Tech Giants Were Pledged Immunity By DOJ To Ignore TikTok Ban, Letters Show
HuffPost
Attorney General Pam Bondi told the 10 companies they wouldn't incur "any legal liability" for defying the law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
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