TikTok brings in new legal expert to further its fight against US ban

TikTok has hired a powerful new voice to fight its corner, as it steps up its fight against a congressional ban on the app.The Chinese owned video sharing platform appears to be gearing up for a lengthy legal fight which could reach the Supreme Court after President Joe Biden signed a bill which in April which requires it to be sold off to a US company within nine months.Longtime general counsel and policy expert at NetChoice, Carl Szabo, is leaving the company — one of DC’s top tech lobbying groups — to jopin TikTok’s government relations department, as the company looks to win favor in the courts.“It certainly signals that the company expects that the fight will land in the Supreme Court and are gearing up, given its poor showing [so far] in the DC Circuit,” Joel Thayer, a tech policy lawyer and president of the Digital Progress Institute told The Post.Calls to ban TikTok were first raised by politicians concerned about data privacy and what information the app sends back to the Chinese Communist Party about its users, and how it could potentially be used.

“TikTok is still trying to deny their reality that a law passed by Congress bans them — they’re going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it with unlimited money from China,” added Nathan Leamer, a former FCC policy adviser and CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies.“Given our parent company is predominantly owned by global institutional investors and our employees — including thousands here in the US — that comment is utterly ridiculous and simply false,” a TikTok spokesperson told The Post.NetChoice, a right-leaning tech lobbying group which works with a variety of tech companies including Amazon, Netflix, Meta, had represented TikTok until immediately after the ban.At that point it kicked the social media giant out of its roster.Szabo has been instrumental in bringing lawsuits against legislation cracking down on tech companies.

Earlier this year, he warned “the lawsuits ar...