After a tumultuous year filled with anxiety and legal battle over its future In the United States, TikTok may have just become a lifeline thanks to the man who was once its greatest enemy: Donald Trump.

President-elect Trump, who tried to ban the social media platform the last time he was in the White House, pledged several times during his last campaign to oppose a ban on the short-form video app, which could happen as soon as mid-January if the company loses a lawsuit currently underway in Washington.

For months, TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, have been embroiled in a legal battle with the United States over a federal law that requires them to cut ties. for reasons of national security or cease operating in one of their largest markets in the world. The measure, signed by President Joe Biden in April, gives ByteDance nine months to divest its stakes, with a possible three-month extension if a sale was pending. If that happens, the deadline could be extended to the first 100 days of the Trump presidency.

Companies have claimed that the transfer was not possibleand the law, if followed, would require them to close their doors by January 19, just one day before Trump’s second inauguration. Lawyers for both sides have asked a federal appeals court reviewing the case to issue a decision by Dec. 6. The losing side would have to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority and could decide to take up the case, which could drag on. prolong the process further.

When reached for comment, the Trump transition team did not provide details on how Trump plans to fulfill his promise to “save TikTok,” as he said in a Truth article Social in September, while encouraging people who care about the platform to vote for it. . But Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the transition team, said in a statement that she plans to go all the way.

“The American people re-elected President Trump with a resounding majority, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said. “He will deliver.”

In an interview with CNBC in March, Trump said he still believed TikTok posed a national security risk, but that he opposed banning it because it would help its rival, Facebook, which he continued to lash out following his 2020 election defeat. He also denied changing his mind on the issue because of Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, a ByteDance investor whom Trump, at the time, said having only met “very briefly”. He said Yass “never mentioned TikTok” during their meeting.

Yet ByteDance – and groups linked to Yass – are trying to exert their influence. Lobbying disclosure reports show that this year, ByteDance paid veteran lobbyist and former Trump campaign aide David Urban $150,000 to lobby Washington lawmakers in favor of TikTok. The company also spent more than $8 million on in-house lobbyists and another $1.4 million on other lobbying firms, according to Open Secrets.

Meanwhile, in March, Politico reported that Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump aide, was being paid by the Yass-funded conservative group, the Club for Growth, to advocate for TikTok in Congress. A spokesperson for the organization said Conway was hired as a consultant to conduct a survey. Conway and Urban did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok, which has long denied it is a national security risk, declined to comment.

If the courts follow the law, it would be up to the Trump Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The fines would apply to app stores that are not allowed to offer TikTok, as well as internet hosting services that are not allowed to support it. Leah Plunkett, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, said that her reading of the statute is that the attorney general must investigate violations, but can decide whether or not to take these companies to court and dismiss them. force compliance.

Trump could do something else to prevent TikTok from disappearing.

He could issue an executive order to overturn the ban — which Plunkett said would not be legal — or urge Congress to repeal the law. That would require support from congressional Republicans who have aligned with Trump, but also supported the prospects to take TikTok out of the hands of a Chinese company.

In a statement sent to the AP after the election, Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said Trump’s “long-standing concerns” about TikTok align with the divestment requirement of the law.

“The Trump administration will have a unique opportunity to negotiate a US takeover of the platform,” he said.

ByteDance, however, has already stated that it has no intention to sell the platform despite the interest of certain investors, notably Former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Analysts say the company is even less likely to sell the proprietary algorithm that powers what users see on the app. This means that even if TikTok is sold to a qualified buyer, it will likely be just a shell of its former self and will need to be rebuilt with new technology.

Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, said it was also possible that Trump would take the issue back to the drawing board and order his administration to negotiate a new deal with TikTok.

TikTok said that in 2022 it presented the Biden administration with a draft agreement that would strengthen user protections and provide it with better oversight of the company’s operations in the United States. But the administration has argued in court filings in recent months that enforcing the deal would be difficult due to the size and technical complexity of the platform.

Trump hasn’t been privy to new intelligence on the subject in a few years and it’s possible he’ll change his mind – and abandon his campaign promise – once he does, said Kreps.

Plunkett, a Harvard law professor and author of “Sharenthood: Why We Should Think before We Talk about Our Kids Online,” said that if she were advising TikTok, she would advise them to develop a legally compliant divestiture plan and their being as favorable as possible.

“There is too much uncertainty about what the Trump administration is likely to do,” she said.