truth social tmtg

oops see also soc media app

MERRI OK

see russian olig vlad

see don jr

see trump 15

attack judge --> fascism

===

an 11 26

On Wednesday, following the GOP’s historic midterm bloodbath, President Donald Trump received another humiliation when the price of his signature DJT stock plunged to its lowest point ever. While investors were once paying $175 per share, it’s worth just over $5 as of this writing, or as the internet noted, “about as much as a Happy Meal.”

DJT is the stock ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the parent company for Trump’s Truth Social social media platform. Launched in 2021, early investors paid as much as $175 per share, which plunged to about $13 per share within two years. After the company went public in 2024 amidst Trump’s presidential campaign, its value briefly jumped to $61.96 but has been falling off ever since, and has been in freefall since October. Then on Election Day, as it became clear that the Republicans had been decimated by the midterms, its price went over a cliff, plummeting from just under $6 to a record low of $5.05. The internet noticed and offered its thoughts on the matter.

“Trump Media stock is down,” Washington Post contributor Drew Harwell pointed out. “A share costs about as much as a Happy Meal. At its peak, investors paid $175 a share.” But as writer Amanda Knox noted, “With a Happy Meal, you get a toy that you can keep.”

“Do not buy the dip,” warned New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch. “If you're baffled by Trump voters, consider Trump investors,” mused another comment.

“Chugging this stuff until my torso kerplodes,” admitted one reshare of the disastrous stock chart. And All In producer Adam Weinstein needed no words to express his sentiments, adding only a clip from Mad Men in which character Don Draper achieves a moment of zen.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s company has been hit by bad financial news. In 2025, Truth Social reported net losses of $712 million. At the same time, data suggests that its traffic has fallen by 30 percent year over year, while its users dropped from a peak of roughly 420,000 in June 2025 to about 260,000 in September 2026. In 2023, it was also reported that TMTG was under investigation for laundering money for Russian oligarchs. While TMTG sued the Guardian and Variety for reporting on the story, the suit was dismissed. According to the Washington Post, a federal probe found that one of the company’s wealthy investors was linked to efforts to move assets from Russia, Ukraine, and China to the Caribbean. Over the past two years, the company has been increasingly involved with various cryptocurrency ventures, and the Trump family’s crypto schemes have reportedly raked in roughly $2.3 billion since he reentered the White House.

-=-=

Trump loses nearly $2 billion in net worth after Truth Social stock closes at new low

-=-=

AN 8 26

Lawsuit filed against Trump's 'blatantly corrupt' Truth Social scheme

100K$ FOR EARLY ACCESS FOR INSIDER TRADING PRED MKT; LOSING USERS 28%?

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday is challenging the legality of Truth API, a recently unveiled initiative to allow Wall Street firms to pay up to $100,000 per month in exchange for early access to potentially market-moving social media posts from President Donald Trump.

The complaint, filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept, alleges Truth API violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment by granting insiders special access to the president’s announcements.

The scheme also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by “charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost” of receiving the benefit of information from the president, the complaint states.

The lawsuit describes Truth API as “profoundly corrupt,” given that “the president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”

In establishing the plaintiffs’ standing, the complaint argues that The Intercept is being put at a competitive disadvantage by the scheme, given that the news outlet is “both unable and unwilling to subscribe” to it, even though it risks “losing out on timely news to competing organizations.”

Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, accused the president of “trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” while vowing that “we won’t let that stand.”

David Bralow, chief legal officer for The Intercept, said that “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements,” emphasizing that “public information belongs to the public.”

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at FPF, said Truth API “is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago.”

“Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous,” Stern added, “because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them.”

The Intercept and the FPF are being represented in the case by attorneys from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.

Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at CREW, said his organization was “proud to represent our clients in their effort to end this corrupt and unconstitutional scheme” because “all Americans are entitled to timely access to their president’s public statements, not just those willing to pay the president’s company $100,000 a month.”

Truth API has also drawn the attention of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the US House Judiciary Committee, who announced a probe into the initiative last month, describing it as an “insider-information scheme” that “will enable Wall Street to profit from the president’s frequent market-moving posts on major businesses.”

-=-=

an 7 26 grift truth soc

Inside the secret $100K tool giving traders Trump's news first

AN 7 26

One of the Trump family's companies this week unveiled the latest in their long line of moneymaking schemes, and according to the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America, it constitutes "truly one of the most wildly corrupt things that has ever happened."

