TikTok launches legal action against Donald Trump over US ban
TikTok has said it will file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's executive order that prohibits transactions with the app and its Chinese parent ByteDance.
TikTok in a statement said that it had tried to engage with the US administration for nearly a year, but faced "a lack of due process" and that the government paid no attention to the facts.
"To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system," the video app's spokesperson said.
Mr Trump issued an executive order earlier this month that gave ByteDance 90 days to divest the US operations of TikTok.
ByteDance has been making progress in talks with potential acquirers, including Microsoft Corp and Oracle.
Some of ByteDance's US investors could also join the winning bid.
While TikTok is best known for its videos of people dancing and going viral among teenagers, US officials have expressed concerns that information on users could be passed on to China's government.
The company has said it has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump's crackdown as political.
The US measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, who is behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.
A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, US-based users of WeChat, another Chinese app banned by Mr Trump, are suing the White House in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the US to the app.
The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit US WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the hugely popular messaging app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.
In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump's executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its US users' freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.
