Tag: TRUTH Social

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Business Crime Donald Trump Social Media

Three Major Truth Social Investors Arrested On Charges Of Insider Trading

Three Florida men have been arrested by federal authorities and charged with insider trading involving $22 million they made prior to former president Donald Trump’s failing Truth Social media company being taking public, the Associated Press reports.

The three men — Michael Shvartsman, 52, of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida; Gerald Shvartsman, 45, of Aventura, Florida; and Bruce Garelick, 53, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida — will make their first court appearance Thursday in Miami.

Michael Shvartsman, the AP reports, was the owner of Rocket One Capital LLC, a venture capital firm. His brother, Gerald Shvartsman, was Rocket One’s chief investment officer, according to court papers.

The indictment alleges that between June 2021 and November 2021 the men bought securities after Garelick was given a seat on the board of Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was created to take Truth Social public. Authorities also allege that Garelick then began sharing insider information with others.

According to the indictment, the men were invited to invest in the special purpose acquisition company, Digital World Acquisition Corp., and were provided confidential information that a potential target of DWAC and another acquisition company, Benessere Capital Acquisition Corp., was Trump Media & Technology Group.

Even though Trump isn’t implicated in the scheme, this is the latest blow to the former president’s attempts to merge DWAC with Trump Media, meaning the stock price may collapse and result in a death spiral for Trump Social, which still has fewer than 2 million users, compared to Twitter’s 353 million and Facebook’s 2.96 billion.

In recent weeks, there have been rumors that Trump may be rejoining Twitter as he ramps up his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

 

Categories
Business Donald Trump Social Media

Trump’s Truth Social On The Verge Of Imploding As Feds Ramp Up Investigations

Truth Social, the social media site launched by failed one-term former president Donald Trump in February of last year, is facing financial collapse as soon as September, according to The New York Times.

Two federal investigations of a proposed merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media & Technology Group could wind up costing the venture $300 million and require the company to repay millions to investors.

That deal has been waylaid by two intensifying federal investigations. One is focused on whether preliminary merger discussions between Digital World and Trump Media violated federal securities laws. The other investigation is looking at whether a group of early investors in Digital World — who were brought into the deal by [deal architect Patrick] Orlando — engaged in improper trading.

With a six-month clock ticking, it seems unlikely that the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C) will complete its investigations of possibly illegal actions taken during the founding of Truth Social, The Times adds.

Executives of Trump Media and some shareholders of Digital World have accused the S.E.C. of trying to run out the clock. In February, officials with Trump Media sent a letter to several Republican congressmen asking them to open an investigation into the S.E.C.’s refusal to approve the deal, accusing regulators of being biased against the former president. SPACs are not allowed to hold serious merger discussions before they go public, and if they do, it can violate federal securities laws. Federal authorities are trying to determine if Digital World’s talks with Trump Media were substantive enough that they should have been disclosed before the SPAC sold shares to the public in September 2021.

Those facts, according to Michael Klausner of Stanford Law School, do not bode well for Truth Social:

“If it was clearly prearranged, that was an egregious violation. The S.E.C. has the discretion to stop a merger where the disclosures violate security laws.”

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that yet another company aligned with the disgraced ex-president is imploding. After all, he’s made a career of creating companies and products that fail miserably and wind up mired in a legal morass.

Categories
Donald Trump GOP Ron DeSantis Social Media

Trump’s Truth Social Site Goes Dark Shortly After #DeSantis24 Starts Trending On The Platform

It started as a dare combined with a sociological experiment and seasoned with a dash of humor: Could three guys manage to get the hashtag #DeSantis2024 trending on Donald Trump’s Truth Social site?

And if they could get the hashtag trending, what would happen next?

Ari Cagan, Adam Faze, and Peter McIndoe are best known for their satirical “Birds Aren’t Real” movement and decided they’d use another site, TikTok, to see if they could indeed make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) trend on Truth Social.

They succeed, and wound up taking down the ex-president’s site with their gag, NBC News reports.

“If only 100 of us make accounts and post with a new hashtag, it will literally be trending, and Trump will see it,” McIndoe told the camera in a shaky video in front of Trump Tower in New York. “So in my opinion, the hashtag we should use is #desantis2024.”

#DeSantis2024 it was, and in no time it became the leading topic on Truth Social, going from nowhere at the beginning of the week to the top spot, with 1,500 mentions overnight.

You want viral? That’s viral with some major attitude.

