Billionaire Frank McCourt told Yahoo Finance he is still interested in acquiring TikTok if it isn’t able to overturn a federal law that demands the Chinese-owned social media app be sold to a US buyer.
“There’s a deal to be made here so that US TikTok can stay in business,” McCourt said in an interview on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast. “We want to see the platform stay in business and the 170 million people enjoy it.”
The executive chairman of McCourt Global said his team at Project Liberty is “beginning” conversations with the incoming Trump administration but is not at the moment negotiating anything with ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok.
Axios reported that McCourt’s Project Liberty has secured “informal commitments of more than $20 billion of capital” for a TikTok bid. Other investors, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, have in the past also expressed a desire to purchase the social media app.
ByteDance is still hoping it will not have to consider a sale of TikTok. On Monday, the company filed an emergency court document asking for a D.C. appeals court to temporarily block the government from enforcing the law so that the Supreme Court has time to review it.
The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, gives ByteDance an ultimatum to either sell TikTok to a US owner by Jan. 19, 2025, or have it banned from operating in the country.
TikTok challenged the law in court, saying it ran afoul of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
Last Friday, a panel of three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded the law withstood constitutional scrutiny by protecting free speech in the US “from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
The law’s deadline of Jan. 19 means that ByteDance would need the Supreme Court to either issue a ruling before then or pause enforcement until it renders a decision. However, the high court is under no obligation to take up the company’s requests.
McCourt said his company started work on a possible TikTok bid eight months ago, including technology, capital, and legal requirements to buy the platform.
He didn’t say how much it would cost to acquire the app. That, he added, would depend on what parts of TikTok would be sold. ByteDance has maintained that it would not sell TikTok’s algorithm, which is technology that belongs to the Chinese Communist Party.
McCourt is a longtime advocate for consumer privacy and data protection. He said his goal of acquiring TikTok is part of a broader plan to allow consumers to monetize their own data, as opposed to current models that largely withhold technology unless users give their data away for free.
He also said TikTok in the hands of an American owner would close China’s backdoor access to American users’ information.
But McCourt said he didn’t yet know what TikTok would do if the law were ultimately held valid.
“They may let it shut down,” he told Yahoo Finance. “I hope not. President-elect Trump hopes not,” he said.
In September, the president-elect suggested in a post to his social media website, Truth Social, that he would “save TikTok” and prevent federal law enforcement from shuttering the app.
But neither President Biden nor incoming President-elect Trump is empowered to repeal the law. New legislation to overturn the measure would need to be approved by a majority of federal lawmakers.
The D.C. appeals court gave Biden an option to issue a 90-day extension, during which the law would not be enforced, but only in the event that TikTok was progressing toward divestment.
“We’re negotiating with nobody on the ByteDance side, at the moment,” McCourt said. “We’ve reached out unsuccessfully because they’ve taken the position, initially, that they were going to win the litigation … and they’re not talking about a sale as of yet.”
In TikTok’s new request for the D.C. appeals court to put the law on hold, the company said a pause was “especially appropriate” because it would allow Trump’s incoming administration “time to determine its position.”
The request went on to say that the new administration’s position could “moot” impending harms, as well as “the need for Supreme Court review.”
TikTok requested that the D.C. appeals court make a decision no later than Dec. 16.
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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