Trump left Truth Social board not long before it got hit with an SEC subpoena, filing shows
Truth Social #TruthSocial
Former US President Donald Trump.Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
A filing shows Donald Trump was removed as a director from Truth Social’s board on June 8.
It happened three weeks before Truth Social’s parent company was issued with a federal subpoena.
Truth Social in a statement denied that Trump left the board, despite the document saying so.
Former President Donald Trump left the board of his social media firm, Truth Social, weeks before it was served with a federal subpoena, records show.
According to a June 8 filing with the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations, Trump was removed from his position as chairman of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).
He was one of several departures along with his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other members Wes Moss, Kashyap Patel, Andrew Northwall, and Scott Glabe.
The departures were first reported Thursday by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
TMTG is the parent company of Truth Social, the social-media platform Trump launched after he was banned from mainstream social media following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
But Truth Social pushed back against reports on the filing in a statement, claiming that Trump was still serving on the board as its chairman.
Its statement suggested the reports were based a misunderstanding of the document, but did not elaborate. Truth Social did not immediately respond to a request from Insider for more explanation.
TMTG is currently in the process of being acquired by Digital World Acquisition Corp, a SPAC.
The deal is under close regulatory scrutiny from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Manhattan Grand Jury.
The June 8 document describing departures from the board came before a flurry of legal activity around the acquisition.
Digital World first told investors on June 13 the merger was the subject of an investigation by the SEC.
It later revealed its board members had received subpoenas from a grand jury on June 16, according to a regulatory filing published on June 24. The same filing added that Digital World had also received a subpoena on June 24.
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Digital World then disclosed in a July 1 filing the SEC had issued TMTG with a subpoena on June 27. The same filing said the grand jury issued TMTG with a subpoena on June 30.
If Donald Trump has indeed left the board, he’s not the only high-level departure from Truth Social.
Andy Dean Litinsky, a former “The Apprentice” contestant who reportedly pitched the original idea for Truth Social to Trump and a top exec left the company months ago, Reuters reported in June.
Two other top executives — technology chief Josh Adams and head of product development Billy Boozer — also left the company in April two months after Truth Social’s app launched on iOS, Reuters reported.
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