Vice President JD Vance will be overseeing the sale of social media platform TikTok from its Chinese parent company, The Post has learned, after President Trump threw the popular app a lifeline on Day One by giving it additional time to find a US buyer.
Vance, who formerly owned his own venture capital firm, and national security adviser Michael Waltz will quarterback TikTok’s qualified divestment from Beijing-based ByteDance, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Waltz and other national security hawks in Congress have long warned about the threat the platform poses to Americans, with both congressional and independent investigations confirming a trove of 170 million US users’ data is accessible by the Chinese Communist Party.
Trump teased last month that Microsoft had expressed interest in the purchase — but added that it could erupt into a full-blown “bidding war” among US companies.
Punchbowl News, which first reported on Vance and Waltz teaming up for the sale, also said that Frank McCourt, the billionaire business partner of “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, visited Capitol Hill this week to speak with Republicans about a possible purchase.
Congress had passed, and former President Joe Biden had enacted, legislation this past April requiring TikTok to be spun off from ByteDance or be banned in the US.
One of the Republicans who met with McCourt was Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is pushing for a full divestment and “complete break from Communist China in accordance with the law,” a spokesman for his office told Punchbowl.
The qualified divestment had been scheduled to take effect on Jan. 19, with the app briefly going dark the previous day.
On Jan. 20, Trump signed an order extending the sale deadline by 75 days, giving all parties until April 5 to reach a deal.