President Donald Trump, his family and their many business holdings have been doggedly determined to milk as much money as possible out of his second term through an unending parade of schemes and grifts. As Trump himself admitted in a recent interview, he has felt no compunction about profiting off his station after realizing that no one would stop him if he did.

Earlier this week, the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Trump's Truth Social platform, announced its intention to sell early access to "market-moving" posts on the platform from some of its "highest-ranking" accounts. The president is by far and away the biggest account on Truth Social, with his continued use of it over other social media sites being essentially the only reason it still exists. In effect, the plan appears to be selling early access to Trump's posts so that banks and traders can take advantage of how they will impact the stock market.

In one of the most recent episodes of the podcast, the former Obama administration officials at Pod Save America dug into the news, calling it an alarming new low for Trump's corrupt second-term pursuits.

"Why don't they just start asking the Treasury to print money for the Trumps?" co-host Jon Favreau, the former head speechwriter for Barack Obama, said. "That is, I don't know why we're going through all of these schemes and this and that. Everything's so complicated. Just go to [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, ask him to start printing money, put it in your pocket, walk away."

The other co-host, former senior Obama comms advisor Dan Pfeiffer, did not mince words with his reaction to the news.

"This is truly one of the most wildly corrupt things that has ever happened," Pfeiffer said. "And that's saying a lot."

Pfeiffer also stressed that, despite the fact that Truth Social is a "stupid platform" that few people outside of political circles pay attention to, Trump's posts there are legitimate presidential statements. In effect, he said, this new plan from the Trump Media & Technology Group would be akin to past presidential administrations giving Wall Street early access to official speeches or press releases.

"Example: president announces a new ceasefire with Iran, you can use that to buy oil futures," Pfeiffer explained. "He says the end of the ceasefire, you can sell your oil futures faster than anyone else because you have paid money to the president to get access to that market-moving information before everyone else in this country."

He further suggested that the move represented an "abuse of power" from Trump, as well as an example of "a high crime and a misdemeanor," referring to the sorts of offenses for which a president could be impeached.

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an 5 26

Natalie Harp has become one of the most influential figures in shaping President Trump's public messaging, yet few Americans know her name. The executive assistant operates largely behind the scenes, serving as the critical filter between the president's impulses and the millions of followers who consume his Truth Social feed each day.

Her role has expanded dramatically since Trump's return to the White House, according to a new, wide-ranging report in the *Wall Street Journal*, making her instrumental in the nearly 8,800 posts published to the president's account since the start of his second term. While Trump personally approves all content, Harp controls much of what reaches his desk for approval in the first place.

Each evening, Harp arrives with stacks of printed-out draft posts—material she and other advisers believe will appeal to the president. These proposed messages often recycle content from fringe social media accounts, partisan commentators, and anonymous users across X and other platforms. According to people familiar with the process, Harp scours the internet for videos, images, and text that align with Trump's grievances and worldview.

Once Trump approves the selections, Harp logs into the president's account—often during late-night and early-morning hours when most White House staff have gone home. She then posts batches of messages in rapid succession, contributing to the frenetic posting patterns that have characterized Trump's Truth Social presence.

On a single night in December, Trump's accountposted nearly 160 times between 8:17 p.m. and midnight. Such bursts have occurred 44 times since Trump returned to office, with dozens or more posts frequently published between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., according to the Journal's analysis.

Harp's influence extends to some of the most controversial content to appear on Trump's account. Earlier this year, at the president's direction, she posted a video containing racist imagery depicting former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes, as well as an AI-generated image portraying Trump as a Christ-like figure. Both posts were later deleted after bipartisan backlash.

Trump later told reporters he had not seen the offensive portion of the video before approving it, blaming an editing error. However, the episode raised questions about how thoroughly the president reviews content before it reaches his followers.

What distinguishes Harp's role is her apparent autonomy in the process. Unlike typical White House operations, she does not share draft posts with the chief of staff's office, communications aides, or national security officials before they are posted. When questioned about this lack of coordination, Harp has told colleagues she works directly for Trump and only answers to him.

This approach has frustrated some White House officials who worry about the absence of institutional checks on the content being published under the president's name.

The lack of broader review means that some of the most divisive presidential messaging bypasses traditional White House communication channels entirely. The posts often amplify conspiracy theories, including false claims about the 2020 election being stolen. They describe migrants as existential threats, call for the arrest of political opponents, and mock critics—all without input from seasoned communications professionals or policy experts.

