By Haleluya Hadero
Billionaire businessman and real estate mogul Frank McCourt said he's putting together a consortium to purchase TikTok's U.S. business, adding to the number of investors hoping to benefit from a new federal law that requires TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the popular platform or face a ban.
The announcement, made Wednesday, said the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers was organizing the bid in consultation with the investment bank Guggenheim Securities and "with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform's design and purpose."
If a sale occurs, McCourt said he would plan to restructure TikTok and give more agency to people "over their digital identities and data" by migrating the platform to an open-source protocol that allows for more transparency.
Other investors, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, have expressed a desire to purchase TikTok. However, parent company ByteDance has already said it does not plan to sell the platform. The Chinese government is also unlikely to approve a sale – especially not one that includes the recommendation engine that powers the videos that populates users' feeds.
Last week, ByteDance and TikTok filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government to block the law from going into effect. On Tuesday, eight TikTok creators filed their own challenge, arguing the law violates their First Amendment rights to free speech.
The company also has been waging a legal battle in Montana to block a state law that would ban the video-sharing platform.
On Tuesday, TikTok, Montana users and the state of Montana agreed to put a stay on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Montana's first-in-the-nation ban while the federal lawsuits are decided.
Montana's law, which was temporarily blocked before it could take effect on Jan. 1, would be nullified if a company that is not based in a country designated as a foreign adversary acquires TikTok.
McCourt is worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes. He sold the Dodgers for $2 billion in 2012 to Guggenheim Baseball Management. In 2016, he bought the French soccer club Marseille.
Haleluya Hadero is an AP business writer. Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed reporting.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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