Sayegh, the head of public affairs at one of TikTok’s biggest investors, had become an unofficial adviser to the Chinese-owned social-media giant as it navigates survival in the geopolitical crosshairs of the world’s two superpowers.
He turned to a seemingly unlikely potential savior for TikTok: Donald Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee for president, who had initiated the effort to ban TikTok in his first term. Sayegh started back-channeling to Trump’s closest advisers, making the case that it was foolish to hand wins to both President Biden, who would appear tough on China, and Meta Platforms, which Trump believed had hurt his re-election bid in 2020.
Hours after the White House indicated support for a TikTok ban, Trump came out in favor of TikTok. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted on his social-media network Truth Social, referring to Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg with a Yiddish obscenity.
At TikTok, executives celebrated. Their optimism grew when Trump was elected to a second term this month, raising the prospect that he could make good on his campaign pledge to undo the ban and give the app new life in its most important market.
TikTok has reached out to Elon Musk in recent weeks for insight about the incoming administration, The Wall Street Journal reported. Musk is both owner of a rival social-media platform, X, and one of the president-elect’s closest confidants.
It is still far from certain what will happen. The law requiring a sale or a ban passed with overwhelming bipartisan congressional support. TikTok filed a lawsuit in May, challenging the law, and a court decision is expected by early December. If TikTok loses that suit, it faces being banned or sold by Jan. 19, one day before Trump takes office.
Trump would face constraints in trying to alter that course. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), chair of a judiciary subcommittee, said last week the president-elect can try to change the law but can’t ignore it.
A spokeswoman for Trump said he plans to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. “He will deliver,” she said.
What is clear is that TikTok executives believe that Trump’s victory gave the company its best shot at remaining in the U.S. And they credit this potential lifeline in part to Sayegh.
This account of Sayegh’s role in TikTok’s shifting fortunes is based on interviews with current and former executives at TikTok and parent company ByteDance, investors in the company, and current and former U.S. officials.
The son of immigrants from Lebanon in the 1960s, Sayegh grew up in Brooklyn and then Westchester County, in a suburb of New York City. He was obsessed with becoming a child actor.
“I went to many, many an audition,” he said in a podcast earlier this year. “I didn’t get called back a lot.”
He has said the experience taught him not to fear failure and encouraged him to pursue his other passion, politics. After graduating from George Washington University, he worked briefly for his family’s stone-importing business before joining a prominent Republican consulting firm and, later, Fox News.
He joined the Trump administration as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for public affairs. A devout Catholic, he made the sign of the cross before entering the Treasury Department in part to thank God for the dream job. After that, he ran the impeachment-defense war room in the White House.
In 2023, he became head of public affairs for Susquehanna International Group, one of the biggest investors in ByteDance.
A Pennsylvania-based investment company, Susquehanna was an early investor in ByteDance and now holds a stake of roughly 15%, which based on recent share buybacks could be worth more than $45 billion on paper. Roughly half of that stake is personally owned by Susquehanna co-founder Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor who supported many libertarian-leaning members of Congress opposed to banning TikTok.
TikTok executives have long known their Chinese parent company could worry lawmakers who feared Beijing could lean on ByteDance for information about TikTok’s users or to influence the content TikTok serves. TikTok has said it wouldn’t comply with such requests, but has simultaneously pursued strategies to distance itself from ByteDance.
After Trump said he would ban TikTok in 2020, TikTok pitched a plan called Project Texas to try to wall off U.S. users’ data from China. Executives at TikTok believed Project Texas would have assuaged Trump’s concerns had he won the 2020 election.
Trump didn’t win, and under Biden, momentum to ban TikTok in the U.S. accelerated. TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, in early 2023 assembled a dream team of advisers to defend TikTok. Susquehanna often lends support to portfolio companies, and leadership believed TikTok’s predicament warranted close attention. Susquehanna sent Sayegh in to help.
Sayegh is close to Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, and maintains regular calls with people in Trump’s orbit, according to people familiar with his outreach.
Sayegh regularly attended the meetings of TikTok’s political advisers, who included former Obama administration advisers David Plouffe and Jim Messina. The sessions often focused on how to win support from leading Democrats and Republicans.
Sayegh later indicated to the group he was trying to get Trump himself to join TikTok. TikTok had advantages over other social networks, including never having banned Trump from its platform. Before the April legislation to ban or sell TikTok, the platform had had what executives viewed as productive conversations with the Trump campaign about joining their app, and Sayegh told campaign executives that if Trump joined TikTok, it could help him court young voters.
Trump eventually joined TikTok in June, saying in one of his first videos that he would “save TikTok.”
Sayegh’s boss, Yass, has also backed Republicans through conservative advocacy group Club for Growth that has rallied conservative opposition to a TikTok ban, and Trump spoke at a Club for Growth retreat earlier this year, saying he and the group were “back in love.”
Meanwhile, Sayegh and other TikTok executives leaned on conservative influencers, including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, to help make their case.
Throughout campaign, Sayegh kept Chew informed of his progress.
TikTok also approached other Republicans to join their influence campaign. It hired one of the lobbying firms closest to Trump, Ballard Partners.
Additionally, ByteDance board member and investor Bill Ford maintains contact with people close to Trump, and his wife donated more than $800,000 to Trump and other conservative groups in the past year.
Since the election, Sayegh has continued to meet with members of Trump’s inner circle.
Executives at TikTok and its parent company say they hope that Trump will delay enforcement of the ban, and could find a way to negotiate a deal to keep it operating in the U.S. despite the difficulties of repealing the law.
On election night, Sayegh watched the results come in at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in Florida, where Trump was also in attendance.
When Trump won, Sayegh and other TikTok executives celebrated again.
Raffaele Huang contributed to this article.
Write to Georgia Wells at georgia.wells@wsj.com, Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com and Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com