Much of the content Harp selects comes from obscure or anonymous accounts. The Wall Street Journal found that significant portions of Trump's Truth Social feed consist of reposts from accounts like @TheSCIF, @WallStreetApes, and @NathanielSami—users whose identities and motivations are largely unknown to the general public.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheungdefended the arrangement, stating that "Truth Social has never been hotter" because it allows Trump to offer "unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context." He declined to discuss internal deliberations about how the posting process works.

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===

fusion business?!

PSW 4 26 CORRUPT STATS $ TRUMP KIDS BARRON

ARAB JUSTIN SUN SUE LIBERTY, DRONE PLUS GOLF MERGER

pakistan stable coin?

Apr 22, 2026 Pod Save the World

Tommy and Ben break down another chaotic and consequential week in global affairs. Trump blinks and extends the ceasefire with Iran, but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as US-Iran negotiations stall. Meanwhile, an internal power struggle between Iran's elected leaders and military is complicating talks, and the human cost for ordinary Iranians continues to mount. In Lebanon, Trump stunned Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu by publicly ordering Israel to stop bombing, but the IDF continues to occupy southern Lebanon, and an explosive image of an IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ threatens to erode evangelical support for Israel.

The guys also dig into the sprawling conflicts of interest and corruption plaguing Trump's foreign policy team: Jared Kushner's billion-dollar Gulf slush fund, Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s drone grift, and the Trump family’s foray into the crypto and fusion energy business. Finally, they talk about the historic election results in Hungary and Bulgaria,

Trump’s slow-rolling regime change efforts in Cuba, and reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is such a sloppy drunk that he’s become a threat to national security. Then Tommy is joined by former USAID official Nicholas Enrich to talk about his new book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches and subscribe to his Substack here.

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THIS IS ACTUALLY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE?!

AN 4 26

Trump’s new app has no privacy policy and uses Russian software - Alternet.org

President Donald Trump has been promoting the White House’s new mobile app — pushing it to become the third-most downloaded item on Apple’s popular App Store. But the app reportedly has numerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities, does not properly disclose the data it shares, and uses software components from a Russia-founded company.

“Cybersecurity researchers warn that the White House’s new app regularly shares users’ IP addresses, time zones and other data to third-party services,” NOTUS reports. “But most of its users wouldn’t know that, because the app doesn’t disclose its data sharing the way most others do.”

Cybersecurity experts were shocked by the app’s “slipshod” approach to cybersecurity, especially as it is essentially a product of the White House, and especially since the U.S. is at war.

“The U.S. government’s infrastructure is being attacked from all sides right now, and having an amateur WordPress developer running the White House’s public presence puts everybody who visits it at risk,” Philip Fields, a cybersecurity researcher and former FBI intelligence analyst, told NOTUS. He explains that if this were just a small business’ “random app,” it would not be a story.

“But it’s not,” Fields added. “This is the White House.”

Additionally, the app reportedly has left users and some White House staffers vulnerable. One researcher showed NOTUS screenshots revealing that a Russia-founded software kit company that “provides premade widgets for the app makes public the personal information of some White House staffers through the app.” NOTUS chose to not disclose the staffers’ personal information.

Cybersecurity experts also told NOTUS that the data collected by the White House is not being properly disclosed.

“The White House, as of its latest version released on Friday, left that privacy manifest completely blank, suggesting it collects no data from users,” NOTUS reported.

“It seems to be sharing quite a lot of data about the users to these third parties,” a researcher told NOTUS. “The problem is that the privacy manifest says they do not share that information, but in fact they do. … That is a problem for end-user privacy because effectively, they’re misleading users about how their data is shared.”

A White House press release promoted the launch of its “powerful new official mobile app — delivering President Donald J. Trump and his Administration directly to the American people like never before.”

In his promotional video, Trump says, “Every American should expect their government to have transparency, and the Trump administration is the most transparent in history. That is for sure.”

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an 12 25

President Donald Trump expanded his business activities with the launch of his tech company, Trump Media & Technology Group — which includes his social media platform Truth Social and is separate from the Trump Organization. Although the company increased the president's net worth, its publicly traded shares have been underperforming in the stock market recently.

But Trump Media shares rebounded on Thursday morning, December 18 with the announcement of a merger with the nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies.

According to CNN reporter Matt Egan, "The surprise merger drove shares of Trump Media 17 percent higher in premarket trading. The companies said the all-stock transaction is valued at more than $6 billion and will create one of the first publicly traded fusion companies. After the deal closes, shareholders of Trump Media and TAE would own about 50 percent of the combined entity."

Egan notes that the merger announcement "comes as Trump Media's share price has plunged this year."

