Trump and Don Jr Were Removed from Truth Social Company Board Just Weeks Before It Was Served With Federal Subpoenas
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Former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and several other allies were all removed from the board of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), mere weeks before the company was served with federal subpoenas, as first reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
TMTG owns Truth Social, the social media platform Trump launched after he was permanently banned from Twitter for tweets he made in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 on the U.S. Capitol. Truth Social has been slow to get traction, with Trump himself slow to start posting and a series of embarrassing technical stumbles.
The former president has increased his posting frequency in recent months, with his Truth Social account festering a farrago of fury against his media critics and political foes — not to mention his unrelenting complaints that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
News about the subpoenas from the SEC and a grand jury for the Southern District of New York broke in late June, and sent share prices tumbling for both TMTG and Digital World Acquisition Corp., the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that is planning a merger with TMTG in order to take the company public. Various reports have said if the merger is completed, it could bring in $1.3 billion in capitalization, and the company being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Subpoenas were also issued for Digital World’s directors, as Axios reported. “There have been some attempts to frame these investigations in political terms, but they appear to be more about apolitical securities law,” wrote Axios’ Dan Primack. “Namely, that blank check companies can’t court potential targets prior to their own IPOs — which is something Digital World Acquisition is speculated to have done.”
As for TMTG, the company registered as a for-profit corporation under Florida law with a Sarasota address on April 18. That original filing was updated in a June 8 amendment that removed all the board members except CEO and former Congressman Devin Nunes and CFO Philip Juhan. Removed from the board were Trump, Trump Jr., and two former Trump aides, Kashyap Patel and Scott Glabe.
The SEC subpoena followed on June 27, and the New York grand jury sent theirs on July 1. There’s also an ongoing DOJ investigation. According to the Herald-Tribune, the grand jury also subpoenaed “certain current and former TMTG personnel,” but did not publicly identify them by name. From the article:
In a statement, Trump Media said it “will continue cooperating fully with inquiries into our planned merger and will comply with subpoenas we’ve recently received, none of which were directed at the company’s chairman or CEO.”
What the statement did not mention was that Trump is no longer chairman, at least according to the state business filing.
