House Committee Votes to Aid Defense of TikTok Ban

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee reportedly voted Thursday (July 11) to give the Justice Department a transcript of a closed-door hearing about threats posed by TikTok.

The release of the transcript is meant to help the Justice Department defend a law that requires TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, to sell the app’s U.S. operations, Reuters reported Thursday.

The transcript will be released only to the Justice Department; lawmakers have no plans to make it public, according to the report.

The Justice Department had asked to see the transcript, saying it would assist in the litigation, the report said.

An unclassified document produced for the classified March hearing said that TikTok poses security concerns because the app collects “tremendous amounts” of data and could put Americans at risk, per the report.

The document said, per the Reuters report: “Working through ByteDance, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) could use TikTok to access data on millions of U.S. users and control the software on millions of U.S. devices.”

TikTok and ByteDance filed their lawsuit on May 7, asking a court to review the constitutionality of the law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. business or have it shut down.

“That law — the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (‘the Act’) — is unconstitutional,” the companies said in the lawsuit. “Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership.”

President Joe Biden signed the law on April 24, days after the bill was passed by the House and the Senate, with supporters arguing the threat of a ban is necessary for national security concerns.

A day earlier, on April 23, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in remarks on the Senate floor: “Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company. Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”