House Republicans say TikTok made misleading claims in briefings on data handling, and top Democrats call the report “deeply disturbing.”
The chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., says TikTok’s misleading claims about data storage, which followed a congressional subpoena in December, violated the company’s “commitments to transparency” and “may have violated federal law.”
“The bottom line is that TikTok lied. They misled the committee,” Meadows told Fox News on Tuesday.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., also called the company’s claims “deeply disturbing.”
The report from the Republican and Democrat chairmen on the panels comes after a congressional committee investigating the matter had to turn over millions of files from the company after lawyers for Apple and its subsidiaries asked the committee to end the subpoena.
Democrats are urging the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena TikTok CEO Jack Dorsey and call a hearing on his company’s data practices.
On Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler sent a letter to the CEO of the social media platform with the subject line, “Stop the TikTok Company: You are a fraud.”
“TikTok’s practices of withholding potentially sensitive information from the public make it a clear and present danger to the national security,” he wrote.
The chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Government Operations, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said the hearing was necessary following the company’s misleading statements.
“The bottom line is that TikTok lied to the committee. They misled the committee,” Meadows told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Tuesday.
“It is no surprise that TikTok misled the committee,” he told the Washington Examiner earlier in the day. “The American people need to know what’s going on.”
Meadows, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the company urging them to end their practice of making claims about security practices and instead make the company “open up and reveal for the American people their entire user data and who accesses it.”
“If the American people are going to trust TikTok, they will
