Trump Administration and Rule of Law

A newly formed anti‑corruption group, The Public Integrity Project, has filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., accusing President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi of violating a 2024 divestiture law and a unanimous Supreme Court ruling when they approved a January 2026 deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets to an investor group with close Trump ties. The suit argues Trump repeatedly extended TikTok parent ByteDance’s deadline beyond what the statute allowed, then ordered DOJ not to enforce the law’s investigation requirements, and ultimately blessed a partial sale that left ByteDance in control of TikTok’s core recommendation algorithm and key U.S. operations. The buyers include Oracle, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic, some of whose principals reportedly raised money for Trump or invested in his family businesses, fueling online criticism that a national‑security divestiture was turned into a political favor. Plaintiffs Zhaocheng Anthony Tan and Garrett Reid, software engineers who own Alphabet and Meta stock, claim they were harmed because they reasonably expected the law to be enforced and TikTok’s market position curtailed. The case lands as DOJ’s traditional public‑integrity machinery has been gutted, and as national‑security and tech‑policy circles debate whether the TikTok law was undermined by a White House that chose a friend‑friendly workaround rather than a clean break from Chinese ownership.