As the deadline for Byteance Ltd. to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok quickly approaches, President-elect Trump, various members of Congress and advocacy groups have made representations to the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of pausing the forced selloff.

The forced selloff of the U.S. arm of TikTok was signed into law by President Biden in April after the Orwellian-sounding Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed both houses of Congress. The law itself came about following accusations that TikTok is a national security risk due to alleged control over the app and parent company by the Chinese Communist Party.

The investigation into the ban also resulted in ByteDance Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean native who also served in the country’s defense forces, being accused of being loyal to China, based only on his Chinese ethnicity. Singapore is a longstanding American ally.

Trump’s interjection into the Supreme Court hearing saw the 45th and soon-to-be 47th President argue that the court should give him time after his Jan. 20 inauguration to “seek a negotiated resolution” of the dispute. The president-elect also said that the law raised “sweeping and troubling” free speech concerns.

Because it’s Trump, Bloomberg reports that the president-elect also told the justices that only he “possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government.”

Also joining in arguing for a stay on the law were three Congress members – Senators Ed Markey and Rand Paul, along with Rep. Ro Khanna. “All three are strong advocates of free expression and are deeply concerned that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will deprive millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights,” the brief stated.

“The TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny,” Markey, Paul and Khanna wrote. “Its only historical parallels are illegitimate.”

“Its principal justification — preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government — reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative,” the brief added. “And its secondary justification of protecting users’ data from the Chinese government could not sustain the ban on its own and also overlooks that Congress did not consider whether less drastic mitigation measures could address those concerns.”

Advocacy groups, including the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute, Fight for the Future and Public Knowledge, also submitted a joint brief to the Supreme Court. The brief argued, among other things, that “the government has not presented credible evidence of ongoing or imminent harm caused by TikTok.”

Not surprisingly, Trump’s late interjection into the case is gaining most of the headlines.

Trump’s recent conversion to becoming both a TikTok fan and supporter comes after the president-elect, in his first time in office, also tried to force ByteDance to divest the U.S. arm of TikTok in August 2020. Perhaps indicating how much things have changed, at the time, the TikTok divestment was blocked with the support of some of the very same Democrats that have pushed the new law.

Trump’s conversion from TikTok critic to fan may have had some direct personal motivation, with the president-elect noted as saying earlier this month, “I used TikTok very successfully in my campaign… And I used TikTok, so I can’t really, you know, I can’t totally hate it. It was very effective.”

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