An anti‑corruption group is hauling President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi into court in Washington, D.C., accusing the administration of green‑lighting a TikTok deal that it says leaves too much power in the hands of the app’s Chinese parent company.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, takes aim at a partial sale of TikTok’s U.S. business and asks judges to force the deal back to the negotiating table. The plaintiffs argue the agreement flouts a federal divestiture law passed last year, enriched investors with ties to the president, and still lets ByteDance keep a tight grip on TikTok’s all‑important recommendation engine.
Congress passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in 2024, ordering ByteDance to sell off TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a ban. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld that law on January 17, 2025, and the lawsuit leans heavily on that ruling to argue the current deal cannot stand as announced, according to the Supreme Court.
What the suit alleges
The lawsuit, brought by the Public Integrity Project, claims the January deal approved by the White House violates the statute because ByteDance would still own TikTok’s recommendation algorithm and continue to manage key U.S. operations. In other words, the group argues, the core of TikTok’s power to shape what users see would remain overseas, despite Congress’s order to separate.
The plaintiffs, Zhaocheng Anthony Tan and Garrett Reid, are described in the complaint as retail software engineers and shareholders in rival platforms. They say the administration’s failure to fully enforce the law hurt them financially by leaving TikTok with a competitive edge it was supposed to lose, according to NPR.
Who filed the case
The Public Integrity Project filed the challenge Thursday in the D.C. Circuit on behalf of the two investors. The group says it wants a reworked agreement that, in its words, “doesn't put administration allies in a position to censor political content” on one of the country’s biggest social platforms.
The brief and related press materials also spotlight the buyer group tied to the transaction: Oracle, MGX (Abu Dhabi), Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic. The filing notes that some of those investors have had prior connections to the president, a detail that the plaintiffs argue raises conflict‑of‑interest concerns, as reported by Reuters.
Legal implications
The complaint accuses the Justice Department of failing to investigate the TikTok deal as required by the divestiture statute and casts that inaction as an ongoing violation of federal law. That alleged lapse is central to the case: if DOJ did not do the vetting Congress demanded, the plaintiffs argue, the courts should step in.
Brendan Ballou, the Public Integrity Project’s chief executive and a former Justice Department lawyer, says the lawsuit is meant to rebuild accountability from outside DOJ at a time when leadership changes have, in critics’ view, weakened the department’s public‑integrity work, according to NPR.
What happens next
The D.C. Circuit will first decide whether the case clears procedural hurdles, then determine what, if anything, to do about the contested deal. Judges could order the agreement renegotiated, send the matter back to the executive branch for another look, or toss the challenge entirely.
The plaintiffs are not asking the court to ban TikTok outright. Instead, they want a transaction that fully satisfies Congress’s 2024 divestiture mandate, a fight that could drag on for months and test how far presidential authority really goes when it comes to enforcing that law, as reporting has noted. The White House, the Justice Department and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.
