Trump media venture eyed by regulators
NEW YORK — Regulators are looking into the deal that would bring Donald Trump’s new social media company to the stock market, one that has attracted both legions of fans of the former president and people looking to make a quick profit.
The company partnering with Trump Media & Technology Group acknowledged the inquiries in a filing it made with regulators Monday. It also gave some financial forecasts for the company, which wants to rival Twitter and other platforms that banned Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, along with Netflix and other streaming video services. It said over the weekend that it has lined up $1 billion in investments from a group of unnamed institutional investors.
Separately, Trump Media announced that Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, will leave Congress to become the company’s chief executive in January. Nunes, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, was an ardent backer of Trump’s during probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the president’s 2019 impeachment by the Democratic-led House.
The regulatory scrutiny is focused on the October announcement by Trump’s media venture that it would merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp. That company had launched on the U.S. stock market three weeks earlier with the sole purpose of finding a privately held company to buy. It’s often referred to by its trading symbol of “DWAC.”
DWAC said Monday that it is cooperating with “the preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The SEC early last month requested documents related to meetings of DWAC’s board and communications between DWAC and Trump’s media venture, among other things.
The SEC could be looking at whether DWAC and Trump’s company had any conversations about a deal before DWAC’s own initial public offering of stock, said Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida who is an expert on IPOs.
By Associated Press
