $20 billion offer to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to acquire the platform’s U.S. operations. Their offer is reportedly the only one approved by the Department of Justice.
Sources say Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who has been named to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) on the House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, was also at the events.
TIKTOK BEGINS RESTORING SERVICE AFTER TRUMP VOWS DAY 1 EXECUTIVE ORDER
Nearly all the lawmakers in attendance had participated in a closed-door classified intelligence briefing last March that detailed the influence and reach of TikTok. That briefing solidified a rare bipartisan push that resulted in the bill requiring TikTok to sell its U.S. division to an American entity or face outright banning.
While the content of the classified briefing has not been released, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters as he left the March session. “My reaction to this briefing is that TikTok is a gun aimed at Americans’ heads. He added, “The Chinese Communists are weaponizing information that they are constantly, surreptitiously collecting from 170 million Americans and potentially aiming that information, using it through algorithms at the core of American democracy.”
Sen. Cotton warns Apple, Microsoft, Google could face ‘ruinous bankruptcy’ by flouting Tiktok ban
Sources close to the situation say Sen. Graham and Sen. Cotton were particularly outspoken during the Sunday meetings, insisting that U.S. app hosts, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which distribute the service, could face “ruinous liability” under the law.
The law states that web-hosting providers must terminate their relationship with the platform or face daily fines of $5,000 per user who can still access the service. This penalty can quickly add up to billions of dollars.
‘TIKTOK IS BACK’: TRUMP TEASES FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA APP
Sen. Cotton later took to X to post both a thank you and a warning to app store sites. “We commend Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same. The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it,” separately adding, “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs. Think about it.”
While TikTok has restored access to the platform, none of the hosting providers have made the app available for download.
Cotton, a Harvard-trained lawyer, also indicated that President Trump had not taken the oath of office by the January 19th deadline and is, therefore, not in a position to ‘extend’ the time before the ban takes effect.
On X he wrote, “Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.”
KEVIN O’LEARY WARNS TIKTOK’S FATE COULD BE DETERMINED BY ‘SECRET GOLDEN SHARE’ GRANTING BEIJING ‘VETO’ POWER
Graham: “Golden Share Chinese co’s must be banned/delisted from U.S. stock exchanges.
After the McCourt-O’Leary get-togethers, Sen. Graham also took to X with a new plan to delist any so-called “Golden Share Structure” Chinese companies. Golden Share is a term for companies in which the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, call the shots and can summarily control management decisions.
Graham posted last night, “It is apparent that what’s known as a “Chinese golden share structure” is standing in the way of saving TikTok.
If a company has a “golden share structure,” it means that one of the shareholders is Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party. He owns you and makes all the decisions.
I will soon introduce legislation with my Senate colleagues that prevents any company that has a “Chinese golden share” from being listed on any American exchange and further, remove any existing company that has a golden share structure from any American exchange.”
One source in attendance told Fox Business the agreement among Republican attendees to follow the law and the Supreme Court ruling that upheld it was “pretty much unanimous,” adding that “these social media platform owners have an inordinate amount of power. (These platforms) distorts the results and polarizes us unnecessarily. They optimize putting people in a triggered state and pitting them against each other.”
