U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent letters to 10 U.S. tech companies, including Google and Apple, earlier this year, making clear that they wouldn’t be prosecuted for ignoring a TikTok ban approved by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The letters, released Thursday following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Google shareholder Anthony Tan, show that Bondi told the companies integral to TikTok’s U.S. operations that Trump believed the abrupt shutdown of the app would “interfere with the execution of [his] constitutional duties to take care of national security and foreign affairs.”
Therefore, Bondi said, those companies “may continue to provide services to TikTok as contemplated … without violating the Act, and without incurring any legal liability.”
Bondi added that the department would shield the companies from anyone else trying to penalize them for violating the TikTok divest-or-ban law, including by “filing amicus briefs, statements of interest or intervening in litigation.”
The New York Times also obtained some of Bondi’s letters following its own FOIA lawsuit for the correspondence.
The other eight companies who received letters by Bondi include: Amazon, Microsoft, Akamai Technologies, Digital Realty Trust, Fastly, T-Mobile, Oracle and LG Electronics USA.
Last year, former President Joe Biden signed a package of foreign aid bills into law, including a provision to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell its stake in the platform or risk being banned from U.S. app stores over national security concerns, prompting the platform to go dark temporarily.
Following his inauguration in January, Trump immediately signed an executive order directing the DOJ to not enforce the law, giving TikTok 75 days to find a U.S. buyer. The president has since extended that deadline three times.
Following the passage of the law, Google and Apple briefly removed TikTok from their app stores. Reports at the time attributed the platform’s return to app stores to Bondi assuaging their concerns. But the letters had not been made public at the time.
Meanwhile, Trump, who last month gave TikTok another 90-day extension to comply with the law, told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo he’s making progress on a potential sale, adding that he expects to announce a buyer soon as concerns about its long-term future in the U.S. remain.
The sale would still require Beijing’s approval, but Trump sounded confident China wouldn’t block it.
“I think President Xi [Jinping] will probably do it,” Trump told Bartiromo.