And to think just last week how the news folks were crowing that Russia’s economy appears to be doing even better than before it started the war on Ukraine…
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He’s done blatant tax and financing fraud for the entirety of his business career, so that’s nothing new. He raped Ivana in the late 80s or so, probably E. Jean Carroll and others too. Arguably became an unregistered foreign agent of the Soviet Union/Russia around the same time. Did a bunch of bankruptcy and securities fraud in the 90s. Appears to have entered the international money laundering golf resorts and condo business in the '00s, which he’s definitely still into.
I don’t think he’s especially more brazen about it now than he was pre-presidency. I just think the spotlight of holding the office has made it much more apparent.
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He got used to the power of the office of POTUS, that will never go away in his rotted little pea brain, so perhaps this is why he is more flagrant as he doesn’t understand he ain’t POTUS no more.
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And if anyone really wants to get down into the weeds, use the googles to look up “death-spiral convertible.” Trump’s SPAC has this feature and it basically guarantees that the rubes who bought shares on the open market were doomed to lose their shirts.
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Yes, I recall reporting on that earlier. Reminds me of Melania’s NFTs for cryptocurrency. How’s that workin’ out for you, babe? No walking-away money?
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You are conflating a SPAC with a “shelf” company. DWAC did not exist until they IPO’ed last fall about six weeks before announcing their intended acquisition of TMTG. There was no “buy on the cheap”, every pre-IPO investor bought their shares at $10, the same price they IPO’ed at. Also the same price DWAC traded at on the public market until things got silly upon the announcement of the planned acquisition.
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Either he takes over the country or he is already going to jail for the rest of his life. He no longer has much to lose and his voters don’t care/won’t learn what he does.
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Trump muses: Don’t look like Americans think much of cozying up to Putin just about now. Hmm, where’s my next sugar daddy supposed to come from?
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You’re right, I had not caught up on that particular innovation. It used to be that the PE guys would buy up a publicly traded company on the cheap to avoid the going-public disclosures, but now they seem to just do the going-public disclosures that amount to “We don’t know WTF we’re going to do, we just have a ton of money and want to buy some shit, LOL.”
So the very recent IPO of DWAC suggests to me that Trump was likely selling his name to DWAC after buying the stock post-IPO. In other words, pump-and-dump.
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Yep.
Something tells me by the time this is through, the deal won’t go down.
They promised the equity funds $450 million in stock for $300 million cash. Even it tanks on day one, they can still take a profit from that.
Very shady.
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Exactly. These Special Acquisition Vehicles can say ‘We’re going public with a fund to buy the best Virtual Reality firms and we have $______ to invest in top notch VR companies.’
It turns out that SPAC’s have 10 x the bankruptcy rate of other firms. Big surprise.
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Seems to have been pre-IPO and pre-existence of the DWAC, there’s some connection between the guy leading the DWAC and trump that goes back to early 2021, suspicion is that the entire scheme was set up specifically to do the pump-and-dump for trump.
Which, in my understanding of the limited rules on SPACs can be a massive violation, as they’re not allowed to negotiate with a partner before forming, they’re supposed to form and then look for suitable candidates.
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Well, DWAC may have effectively killed the SPAC as a viable platform, which would not be the worst thing in the world. I’m sure there will be some new vehicle coming down the pike.
I doubt it. Would run afoul of arms-length transaction rules and put at risk the $1.2+ billion in cash he gets majority control of if and when the deal goes through. Also, if he were buying stock and got over the 5% ownership threshold one of the regular public comany filings would disclose that. Remember, the dumpng gets done by the initial investors and those who kicked in a billion dollars in the PIPE. What he gets out of it is $1.2 billion in cash to play with. Not bad for lending out your name and spending a few mil to prop up a facsimile of a social networking site.
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All of this is very good context that should have been summarized in the article, so that the reader would understand the likely reasons why (ETTD) this deal is under SEC and Grand Jury subpoenas.
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Enjoy your time in the barrel, Devin.
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Trump Motto: You aren’t trying hard enough if you aren’t breaking the law
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Sounds like a form of corporate sock-puppetry in order to get around SEC disclosures etc.
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I was just starting to unwind the Brazil connection and Bolsanaro. Hmm. All things Trumpy, messy.
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For practical reasons, the twice impeached, publicly humiliated former President should be allowed to serve any criminal sentence under home confinement at Mal-de-Mer West on the isle of Alcatraz
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trying to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group in an $875 million deal.
Now we know the value of junk.
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