Trump’s Truth Social media company ‘propped up in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation’

Donald Trump’s Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company behind his Truth Social network that made its Wall Street debut last week, had to be kept afloat in 2022 through a series of emergency loans provided, in part, by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny as part of a federal investigation into insider trading, according to a report by The Guardian.

The Republican presidential contender’s social media platform was taken public last Thursday after TMTG merged with Digital World Acquisition Corporation and enjoyed a remarkable debut on the Nasdaq exchange with shares trading at a high of $78.

They plunged days later, however, as the company’s extraordinary 2023 losses came to light – leading some to warn that it is the latest example of a volatile “meme stock” offering that has little underlying value.

According to The Guardian, TMTG might never have made it to the merger stage after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the deal in 2021, prompting Mr Trump’s company to chew up cash to keep it alive long enough until it could be cleared to make its stock market bow.

That expense forced the company to seek out emergency loans, two of which, the newspaper reports, were worth $8m in total and came in the form of convertible promissory notes (granting the lender a significant stake in TMTG) from an entity called the ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank registered in Dominica in the Caribbean.

The broadsheet cites leaked documents linking the trust to the Russian-American businessman Anton Postolnikov, co-owner of Paxum Bank and the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security over his role in the TMTG merger.