"Truth Social has struggled to gain traction, remaining a far smaller player than rival social media platforms," Egan reports. "Trump Media has announced efforts to diversify into artificial intelligence, crypto and asset management."

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an 11 25

President Donald Trump was recently handed another loss in court, after failing to convince a Florida judge that he was owed money by the Guardian newspaper for reporting on a federal investigation involving his company.

Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell reported Monday on the ruling by Judge Hunter W. Carroll of Florida's Twelfth Judicial Circuit, who is an appointee of then-Gov. Rick Scott (R). Carroll granted an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion the Guardian filed, which defendants often file when alleging a lawsuit has been filed with the intent of intruding on First Amendment rights.

Additionally, Lowell reported that Judge Carroll found that reporting critical of Trump and his businesses could not be used by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which is the parent company of his Truth Social platform, to demonstrate actual malice in litigation.

TMTG sued over a 2023 article in the Guardian, in which the paper reported on a federal investigation into the company by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). TMTG had accepted $8 million in emergency loans from shadowy entities it knew little about at the time it accepted the money. One loan for $2 million came from Paxum Bank, which is headquartered in the island nation of Dominica. The other $6 million loan came from an entity called E.S. Family Trust.

The Guardian reported at the time that one of the trustees of E.S. Family Trust was a director of Paxum Bank. And one of the bank's part-owners had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. SDNY prosecutors were probing whether the loans violated federal money laundering laws.

According to that report, one of the executives of TMTG floated the idea of returning the money given the lack of details and transparency about who was providing the loans. TMTG co-founder Will Wilkerson — who eventually became a whistleblower in the federal investigation — told SDNY that Chief Financial Officer Phillip Juhan was uncomfortable about the murky nature of the two entities.

The $2 million from Paxum Bank was sourced in December of 2021 by Patrick Orlando, who was executive at Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which was the entity TMTG merged with when the company went public. Orlando charged a $240,000 finders' fee for the loan, which was sourced through an offshore bank. Donald Trump Jr. ultimately signed off on the loan, per the report.

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comm dr an 5 25

Monday reporting from the Financial Times that U.S. President Donald Trump's family media company "plans to raise $3 billion to buy cryptocurrencies" sparked a fresh wave of alarm over his administration's policies and potential corruption.

After winning a second term last year, the Republican president transferred his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG)—which is behind the Truth Social platform—to a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump Jr.

Citing six unnamed sources, FT reported that TMTG "aims to raise $2 billion in fresh equity and another $1 billion via a convertible bond," and "also plans to launch an exchange-traded fund focused on cryptocurrency."

According to the newspaper:

TMTG said in a statement that "apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources" but did not comment further. Representatives for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

IFrame Content

After Reuters also requested comment on the reporting, the news agency noted, TMTG called both Reuters and FT "fake news."

Responding on social media, Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam, director of the politics and international relations program at the University of Tours in France, said that "the most shocking thing is not the project itself, it is who benefits from it: those close to the president, through an opaque structure, and at the heart of the administration."

"The Trump administration has a very strong pro-crypto policy: favorable taxation, favorable regulation, promotion of investments. And meanwhile, his own family is preparing to raise $3 billion to go all-in on bitcoin," she wrote, highlighting Donald Trump Jr.'s role at TMTG.

Sheppard Sellam also noted that both he and the president's second-eldest son, Eric Trump, are set to speak at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, scheduled to start Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada. Other planned speakers include Vice President JD Vance, Trump's "Crypto Czar" David Sacks, and various Republicans in Congress.

"Where does politics end and business begin?" the professor asked. "He is a sitting head of state whose immediate entourage is organizing massive financial operations, with a direct effect on the markets... and on their wallets."

Florian Hollenbach, an economist at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, simply said, "So much corruption and all out in the open."

The FT reporting came just days after the president dined with the top investors in his meme coin at his Virginia golf club—an event that drew protesters whose chants included: "America's not for sale," "Lock him up," and "Trump is a traitor."

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has also generated alarm with his crypto executive order. His administration faced further criticism last month for disbanding a U.S. Department of Justice unit tasked with investigating criminal actors in the digital asset space—a decision laid out in a memo authored by the president's former personal defense attorney.

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an 10 24

Whistleblower slams Trump Media for outsourcing jobs abroad as betrayal of 'America First'

===

Truth Social stock slides after Trump goes back to Twitter Rob Beschizza

BB 8 24

---

RSS Trump has now amplified QAnon-promoting accounts over 800 times on Truth Social](https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-has-now-amplified-qanon-promoting-accounts-over-800-times-truth)

05/23/24

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AN 5 24

Former President Donald Trump has long used the social media platform Truth Social to criticize anyone he views as an enemy, or a threat to his reputation.

