CNN’s Elie Honig Breaks Down Three Ways TikTok Can Still Be Saved

CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig offered a breakdown of three ways that TikTok might be saved after the Supreme Court voted to uphold a law to ban the social media platform over national security concerns.

A bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden mandates that TikTok will face an official ban in the United States on Sunday, January 19, unless its parent company, ByteDance, secures a divestment deal with an investor compliant with stricter data regulations.

In passing the bill, lawmakers had voiced concerns about the user data that the application tracks and noted that it would be accessible to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), given ByteDance is a Chinese-owned company.

Speaking to host Jim Acosta on Friday just moments after the Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban, Honig laid out the last three remaining avenues of action that might save the app for American users:

This is a devastating ruling for TikTok, not unexpected, but there are still three things that could happen, that could, at least temporarily, save TikTok.

First of all, the law says that if the president certifies that negotiations have commenced in a meaningful way, that they’re working towards a deal to sell TikTok to a US-based owner that can put this law on hold for up to 90 days. So that’s option number one.

Number two, and a little more precipitous, the president can issue an order to the executive branch, to the Justice Department, not to enforce this law, because the way these massive fines get enforced is really through the Department of Justice.

And then third – very, very unlikely – Congress could go back and either revise or repeal the law. But keep in mind, it was just passed a few months ago by massive bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate. So I think that one is by far the least likely.

But yes, and I should note, not just Donald Trump, but the president, so Joe Biden, is capable of taking either of those first two steps over the next three days. But, ultimately, this will likely land on Donald Trump’s desk.

That’s certainly the expectation of Trump’s incoming national security advisor Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), who told Fox & Friends that the president-elect is considering the use of an executive order to stall the ban.

“We’ll keep it from going dark,” he said.

Watch above on CNN.