U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) speaks alongside former U.S. President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, March 9, 2024.
Elijah Nouvelage | AFP | Getty Images
A media company with ties to former President Donald Trump is off to a rocky start, with stock prices plunging and the company’s value falling by the day.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., doesn’t seem eager to talk about the troubled business, years after she bought shares in a company that helped Trump’s company go public on the Nasdaq .
When asked by CNBC and NBC News, Greene would not say what happened to her shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. happened through a merger with Trump media, recently began trading publicly as DJT. The share price has fallen at least 45% since the beginning of the month.
Trump Media is the parent company of the former president’s social media app, Truth Social. DWAC shareholders voted to merge with Trump Media to take the company public on March 22. The company debuted on Nasdaq on March 26.
Greene is one of two congressmen supporting the purchase of shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp. have disclosed. She and Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Ind., each purchased shares of the company in the same month in October 2021, according to financial filings. The company announced that it had entered into a deal with Trump Media to merge the two companies, with the goal of the Trump company is publicly traded on the stock exchange.
Greene purchased DWAC stock in an amount between $15,000 and $50,000 on Oct. 22, 2021, just days after the merger was announced, according to her official congressional financial filings. DWAC stock opened trading at $118.80 and closed at around $67 for the day.
Bucshon purchased DWAC shares on Oct. 25, 2021, for anywhere between $1,000 and $15,000, according to a financial release. DWAC stock closed the day at around $83.
If either lawmaker were still an investor in DWAC now, they could have lost thousands — in Greene’s case, up to $32,500, according to Chris Josephs, co-founder of stock trading app Autopilot. Josephs pointed out that Bucshon could have lost up to $8,900 due to the declining share price.
A spokesperson for Bucshon confirmed to CNBC and NBC News that the Indiana lawmaker still owns stock in the now-merged media company despite the declining stock price.
“Congressman Bucshon has taken no further action with respect to his investment in DWAC since the initial purchase in October 2021, and he has fully complied with all disclosure obligations required by federal law with respect to this trade,” the spokesperson said in a statement .
He did not respond to further questions about why Bucshon continued to hold the stock, which closed at $32 on Thursday, marking a 54% decline in the share price since its Nasdaq debut in March. The company has also erased all of its gains since shares began trading under the DJT ticker at $70.90.
Bucshon’s most recent annual financial reporting shows that he began 2023 with $1,001 to $15,000 in DWAC stock.
But Greene wouldn’t say what happened to her shares since her original purchase, and her public disclosures have not shown that she sold DWAC or Trump media stocks, according to documents archived by LegiStorm, raising questions about it among ethics lawyers , what happened to Greene’s shares.
Asked about the status of her DWAC shares, Greene spokesman Nick Dyer said in an email that Greene “does not currently hold any shares, as indicated by their financial disclosure.”
He did not respond to follow-up requests for comment about what happened to their shares in the company.
When asked by NBC News on Wednesday, Greene also wouldn’t say what happened to her Trump Media shares. “That’s a waste of time. I think you can read my reports and see what I own,” she said.
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“Where is their stash?” Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer, said in a telephone interview.
He and other ethics lawyers cited several possible reasons why Greene would not have included the stock in her recent disclosures.
If she still owns DWAC stock and the asset’s estimated value falls below $1,000, disclosure wouldn’t be necessary, according to Kedric Payne, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center.
Another plausible scenario would be that Greene recently sold her shares. In that case, she would not have to disclose the sale for up to 45 days, according to Painter. She also could have lost the asset during her divorce proceedings with her then-husband in 2022, Painter said, noting that a gift of the shares as part of a divorce settlement may not be considered a property transaction. According to Business Insider, Greene finalized her divorce in December 2022.
“She needs to explain what the hell happened,” Painter explained.
The legislature is not prohibited from trading or holding individual stocks and other investments. But under the STOCK Act, members of Congress must report all trades within 45 days.
Some members of Congress and outside groups have long argued that members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stocks while serving as elected officials. But a bill that would ban them from trading individual stocks is stalled in Congress.
—Scott Wong of NBC News contributed to this story.
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2024-04-12 18:33:27
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