Ahead of the start of his New York hush money trial on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, the MAGA hopeful urged his supporters to turn out in droves to protest the case against him.

A few days later, on April 23, the former president wrote via Truth Social that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is a "'highly conflicted' overseer of a 'kangaroo court.'"

Per a Thursday USA Today report, Trump's "rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence."

MAGA fans "swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan," according to the report, and "the comments soon turned ugly," as some devoted Trump supporters "called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed."

One social media user wrote, "Treason is a hangable offense."

Another said, "They should all be executed."

USA Today reports:

In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused* of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The newspaper also notes:

The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community, is also a frequent venue for Trump-inspired violent rhetoric. 'These judges and lawyers should HANG for perpetuating these fraud cases,' a commenter wrote on April 16, suggesting the executions would be '*an example for future generations of judges and lawyers.'

Former New York Police Department Director of Intelligence Mitchell Silber, according to the report, "compared the Trump supporters now calling for violence against judges to the Capitol rioters who believed they were following Trump’s 'marching orders' on Jan. 6, 2021."

Silber emphasized, "This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon. Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence."

*USA Today's full report is availablehere

===

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SEC charges Trump Media’s independent accounting firm with 'massive fraud' - Alternet.org

---

alternet-no lnx

Russian banker who loaned Trump’s Truth Social $8M reportedly has 'family links to Kremlin'

Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2019 (Creative Commons)

:{:{Alex HendersonApril 22, 2024}:

Even after X CEO Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's @RealDonaldTrump account, the former president has continued to use his own Truth Social as his primary social media platform. Trump's last post on X was on August 24, 2023, but he uses Truth Social frequently.

Truth Social, launched in August 2022, is part of Trump Media and Technology Group — which is now publicly traded. One of Truth Social's backers was Anton Postolnikov, a 40-year-old Russian banker who loaned the outlet $8 million.

According to the Daily Beast, Postolnikov reportedly has "family links" to the Kremlin and made a lot of money with websites that sold "dodgy sex pills."

READ MORE:Putin, Trump and Netanyahu unveil the terrifying perils of strongman rule

"The flagship product sold by these sites, Vimax — which promises longer sex and a firmer erection — has prompted warnings from health regulators in the U.S. for containing hidden ingredients that may endanger health," journalists Matt Bernardini and Matei Rosca explain in an article published on April 22. "The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to buy the supposedly natural male enhancement supplements, and told anyone who had bought the tablets to throw them out."

The reporters add, "The sites where the pills were sold included vimaxtrialoffer.com, which was registered in the name of Anton Postolnikov, 40, according to public domain ownership records."

Postolnikov has a strong connection to MAGA politics.

In addition to helping Truth Social get started, he donated $30,000 to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, according to Bernardini and Rosca.

READ MORE: Wall Street is now betting on Trump’s Truth Social stock to fail

"In (2021), documents show that a company listing Postolnikov as its 'authorized person' owned two dwellings on Miami’s private Fisher Island worth $13 million," Bernardini and Rosca report. "The company that owns the luxury properties, 7812 Fisher Island LLC, is the subject of ongoing divorce proceedings in Florida where Postolnikov is splitting from Olga, a fellow native of St. Petersburg who describes herself as a photojournalist…. Before his alleged foray into Florida high finance, Postolnikov was involved in the selling of Vimax, which was sold via offshore companies in the U.S., Cyprus, and Mauritius, according to the products' websites."

READ MORE: Truth Social lost millions last year: SEC filing

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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note 1 23 ok'd to return to fb and prolly twt, but strategic reason to stay off till spring/summer primary?

===

an 4 24

a Russian businessman based in South Florida may have made millions off of insider trading in a scheme involving the parent company of former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform.

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that investor Anton Postolnikov — the nephew of a former staffer to Russian President Vladimir Putin — is mentioned in court documents from a 2023 New York securities fraud case prosecutors brought against three men from South Florida. Gerald and Michael Shvartsman, along with accomplice Bruce Garelick, allegedly pocketed $23 million from insider trading involving a 2021 merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the Miami, Florida-based Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Garelick and the Shvartsman brothers are accused of sharing non-public information with friends and colleagues in order to maximize their gains from the deal. Documents show Postolnikov loaned $8 million to Trump's company through a Caribbean bank he owns that frequently works with the pornography industry.

