With The New York Times, I have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the Justice Department seeking disclosure of the letters Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to Apple and Google assuring them that they would not be prosecuted for violating the law against providing support to TikTok unless its Chinese owner sells it. The letters prompted the two companies to restore access to TikTok in their smartphone app stores.
Notably, the executive order by President Trump declaring an enforcement delay and requiring DOJ to send those letters did not merely direct the government, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, to not charge the companies with breaking that law. Trump also required Bondi to tell the companies that — somehow — “there has been no violation of the statute” for any activity that contravenes the statute during the enforcement delay period.
Trump cited no legal rationale for how he has the authority to actually nullify a law that Congress enacted and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld – a kind of monarchical prerogative power to suspend a law when the king decides that doing so would be in the public/Crown’s interest. The founders seemingly rejected the idea that American presidents would have such a power when they imposed upon that office a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. So it will be interesting to see what Bondi actually told them.
The case has been docketed at 25-cv-4199. My thanks to David McCraw and Timothy Tai for their legal representation.