TikTok fan threatens Sen. Thom Tillis over bill targeting app’s China owners: ‘I’ll find you and shoot you and cut you’
Calls from senators to force a sale of TikTok or ban the popular social media app grew louder Wednesday — as one Republican lawmaker revealed chilling audio of a voicemail his office received threatening his life if he voted to crack down on the China-owned platform.
“Listen if you ban TikTok, I will find you and shoot you,” an unidentified woman with an unnerving chuckle said in her message to the office of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). “That’s people’s jobs and that’s my only entertainment. And people make money off there too.
“Anyways, I’ll find you and shoot you and cut you into pieces. Bye,” concluded the woman.
Tillis, who said Wednesday his office had filed a police report over the threat, accused TikTok of mounting a “misinformation campaign” to confuse voters into thinking Congress is seeking to outlaw the app.
“This is a voicemail my office received last night. TikTok’s misinformation campaign is pushing people to call their members of Congress, and callers like this who communicate threats against elected officials could be committing a federal crime,” Tillis posted on X along with the audio.
“The Communist-Chinese aligned company is proving just how dangerous their current ownership is. Great work, TikTok.”
When asked about the call to Tillis, a TikTok spokesperson told The Post, “Threats like this are unacceptable and we condemn this in the strongest possible terms.”
“Clearly, there are millions of Americans who want to speak out against the ban bill that would trample Americans’ constitutional rights of free expression, but we must all do so in a respectful, civil manner.”
Last week, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which would require Chinese Communist Party-linked parent company ByteDance to sell off TikTok within six months.
If ByteDance fails to divest, then the government will tell companies like Apple and Google to ban TikTok from their app stores and not provide ByteDance with US-based web hosting.
In response, TikTok has alerted users with a pop-up message telling them: “If the Senate votes to ban TikTok, this means you could lose your right to self-expression.” The message also provides users with a link to obtain their senator’s contact information.
Thus far, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not indicated if or when he intends to take up the House bill, which President Biden has indicated that he will sign.
On Wednesday, national security officials briefed a group of senators about the threat posed by TikTok, which made a deep impression on those who atteneded.
“We just had a very powerful briefing,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) afterward. “I’d like to get as much of the contents declassified as possible.”
“There was a reason why when this brief was given on the House side,” Warner continued. “Afterwards, [the House Energy and Commerce Committee] voted 50-0 to move the legislation.”
“This briefing should crystallize and act as a catalyst for action here in the Senate. My hope is we’ll move forward quickly. There’s been too much doubt and delay already,” added Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
“We need to have the urgency to match the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses through TikTok,” he added. “There is no reason for TikTok to be owned, controlled, manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party. It can exist [as] separate and distinct.”
Not every senator is on board.
“We can’t, sort of like, emulate the Chinese to try to protect our way of life becoming like the Chinese in banning things,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told conservative pundit Tucker Carlson last week.
Underpinning some of the reticence to the TikTok bill is a provision that authorizes the Biden administration to prohibit apps linked to four adversary nations: China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
To ban those apps, government agencies must agree on the threat and must make evidence available to Congress.
Earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Chew committed to a $1.5 billion investment in so-called “Project Texas,” intended to push American data into servers run by Oracle. But lawmakers seem unsatisfied.
National security experts have raised concerns that China could siphon critical metadata, biometric data, location information, and more from users in the US.
There have also been concerns that the CCP could leverage the app as a propaganda tool to influence Americans.
TikTok claims to have roughly 170 million users and has refuted allegations that ByteDance’s ties to the CCP pose national security concerns for the US.
“There has been a lot of misinformation,” Chew said after the House vote before incorrectly claiming “This legislation will lead to a ban of TikTok in the United States.” (Proponents of the bill say their intent is to force a sale, not ban the app.)
“We will not stop fighting and advocating for you,” he added. “We believe we can overcome this together.”
Already some wealthy investors have mused about banding together to purchase the app from ByteDance.
Recently, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin expressed interest in forming a group to do just that but provided limited specifics of who would be involved.
That didn’t go over well with everyone.
“No one is denying that more needs to be done to protect Americans from foreign governments looking to harvest their private data,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) posted on X Tuesday. “Letting a Trump crony buy up social media platforms with Saudi funding isn’t the way to do it.”
