Rubio requests Justice Department probe TikTok CEO for deceptive Congress

Sen. Marco Rubio desires the Justice Department to research TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew for allegedly deceptive Congress about the place it stored Americans’ knowledge. 

The Florida Republican desires the division to look at whether or not Mr. Chew perjured himself when he instructed House lawmakers in March that Americans’ knowledge was saved within the U.S. and Singapore as an alternative of China. 

Mr. Rubio mentioned he knew Mr. Chew’s testimony to be false, pointing that out in a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday requesting a federal investigation. 

“Chew should be held accountable for making false statements about material facts related to TikTok’s operation, as he appears to have done in this case,” Mr. Rubio mentioned within the letter. “I therefore request that you investigate whether Chew committed perjury when he falsely stated that TikTok has not stored the user data of Americans in China and urge you to be transparent with the American people about the threats posed by TikTok.”

TikTok mentioned its chief didn’t lie.

“We remain confident in the accuracy of Shou’s testimony,” TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter mentioned Thursday.

Mr. Rubio and different U.S. policymakers harbor considerations that Americans’ knowledge on TikTok is susceptible to China. They have raised questions on the place folks’s info is saved and the way the app’s Chinese mum or dad agency, ByteDance, has entry to the information. 

China’s insurance policies of military-civil fusion drive cooperation between companies and the communist regime. Mr. Chew, nonetheless, has mentioned China made no request for TikTok knowledge and his firm offered no knowledge to the Chinese authorities. 

As a part of its push to keep away from a ban of its app within the U.S., TikTok has made plans to overtake its knowledge storage. 

Mr. Chew mentioned final month that his firm’s overhaul of its American operation, dubbed Project Texas, was properly underway.

“Today by default all U.S. data is stored in the Oracle cloud servers already, in the Oracle cloud infrastructure and no longer in our own servers in Virginia and Singapore,” Mr. Chew mentioned in May on the Qatar Economic Forum. 

In response to experiences indicating TikTok staff shared folks’s personally identifiable info on an inner messaging instrument made by ByteDance between 2019 and 2022, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek mentioned final month that has modified. 

He mentioned when Project Texas is completed, all communications involving U.S. person knowledge will happen on a platform managed by TikTok’s American crew. 

“Our effort to delete historical U.S. user-protected data is well underway and expected to be completed this year,” Mr. Haurek mentioned in May.