Trump, Bondi sued over TikTok deal

Two investors sued President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday over the administration’s approval of a deal that saw TikTok spun off into a separate American-owned entity in order to continue operating in the U.S.

Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, a shareholder in Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Garrett Reid, a Meta shareholder, argue the deal violated a law requiring TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a U.S. ban.

“For the law to mean something, it must be followed, even—perhaps especially—by the President. Respondents have violated the statute and subverted the will of Congress. Petitioners bring this case to ensure that such violations, and such subversion, do not continue,” the lawsuit, filed by the Public Integrity Project, reads.

TikTok officially spun off its U.S. business in late January. The new entity is majority owned by American investors, with Silver Lake, MGX and Oracle serving as managing investors and each taking a 15 percent stake. ByteDance maintains a 19.9 percent stake.

Oracle is tasked with providing security for the new U.S. TikTok and retraining a copy of the recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data.

“In short, under the announced deal, ByteDance would still control all the essential elements of TikTok,” the lawsuit argues. “Such a deal would subvert the very purpose of the TikTok Law, as ByteDance could continue to push Chinese propaganda and censor the content it does not like, exactly the harm that the law was intended to prevent.”

Tan and Reid contend that, as investors in competing companies, they suffered financially from the deal’s approval, which created a “legal impediment to [their] financial recovery.”

The deal came to fruition about a year after the divest-or-ban law was set to take effect. After taking office last January, Trump quickly signed an executive order delaying enforcement of the measure as he sought to reach a deal to keep TikTok available in the U.S.

He pushed back the deadline several more times in 2025, which the lawsuit also argues violated the law. In September, the president announced the administration had reached an agreement for a TikTok spinoff, and he quickly signed an executive order declaring the deal a “qualified divestiture” under the law.