What happened next? Truth Social went dark, according to Vice News:

One user who took part in the campaign, who had never used his account to post anything before and only posted the term #desantis2024, claimed his account was banned as a result.

But despite the downtime and possible banned users, the #DeSantis2024 hashtag continued to trend on Truth Social on Wednesday, along with the hashtag #ResearchBirdSurveillance, which is a reference to the viral satire/conspiracy theory movement known as “Birds Aren’t Real” that McIndoe started in 2017.

But perhaps most incredible of all is how three guys with cell phones managed to take down a former president’s social media site. That led Adam Faze to remark with delight, “What TikTok is best at is noticing when something is getting lots of traction and starting to show that same video, then, to the masses. We could never have done this on another platform. This was made for a mobile audience, and it was definitely a stunt that was pulled off only with a phone.”

Truth Social has refused to comment on the incident, but it’s likely that Trump told engineers to shut down the site when he saw DeSantis trending. After all, we know what a thin-skinned and delicate little snowflake Donnie is.

Categories
Donald Trump LGBT Issues Social Media

Trump Launches A Disgusting Homophobic Attack On Pete Buttigieg Via Social Media

Throughout his career in both business and politics, disgraced one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump has been fond of giving people nicknames, probably as a way to pretend that he’s superior to everyone else he encounters, even though the truth is that he’s one of the most insecure losers ever born.

And yet, the failed ex-president decided he’d stoop to a new low with a disgusting attack he launched at Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg via his failing Truth Social site, which is reportedly desperate for cash and on the verge of financial collapse.

Referencing an article from a newspaper he hates, The Washington Post, Trump made a clearly homophobic reference to Buttigieg, writing:

“Wow, is The Washington Post becoming legit. They just reported that the weak and totally ineffective Secretary of Transportation, Pete ‘BUTTedgeedge’ LIED when he said that the Trump Administration’s great and effective reduction in regulations, a giant job producer, had NOTHING to do with the East Palestine Train Derailment. It was just more Dem DISINFORMATION in order to deflect from their gross incompetence.” Trump added: “Really good investigative journalism by The Washington Post. Keep it going!”

This comes just days after Donald Trump Jr. also took a cheap shot at Buttigieg based on his sexual orientation, Newsweek reported:

“Peter has no business in that position, but he’s the guy who had no business running for president. But they let him do that because he was gay and they check off a box and then he didn’t win, but, well, he’s the gay guy, so ‘we’ve got to give him something, let’s make him Transportation Secretary.’

“What does he know about it? Nothing. His failure, after failure, after failure are truly affecting the American people.”

None of this should surprise anyone. After all, both Donald Trump and Don Jr. have repeatedly proven that they’re proud bigots and will stoop to any level if it will help distract from their own massive failure in everything they’ve attempted.

 

Categories
Donald Trump Elections Fox News

Fox News Brutally Mocks Trump As A ‘Three-Time Loser’ On His Own Social Media Site

Fox News is making it clear that they’re finished with disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, even going so far as to call him a “three-time loser” on his failing Truth Social site.

That’s just the latest escalation from Fox, with The Guardian reporting that Rupert Murdoch has let Trump know he will not support his 2024 presidential campaign, which the ex-president recently announced.

After the Republican party’s disappointing performance in the US midterm elections, in particular the poor showing by candidates backed by Trump, Murdoch’s rightwing media empire appears to be seeking a clean break from the former president’s damaged reputation and perceived waning political power.

Last week, Murdoch’s influential media empire, including right-leaning Fox News, his flagship paper the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, each rounded on Trump, calling him a loser and a flop responsible for dragging the Republicans into “one political fiasco after another.”

“We have been clear with Donald. There have been conversations between them during which Rupert made it clear to Donald that we cannot back another run for the White House,” a senior News Corp source told thenewspaper.

Instead, Fox and News Corp are going all-in on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is seen as having a much better chance of winning if and when he decides to run for president.

Lachlan Murdoch, the heir apparent and eldest son, who co-chairs News Corp and runs the parent company of Fox News, has reportedly told DeSantis that the group would back him if he ran in the next election. “Lachlan has been keen on Ron for some time,” said the source. “He’s viewed within the organisation as a sanitised version of Donald.”

DeSantis, who has been called “DeFuture” by the New York Post and “the new Republican party leader” in a Fox News column, has not declared whether he intends to compete to be the party’s 2024 presidential candidate.

It’ll be interesting to see how Trump responds to being tossed overboard by Murdoch and Fox.