Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company, data shows, just weeks before the company faced federal subpoenas from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan.
Trump, the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, was one of six board members fired on June 8, state affairs have revealed.
Among the removed board members were Kashyap Patel, Trump’s former point-man at the White House; Scott Glabe, a former Trump aide who was an adviser to the media company; and Donald Trump Jr.
The SEC sued Trump Media and Technology Group on June 27, according to a regulatory filing. Trump’s media company owns Truth Social, an app similar to Twitter. Trump was banned from Twitter for inflammatory comments about the uprising.
Four days later, on July 1, a grand jury in the Southern District of New York handed the company another federal subpoena, an action that typically means a possible criminal investigation.
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 like these are raising money to go public with the intention of finding a company to merge with. SPACs are prohibited from finding a partner before going public, but the SEC is investigating possible talks between the two companies that may have been premature, according to a filing.
The merger between the two companies could reportedly mean $1.3 billion in capital and an IPO for the new company, according to the New York Times.
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Digital World revealed in a recent filing that its board of directors had previously received similar subpoenas.
According to Digital World’s filing, the grand jury subpoenas targeting Trump’s company sought a “subset of the same or similar documents demanded in subpoenas against Digital World and its directors.”
The SEC subpoena, according to a filing, seeks “documents related to, among others, Digital World and other potential counterparties to a corporate transaction involving TMTG.”
In addition to the fact that Trump’s company was operated by a grand jury, “certain current and former TMTG personnel” were also subpoenaed. Those “personnel” were not identified.
In a statement, Trump Media said it “will continue to cooperate fully with investigations into our planned merger and comply with subpoenas we recently received, none of which were addressed to the company’s chairman or CEO.”
What the statement failed to mention was that Trump is no longer chairman, at least according to the state-owned company filing.
Former California Congresswoman Devin Nunes is listed as CEO of the media company. A businessman named Phillip Juhan is the CFO of the company. They are now the only two board members on the list, both with the same office address in Sarasota.
The removal of Trump and the other board members not only preceded two federal subpoenas, but also occurred shortly after Trump registered his business in Sarasota, which happened on April 18.
The Trump Media office is located on the second floor of an office building on Cattlemen Road.
A visit to the office by the Herald-Tribune on June 27 revealed that Trump’s company name was not on the register in the main lobby, nor was there any reference to the name in the office suite itself. There was also no receptionist, just a note to ring the bell for help.
The visit to the Herald-Tribune office took place the same day the SEC served the Trump company the subpoena.
Notable was the lack of Trump’s name — one of the most recognizable in the world — from the office building, as the former president has a licensing agreement with Trump Media for the use of his name.
A social media platform is vital to Trump, most recently evidenced by his harsh criticism of Truth Social from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who told the House Select Committee that Trump insisted that during the riots he would go to the Capitol.
It is still unknown why Trump chose Sarasota as the home of his company, although it is close to Rumble, the video media platform company used by Truth Social.
Rumble is located on Longboat Key, 11 miles from Trump Media headquarters.
Truth Social was founded about a year after the January 6 attacks, but the app struggled with technical issues and lagged behind its ability to attract followers.
On April 22, the technical issues appeared to be resolved when Rumble announced the successful migration of Truth Social’s website and mobile apps to its cloud infrastructure.
On April 18, four days before that announcement, Trump Media registered as a corporation with the State of Florida, addressing Sarasota and the former President of the United States as its board member.
Please contact Chris Anderson at [email protected]. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital subscription.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Trump Leaves Social Media Company During Federal Investigation
