USA / TikTok owner ByteDance is Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece: US

Washington: The Justice Department filed a response to TikTok's request for an injunction to delay President Donald Trump's partial ban on the app that is scheduled for September 27, to be followed by a total ban on November 12.

The Trump administration is accusing the chief executive of ByteDance, the owner of video-sharing app TikTok, of being "a mouthpiece" for the Chinese Communist Party and alleging that the tech company has a close relationship with Beijing authorities that endangers the security of Americans.

The DOJ claimed that "US user data being stored outside of the United States presents significant risks in this case," but the section relevant to how this is the case is redacted, according to The Verge and NPR.

The Justice Department on Friday night filed the Trump administration's most thorough explanation of its push to ban TikTok in a legal filing in response to TikTok's lawsuit asking a federal judge to stop Trump's ban from taking effect on midnight Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols has scheduled a hearing for 9:30 a.m. Sunday to decide whether the Trump administration's ban will take effect.

Earlier this month, the US Commerce Department announced it would enact a partial ban that would prevent US citizens from downloading the TikTok app beginning on September 20. That ban was delayed to September 27 on September 19. The US government has also threatened to ban the app on November 12 from "enabling the functioning or optimization of the mobile application in the US," which will mean users will effectively stop using the app.

Trump said earlier this month that he "approves a deal in concept," where Oracle and Walmart become stakeholders for a commercial partnership with TikTok, allowing the app to resume US operations. Oracle announced that it will be a 12.5% stakeholder of TikTok Global as the app's security cloud technology provider and Walmart also announced that it was tentatively approved to purchase 7.5% of TikTok Global. US officials are reportedly questioning whether the TikTok-Oracle partnership will sufficiently contend to national security concerns, which puts into question whether this deal will be approved formally. Meanwhile, the US government "tentatively agreed" to Oracle's bid for TikTok, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters.