Thursday, July 7, 2022

Slinking away

Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company, records show, just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan.

[...]

Among the board members removed were Kashyap Patel, Trump's former point man in the White House; Scott Glabe, a former assistant to Trump who was counsel for the media company; and Donald Trump, Jr.

The SEC served Trump Media and Technology Group with a subpoena on June 27, according to a regulatory filing. Trump's media company owns Truth Social, an app similar to Twitter. Trump was banned by Twitter for inflammatory remarks concerning the insurrection.

[...]

Former California Congressman Devin Nunes is listed as the media company's CEO. A businessman named Phillip Juhan is the company's CFO. They are now the only two board members listed, both using the same Sarasota office address.

[...]

The investigations appear to be related to a proposed merger between Trump's media company and a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp., according to a recent regulatory filing.

Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Companies such as these raise money to go public with the intent of finding a company to merge with. SPACs are prohibited from finding a partner before going public, but the SEC is investigating potential talks between the two companies that were possibly premature, according to a filing.

[...]

Trump Media's office is on the second floor of an office building on Cattlemen Road.

A visit to the office by the Herald-Tribune on June 27 revealed Trump's company name was not on the registry in the main lobby, nor was there any reference to the name at the office suite itself. There was no receptionist either, just a note to ring the doorbell for assistance.

  Herald-Tribune
Well, that's not suspicious.

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