The blank check company set to acquire former President Trump’s social media venture said on Monday that each of the directors on its board had received subpoenas from a federal grand jury in Manhattan.
Digital World Acquisition Corp. disclosed the round of subpoenas in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Digital World, which is publicly traded, is trying to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group in an $875 million deal.
The subpoenas come after other investigations have beset the merger attempt.
The SEC has been examining whether the SPAC company — Digital World — sought out Trump Media before it went public, a potential violation of securities law.
In typically Trumpian fashion, the man himself may have skirted those regulations. The New York Times reported last year that Trump was involved in some of those early discussions. Those conversations must be disclosed to potential investors, per federal securities law.
The company said that its board of directors first received subpoenas seeking some of the same documents that the SEC requested, and that the company itself then received a grand jury subpoena “with substantially similar requests.”
Other problems that have faced the merger include issues with the underlying code of TRUTH Social itself which, at first, was taken from an open-source social network apparently without following its terms of use. That issue was cleared up, but the app’s rollout was rocky and dragged out over many months.
In spite of the investigation and associated problems, Trump has begun to post on TRUTH Social. It’s not clear what future the company may have without the SPAC merger, though TPM examined last month how it may affect Trump Media’s CEO, former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
