As if Donald Trump and his people weren’t already embroiled in enough scandal and legal trouble as it is, bombshell new reporting has now confirmed that the now-former CEO of the massive firm that played a major role in taking the former president’s social media company public has been slammed with accusations of fraud by federal authorities in the very same deal.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has now lodged formal allegations against Patrick Orlando in a Washington, D.C., federal court, accusing the now-former CEO of making “fraudulent contact” and making “materially false and misleading statements and omissions” during his time as the Chief Executive Officer of Digital World Acquisition Corp.
These formal charges were confirmed by filings made with the SEC:
NEW — Patrick Orlando, the former chief executive of the SPAC that took Trump Media public, has been charged with securities fraud over the deal pic.twitter.com/BLkfR3ugva
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 18, 2024
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The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Orlando outright and blatantly lied to investors when he told them that his special purpose acquisition company did not have specific target companies before offering shares to those investors.
The SEC filing reads: “Through these publicly available filings, Orlando falsely represented that DWAC, a special purpose acquisition company … that he controlled, did not intend to merge with any specific company and, indeed, had had no discussions or contacts with any specific company and, indeed, had had no discussions or contacts with any potential merger targets.”
Federal authorities further allege that Orlando “knew these statements were false because he had personally engaged in numerous lengthy discussions with representatives of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. …, a social media company, and because he had targeted TMTG for merger with DWAC for months.”
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG) is the parent company of Donald Trump’s Truth Social social media platform that he created in the wake of his then-permanent ban from Twitter — which has since been revoked after Elon Musk bought the company, renamed it to X, and reinstalled Trump’s account, though he does not utilize it much now.
The company trades publicly under the acronym DJT.
Bloomberg reports that the SEC actually settled with DWAC last year, to the tune of $18 million, over almost identical allegations of misleading investors. Orlando stepped down from his role as CEO of the company in the Spring of 2023.
Featured image via Flickr/Trump White House Archives