While neither Trump nor Postolnikov are facing any allegations of wrongdoing from the deal, the Herald reported that prosecutors could tack on more charges in a subsequent indictment. However, it remains unclear if Postolnikov will be added as an additional defendant. A separate filing by Tai Park — the defense attorney representing Michael Shvartsman — suggests that his client could face new charges of money laundering in response to his efforts to conceal his alleged insider trading profits.

Meanwhile, Garelick, who sat on the board of Digital World Acquisition Corp, is accused of making $50,000 from the merger in his work for Shvartsman's company, Rocket One Capital. Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which is often used as a vehicle for entities seeking to become publicly traded companies, as it involves less regulatory oversight than a traditional initial public offering (IPO). The Herald reported that months before the merger was announced, Garelick wrote a message to Postolnikov that read "Anton, Good times last night! Following up on that Trump Media Group SPAC we mentioned. The deal is going to finalize this week. Please let us know if you are interested in investing."

The murky details of the merger may be partially why the deal has yet to be approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after being on hold for more than two years. As a result of that delay, Trump Media and Technology Group has bled approximately $1 billion in investment commitments as of fall 2023. in the first three quarters of 2023, the company only posted $3.4 million in total revenue, which is far behind competing social media companies like Facebook and X/Twitter.

University of Florida business professor Jay Ritter — an expert on publicly traded companies — told the Herald that the fact that the merger is still on hold is "pretty unprecedented." He also likened the SPAC's performance to a "meme stock," in which social media sentiment drives a stock's performance more than other traditional business metrics.

READ MORE:[Russian sources vanished after Trump declassified Christopher Steele material: report

Click here to read the Herald's full report.

===

an 4 24

Two investors who were involved in the merger that helped make the parent company of former President Donald Trump's social media platform go public are now convicted felons after entering a guilty plea on Wednesday.

CNN reported that brothers Gerald and Michael Shvartsman each pleaded guilty to one count apiece of securities fraud in relation to an insider trading case first brought against them in June of 2023. The South Florida-based investors pocked more than $22 million after tipping off friends and family about the merger that would bring about the initial public offering (IPO) of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).

The IPO came about after a special purpose acquisition group — more commonly known as a SPAC — dubbed "Digital World Acquisition Group" (DWAC) agreed to buy TMTG and take it public in March. The Shvartsman brothers and a third associate, Bruce Garelick knew about the SPAC's plans well ahead of time and invited their associates in 2021 to invest in the company before the news became public. The knowledge likely came from Garelick, who at the time was on the board of the SPAC. Investors then reaped a significant windfall after the merger plans and eventual IPO were announced.

"Michael and Gerald Shvartsman admitted in court that they received confidential, inside information about an upcoming merger between DWAC and Trump Media and used that information to make profitable, but illegal, open-market trades," US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damien Williams said in a public statement.

“Insider trading is cheating, plain and simple,” he continued, adding that the guilty plea "should remind anyone who may be tempted to corrupt the integrity of the stock market that it will earn them a ticket to prison.”

TMTG went public last week, trading for nearly $70 per share on the Nasdaq Composite as $DJT. However, after a filing with financial regulators showed that Truth Social suffered more than $50 million in losses last year and needed the SPAC's funding to remain operational, investors immediately soured on the stock, causing it to plummet in value by roughly $4 billion in its first week of trading. As Trump is the majority shareholder, he lost approximately $1 billion in personal net worth due to the stock's poor performance.

Following the disastrous first week after his IPO, the former president sued his business partners, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, in Florida court. Trump accusing them of mishandling the setup of the company's corporate governance structure and botching the merger with DWAC.

Trump's suit came about after Litinsky and Moss filed their own suit against the ex-president in Delaware Chancery Court. In that complaint, the two investors said Trump engaged in "11th hour, pre-merger corporate maneuvering" to "drastically dilute" the value of their 8.6% stake in the company.

The former president, who has 78 million shares in TMTG, allegedly tried to artificially inflate the number of shares to one billion, which would have reduced Litinsky and Moss' stake to less than 1% of TMTG. Their attorney, Christopher J. Clark, told the Washington Post at the time that Trump was "baselessly trying to renege" on a prior agreement.

While Trump stood to gain more than $3.5 billion from the IPO, he is prohibited from selling any of his shares until after the company has been public for at least six months. If the stock continues to decline in value, his shares may be close to worthless by the time he's able to sell.

