Joe Biden’s campaign told its staff to delete the Chinese social media app TikTok from their personal and work phones and created a new rule that requires staff to request permission before trading individual stocks.
The changes, announced to the Biden staff in a Monday email first reported by Bloomberg, reflect some of the strictest ethical standards of presidential campaigns so far.
“As we gear up to officially become the Democratic nominee, we took a moment to ensure that the policies of our campaign represent the highest ethical standards,” Biden spokesman Bill Russo said in a statement.
TikTok has sparked security concerns throughout the U.S. government and major institutions due to its connection to the Chinese government and how it would use personal information of users. The Biden campaign joins the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in asking staff members to not have the app on their devices. The Trump campaign has not publicly banned the app for its staff, but it did pay to promote a petition to ban TikTok from the United States.
Biden appeared in a Washington Post TikTok video earlier this year in which he scolded a man for not wearing a mask outside.
The provision barring staff from trading individual stocks comes in the wake of members of Congress facing insider trading investigations for offloading stocks just before coronavirus lockdowns sunk the economy.
Biden general counsel wrote in the email that its employee guidelines would be updated to bar employees trading individual stocks “without advance written approval of the General Counsel” until Dec. 14, the date the Electoral College records its votes for president, in order to “ensure that staff do not even inadvertently trade on nonpublic information.”
