00:00 Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is my Forbes
00:07 colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.
00:12 Thanks for having me on again, Brittany.
00:14 Of course, as we all know, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and
00:19 his party has largely coalesced around him in terms of support. But you're reporting
00:24 that not many are backing his latest venture. Only two members of his own party who are
00:29 lawmakers bought shares of Digital World, the SPAC that merged with Truth Social's
00:33 parent company. So what can you tell us?
00:36 Yeah, this was really surprising. Shortly after the merger went through and Trump media
00:42 started trading on the stock market, I was curious how many members of Congress own this?
00:47 So they do have to file financial disclosures that information is there. It's a little bit
00:51 tough to find to look up by a particular stock, but there are a bunch of companies out there
00:56 that will put this on the Web where they will go through and pull out all the data and you
01:00 can look through them. So I went to those websites. I typed in Digital World Acquisition
01:04 Corp. It's symbol DWAC. And I found just two members of Congress who would would purchase
01:09 it.
01:11 And who are these members of Congress?
01:14 They are representative Larry Bouchon of Indiana, who I'm sure most people have not heard of.
01:19 And the other one is representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I suspect most people watching
01:24 this have heard of.
01:25 So let's start with her. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene did buy some stock in Digital
01:30 World. How much and when?
01:34 It was somewhere between 15 and 50 thousand dollars worth of shares. Lawmakers are not
01:39 required to give an exact amount. They just get to report in these broad ranges. So that's
01:45 all we know is between 15 and 50 thousand. And in her case, it's even tougher to figure
01:49 out exactly how much she has because the stock swung wildly on the day she purchased it.
01:54 She purchased it in October 2021, two days after the merger plan was announced. And that
02:00 day it swung anywhere from sixty seven dollars and ninety six cents to one hundred and seventy
02:04 five dollars. So by my math, she could have purchased anywhere from eighty five to seven
02:09 hundred thirty five shares, which is a giant swing.
02:13 That is a huge increment right there of shares. What are they worth today?
02:21 Not much compared to what she spent them on. Last we knew, so what she reported them at
02:25 the end of twenty twenty one on her annual financial disclosure, they were worth just
02:30 a thousand to fifteen thousand dollars. By my math, the lowest they could be worth right
02:35 now would be about twelve hundred dollars. They could be worth a little more. Again,
02:40 we don't know exactly what the how many shares she purchased.
02:45 And does she still have them today?
02:48 It appears she does not. They did not show up on her twenty twenty two financial disclosure.
02:54 We the deadline for twenty twenty three financial disclosures is not until next month and usually
02:59 they get an extension till August anyway. So it'll be a few months before we can verify
03:03 it there. But it was not on the twenty twenty two disclosure. I reached out to her staff.
03:09 Her spokesperson, Nick Dyer, told me that we filed everything correctly. He would not
03:13 give me any explanation as to what may have happened to the stock. But he said everything
03:16 was filed above board. Looking at it, I think there are two possible explanations of why
03:22 the shares weren't reported. Number one, if they're below a thousand dollars, they don't
03:27 need to report them. Now, again, that seems unlikely because by my math, they should have
03:31 been worth a minimum of twelve hundred dollars. So they should have had to be reported there.
03:36 The other option is that lawmakers do not have to report stock transfers between family
03:42 members and she possibly could have given these stocks to a family member. The year
03:48 in twenty twenty two, the year they disappeared from her financial disclosures, she got divorced.
03:53 She and her husband, the settlement agreement was was signed before the divorce was final,
03:59 meaning they still would have been family members when any sort of stock transfer happened.
04:04 The shares were originally even purchased in a joint account. And Representative Green
04:09 seems to flick at this possibility in the comments section of her financial disclosure,
04:15 where she mentions some stocks that she'd reported owning previously. She doesn't have
04:19 any more due to a change in her marital situation. And in fact, her financial disclosure in twenty
04:23 twenty two was just six pages in twenty sixteen. It had been our senior twenty twenty one.
04:29 It had been 16 pages. So clearly digital world shares are not the only one to have disappeared
04:35 from her portfolio. So let's now talk about the other member of Congress who bought shares
04:40 of Digital World, and that is Congressman Larry Bouchon. And as you said earlier, he
04:45 is the lesser known member of Congress. Is he anything or are his politics rather anything
04:51 like Marjorie Taylor's green? Is he far right? Is he a firebrand in the party? Yeah, I had
04:57 to look him up, actually. Not somebody I'm familiar with. And he certainly has had pro
05:03 Trump stances. But what really stood out here was that he did criticize Trump for the January
05:08 6 rally and said that he was part of the reason he was part of the reason for inciting it.
05:13 And he's also went on record saying he didn't think Trump was going to be the GOP nominee.
05:17 Now, that obviously didn't pan out, but he's not as pro Trump as you would possibly expect
05:22 from just the other member of Congress to buy shares in Digital World. So how many shares
05:28 did he buy? His his transactions were a lot more straightforward. He purchased a thousand
05:34 to fifteen thousand dollars worth of shares four days after the stock came out. As of
05:38 his last financial disclosure that's been made public. Twenty twenty two. He has the
05:42 same amount, a thousand to fifteen thousand dollars worth of shares, and he's holding
05:46 them in his IRA. But what's interesting here, it was actually the first stock transaction
05:51 for an individual stock that he's reported making since 2013 when he showed it sold the
05:57 shares in Apple. And it's actually the only individual stock that he owns. So, you know,
06:02 this certainly seems like he went out of his way to purchase shares in Digital World and
06:06 it's not part of his typical investing strategy. Is there any indication of why it appears
06:12 that he went out of his way here? No, I reached out to his staff for an explanation of this
06:18 was one of the questions I asked and they didn't get back to me. So once Trump Media
06:23 and Technology Group went public last month, did any member of Congress buy shares of that?
06:30 We're going to have to wait and see on that. Very interesting to see if that interesting
06:34 to see if that happened once the merger went through. But members of Congress have 45 days
06:39 to legally report their stock transactions, and a lot of them take longer than that and
06:44 get off with a slap in the wrist for it. So it's going to be a little bit until we know
06:48 for sure if anyone has bought it since it started trading under the symbols DJT. But
06:53 I will certainly be looking for that. And once you look for it, once you find out if
06:58 anyone did, I'm sure you will be back on to discuss. Zach Everson, thanks so much for
07:03 joining me. Thanks for having me.
07:05 Thank you.
07:05 Thank you.
07:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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