Social media giant TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance have faced a recent setback after losing an appeal to delay the enforcement of a potential ban in the U.S.
As reported by The Associated Press, the platform saw its bid rejected to hold off legislation that would require ByteDance by mid-January to divest TikTok to an approved buyer or face a ban. Attorneys for the company are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Amid the conversation, misinformation about its Congressional opponents appeared online, with one Republican congressman accused of buying more than $1 million in shares in Mark Zuckerberg's Meta as he penned a bill banning TikTok.
The Claim
A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user Wall Street Apes, posted on December 16, 2024, viewed 329,700 times, said: "Biden Admin has contacted Apple and Google and told them remove TikTok from the App Store on Jan 19th
"Congressman Michael McCaul who wrote the TikTok Ban Bill invested $1.15 Million into META AFTER writing the Bill
"- On March 3rd, he authored the TikTok Ban Bill
"- On March 22nd, he invested $150,000 in META
"- On the 26th, he invested another $150,000
"- On the 28th, he invested another $150,000
"So about three weeks after writing the TikTok Ban Bill, this man invested $450,000 in TikTok's competitor.
"Oh, and then what did he do once he saw his TikTok ban was gonna be included with all the Ukraine funding:
"- Well, on April 1st, he invested $350,000 more in META, followed by the fifth where he invested that again.
"Then about a week later, of course, he voted yes on the bill he wrote.
"So within the span of 40 days, this dude wrote the TikTok ban bill, proceeded to invest $450,000 in the competitor, and then invested another $700,000, taking his total investment and META at a $1.15 million.
"And then he voted yes. Now, obviously the word most people are using here is suspicious, but the word we should be using is criminal.
"This man wrote the f***** bill to ban TikTok, proceeded to invest more than a million dollars in its competitor, whose stock will skyrocket if TikTok actually gets banned, and then voted on the bill to ban it.
"Are you paying attention yet?"
The Facts
This post is misleading for several reasons. Texas Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not write the TikTok "Ban Bill" as it is understood here.
In 2023, McCaul authored a bill called the Deterring America's Technological Adversaries Act or DATA Act. As reported by The Texas Tribune, it called for ian nvestigation to determine if TikTok or ByteDance transferred sensitive information from the U.S. to the Chinese government, and a ban of the app if it did so.
It is not the same as the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden passed in April 2024
The DATA Act is not expected to be considered by Congress because of the Foreign Adversary Act's successful passage.
McCaul introduced a package of bills, which included the Foreign Adversary Act in April 2024. Called the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, the package also included a series of sanctions against Iran, Hamas, and Russia.
While McCaul recorded trades in Meta around this time, the value of the trades quoted in the post on are not substantiated. They are based on stock purchases and sales submitted by McCaul via a Periodic Transaction Report (PTR), but he is not required to provide the exact value of the trade, just how much it is worth among a range of values.
Furthermore, these purchases were not made directly by him. Elliot Berke, attorney for McCaul, told Newsweek: "Congressman McCaul did not purchase these stocks and had no advanced knowledge of the purchase.
"He only learned about it due to the PTR disclosure process. Rather, his wife has assets she solely owns, and a third-party manager made the purchase without her direction."
McCaul's PTRs show that all of the purchases were made by his family through LLM Family Investments LP.
Records of purchases and sales made by McCaul in 2023 when he had introduced the DATA Act show multiple sales of Meta stock, not purchases.
A spokesman for McCaul told Newsweek: "Chairman McCaul has publicly expressed his concerns about the national security threat TikTok poses for years. He introduced his own bill to ban TikTok early last year—more than a year before these stock purchases were made. They have no bearing on the congressman's policy priorities."
The Ruling
False.
A firm run by McCaul's family purchased shares in Meta around April and March 2024. The purchase was not managed by McCaul as records show, nor is the total amount sold and purchased disclosed.
McCaul did not write the TikTok Ban Bill either. He introduced a package of bills which included that act, but was not its author. He did author a bill in 2023, calling for investigation and a potential ban of the app. Records show the same trust that purchased Meta stock in 2024 also sold shares in the company in 2023, as McCaul introduced his TikTok bill.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
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About the writer
Tom Norton is Newsweek's Fact Check reporter, based in London. His focus is reporting on misinformation and misleading information in ... Read more