READ MORE:['No legitimate business purpose': Trump sued by Truth Social business partners

Here's what federal law says about Trump 'threatening a sitting president': ex-federal prosecutor](https://www.alternet.org/trump-biden-violence/ "Here's what federal law says about Trump 'threatening a sitting president': ex-federal prosecutor")

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https://www.mediamatters.org/truth-social/truth-social-ceo-devin-nunes-appears-**qanon-show-and-praises-host-getting-truth-out

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donors-to-tucker-carlsons-daily-caller-news-foundation-revealed?ref=home

ref roger s 12 22

this reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of [Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows.

The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for thefirst time a list of donors to the 501(c)(3) organization, a group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told The Wall Street Journal at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation,which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists.

Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” McBride, who is senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told The Daily Beast.

such a policy, she said, would ideally include an advisement to donors that they can’t influence editorial work, and a promise of transparency whenever there’s a conflict of interest.

“You’re looking for, first of all, separation between fundraising and the editorial product, and you’re also looking for clarity around what donors can expect in exchange for their donation, as well as transparency so the audience understands,” McBride said, adding that “a tagline on an op-ed would be an obvious transparency mechanism.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the Daily Caller and Carlson for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The journalistic and ethical standards published on the Daily Caller website don’t mention the foundation or any policy regarding donor influence over editorial content. But some donors have contributed content themselves.

For instance, RightForge, an internet infrastructure provider that caters to conservatives, in 2021 gave the foundation $7,500. In May of that year, the Daily Caller ran an op-ed from RightForge CEO Martin Avila, criticizing what Avila called the social media “witch trial” of former President Donald Trump. Months later, RightForge announced it would host Trump’s new social media network,Truth Social.

Real estate investor Adam Milstein gave the foundation $25,000 in 2021 and published an opinion piece that same year. The piece—titled, “Strategic Active Philanthropy Can Strengthen Our American Values”—includes a brief bio for Milstein, which describes him only as “an active philanthropist, an investor, and community leader.”

While the Daily Caller has been blasted for its affinity for the fossil fuel industry, the tax filing shows the Daily Caller News Foundation received financial backing from conservative green-energy group ClearPath Action, which gave $10,000 in 2021.

ClearPath has received favorable coverage from the Daily Caller, which earlier this year cited CEO Rich Powell in an article about his group, without a disclaimer. When Powell landed a Daily Caller op-ed earlier this month, the outlet added a note to the piece and his contributor page that read, “The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.” But those notes did not mention the financial relationship.

Then there’s Daniel Oliver, a Daily Caller regular contributor who also serves as trustee of the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation, which gave the foundation $7,500 in 2021. The Daily Caller highlights some of Oliver’s rich experience in his bio—chair of the Education and Research Institute, director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and former chairmanships of the Federal Trade Commission under President Ronald Reagan and the National Review”—but doesn’t mention his role with the Coleman Foundation, or the donor relationship. (Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that the foundation was a FDRLST Media investor, citing Oliver’s role.)

An even more influential GOP figure also appears in the filing, in the form of a $10,000 gift from CRC Advisors, a group headed up by arch-conservative megadonor and judicial activist Leonard Leo. The Daily Caller published a piece on Friday based on the results of a CRC poll, without disclosing the relationship. The two groups also show overlap in their employees, including current CRC vice president Kevin Daley, whose LinkedIn page says he left the Daily Caller in 2020 after four years as a reporter.

Power the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry, donated $10,000 in 2021 and appears frequently enough in the Daily Caller that articles about the group have their own tag on the site. Since the donation, Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner has been cited in multiple Daily Caller pieces as an expert voice, without no mention of his status as a foundation donor.

Justin Olson , an elected Arizona utility regulatorand former Arizona GOP Senate candidate, gave the foundation $10,000 in 2021, listing his role at the time as an officer with right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA.

The Daily Caller has given TPUSA favorable coverage, including after the donation. It also published an exclusive report in November 2021, the month after Olson announced his bid, revealing that a Scottsdale school board official had access to a so-called Google Drive “dossier” of personal information of vocal conservatives. (Police cleared the official of wrongdoing.) Olson tweeted the article when it came out, and expressed repeated outrage at the story on the platform, while a Twitter search shows he had not tweeted about schools previously.

The filing reveals the names of 2021 donors, but does not indicate whether they had donated before. Some of the contributors who present apparent conflicts of interest have had contributor roles in the publication previously, such as Leo and Adam Milstein, who published op-eds in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, when Power the Future announced its debut, the Daily Caller had the exclusive story.

There are, of course, numerous examples of media companies drawing funding from non-profit backers. But the Daily Caller and the DCNF have a unique relationship.

