President-elect Donald Trump has transferred nearly all his shares in the parent company of Truth Social to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, operates the social media platform as an alternative to mainstream apps like Instagram and X.
Since its listing, Trump Media has been a favorite among traders who saw it as a speculative bet on Donald Trump’s winning the November 5 election. Trump has retained up to 57% ownership of the company, with his stake valued at nearly $4 billion in the lead-up to the election. FOX Business reported that Trump and Andy Dean Litinsky co-founded TMTG in February 2021 and began trading on the NASDAQ in March 2024.
Jordan Libowitz, vice president of Communications at CREW, criticized Trump’s decision to transfer his stock, arguing that despite the move, the president-elect still has ethical concerns. “Yes, he put it in a trust, but [he] basically did nothing to assuage any ethical fears,” Libowitz told Politico. “This is like a head nod in the direction of ethics without taking an actual ethical step.”
A spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, Karoline Leavitt, told Politico that Trump “removed himself from his multi-billion-dollar real estate empire to run for office and forewent his government salary, becoming the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House.” Truth’s Social worth soared in the weeks leading up to Election Day. In October, the stock price rose almost 9% to $34.17.
Meanwhile, Trump filed an amicus brief late Thursday backing a legal effort by Texas and Missouri to “immediately” halt the Biden administration’s sale of border wall materials, calling the action “possibly criminal.” Earlier this week, Texas and Missouri filed a motion in the Southern District of Texas requesting a status conference to assess whether the government is violating a permanent injunction issued earlier this year. The injunction prohibits the Biden administration from using funds allocated for wall construction for any other purpose.
“The Court should issue an order directing the Defendants to immediately stop any ongoing sale of border-barrier materials to private parties pending the Court’s review of Defendant’s conduct, and the Court should swiftly conduct a searching examination of the Government’s conduct, by formal discovery if necessary, to examine the Government’s compliance with the law, the Constitution, and the Court’s injunction,” Trump’s amicus brief states, according to Fox News.
Trump’s amicus brief states that if officials in the Biden administration are “deliberately selling off border-wall materials at a major financial loss to the Government to obstruct the pro-wall policy of Congress and President Trump, such conduct likely constitutes a criminal act, such as a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” The filing adds: “At the very least, the reported conduct raises troubling concerns of potentially criminal behavior.”
