A man has been arrested in connection with a fire set Sunday morning in response to “recent discussions” to ban the popular video app TikTok, authorities said. The fire occurred at a shopping center that includes the district office of a Wisconsin congressman who has criticized the app.
The 19-year-old man, who has not been identified, was arrested after being found near a Fond du Lac, Wis., shopping center that houses the congressman’s office, Rep. American Glenn Grothman, a Republican, city police said in a statement.
No one was injured and the mall was unoccupied when police and firefighters responded around 1 a.m., police said.
The man was being held at the Fond du Lac County Jail and an arson charge was filed with prosecutors, according to police.
The fire was still under investigation. The exterior of the building sustained moderate damage and the interior sustained minor damage, according to the Fond du Lac Fire Department. Fond du Lac, a city of more than 44,000 people, is about 68 miles north of Milwaukee.
The man told authorities he started the fire “in response to recent discussions about banning TikTok,” police said.
As of Saturday evening, TikTok, the short video application owned by Chinese company ByteDance, was no longer available in the United States due to a new law banning the company’s applications in the United States.
A press representative for Mr. Grothman did not immediately respond to an inquiry Sunday regarding the fire. Mr. Grothman is one of several public officials who have expressed concerns about TikTok.
He previously said in a statement that the app “creates a national security concern as the data of millions of Americans is exposed to communist China,” adding that the app’s parent company “has a deceptive tool to extract sensitive personal information, including the Internet. navigation. »
The Supreme Court said the government’s national security concerns about the app outweighed the free speech concerns involved in shutting down the app, which is used by about 170 million U.S. users per month.
TikTok said on social media on Sunday that it was “in the process of restoring service” after Mr. Trump’s pledge that no one would face financial penalties for hosting TikTok while the service attempted to find a way to comply with the law.