The foundation was created in 2011, a few years after Carlson founded the Daily Caller with then-partner Neil Patel, who still helms the operation. Thanks to the organization’s non-profit status, the foundation can subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break.

Part of the foundation’s stated mission is to train young reporters, but its staff also generates content, which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free. And while this content is nominally available to any publication,The Washington Postreported that it’s rarely used by anyone beyond the Daily Caller. A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy report found that the Daily Caller published “virtually everything” the nonprofit churned out.

However, other groups have taken advantage of the arrangement. The fact-checking site Snopes reported in 2019 that conservative political activists appropriated foundation content to populate a number of small-time websites styling themselves as local news outlets to smuggle political content to unsuspecting audiences.

The Daily Caller has also been called out for its financial and political ties to Trump’s campaign, which shelled out about $150,000 for access to the Daily Caller email list in the 2016 election, the Center for Media and Democracy reported.

One of the most familiar examples of a donor-funded news organization would be National Public Radio. While NPR gets some government grants, most of its money comes from private contributors—including from industries it reports on. But McBride noted that NPR puts disclaimers on stories that may present an apparent conflict.

“When you listen to public media, you hear that certain people give money for certain lines of reporting, like for climate change, et cetera. So you can fund a line of reporting, but you get no influence over how that news is presented, and public media also lets the audience know when that funding may intersects with the reporting,” McBride said.

It’s unclear whether any Daily Caller News Foundation donors tabbed their contributions for specific issues or series. But some well-known issues-driven names populate the list, including top GOP megadonor and election-denial enthusiast Dick Uihlein ($25,000), anti-climate change groups the Bradley Foundation ($50,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundation ($350,000), and conservative free-market underwriters Searle Freedom Trust ($230,000).

The source of the biggest donation, however, is still unknown. That would be the $400,000 the group received through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit known as a conservative dark money “ATM,” which allows funders to channel money anonymously to various recipients. The foundation also got a $300,000 injection from someone identified as “anonymous.”

The Daily Caller operation—which has been exposed forties to white nationalists—has been widely criticized on the left for its financial ties to energy interests, most specificallyCharles Koch, who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.

That bankroll swelled between 2020 and 2021. The foundation’s fiscal year 2020 filing shows $1.57 million in contributions, a number thatnearly doubled to $2.8 million the next year, according to the 2021 document. The foundation spent $1.4 million—$254,000 of it on fundraising—which, combined with previous assets, left it with a year-end balance of about $2.1 million.

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an auditor responsible for overseeing Trump Media's books is ducking calls seeking comment on a pair of loans totaling $8 million that have fallen under investigation as possible money laundering.

Top executives at Donald Trump's social media raised concerns about the loans from Paxum Bank and ES Family Trust, which both are linked to an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and it remains unclear whether the SEC-licensed broker-dealer who sourced the loans or auditor BF Borders completed any due diligence under anti-money laundering and “Know Your Customer” requirements, reported The Guardian. guk

"A person who picked up the phone at BF Borgers this week put a reporter seeking comment on hold until the line disconnected," the newspaper's Hugo Lowell reported. "On a subsequent call, the person said they would pass the request on to managing partner Ben Borgers."

The payments came as Trump Media, which owns the Trump Social platform, was running out of money in December 2021 and February 2022 as its planned merger with the blank check company DWAC was halted by an SEC investigation, and top executives at the fledgling tech company were so concerned about the origins of the loans they considered returning the money.

However, according to Trump Media co-founder turned whistleblower Will Wilkerson, chief financial officer Phillip Juhan ultimately decided not to return the money because giving up $8 million of the roughly $12 million of cash they had on hand would have put the company in a precarious position.

DWAC chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced the first loan, $2 million from Paxum Bank, just before Christmas 2021 and later charged a $240,000 finder’s fee to Trump Media, and he declined to provide requested information about the lender to company executives who voiced concerns.

Donald Trump Jr., who had taken a more actively role in the company since that summer, personally signed off guk? on the loan Christmas Eve 2021 in a communication sent to outside counsel, but Juhan raised concerns again about the sources of the loans on March 8, 2022.

"Our auditors require confirmation statements signed by all noteholders," Juhan wrote in an email reviewed by The Guardian. "We don’t have a contact for ES Family Trust other than the name of Angel Pacheco (Trustee). Can you provide contact info (email) so that our auditor (BF Borgers) can email this confirmation? Thanks!"

its unclear whether any further information or a signed version of the loan agreement were ever passed on to Juhan or the auditor, and the CFO and Orlando also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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