According to a whistleblower, Donald Trump pressured Truth Social executives to hand over their stakes in his right-wing social media platform to former First Lady Melania Trump.
Will Wilkerson, one of the early employees of Trump Media & Technology Group, claims the former president called co-founder Andy Litinsky at a Florida coffee shop and made the request.
The Washington Post says Mr Trump made the application, which was worth millions of dollars, even though he had already received 90 percent of the company’s stock.
Mr Wilkerson says Mr Litinsky refused, telling the former president that “the gift would have meant a huge tax bill that he couldn’t pay.
“Trump didn’t care. He said, “Do whatever you must do.”
Mr. Wilkerson filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August alleging securities violations related to the merger of Trump Media and Digital World.
Mr Litinsky, who first met Mr Trump as a contestant on TV show The Apprentice in 2004, was removed five months after the alleged incident and Mr Willkerson told the newspaper it was a payback.
Mr. Wilkerson and his attorney shared emails with the Washington Post and the SEC in which Mr. Litinsky reportedly told him that Mr. Trump was “taking retaliation against me” and threatened to “blow up the company” if his demands would not be met”.
The Post says Mr Wilkerson was fired from his job as the company’s senior vice president of operations after speaking to the newspaper.
Mr Trump was forced to build his own social media network after he was banned from his followers Facebook and Twitter following the January 6 riot.
The proposed merger between Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, and blank check company Digital World Acquisition Corp is currently under investigation by the SEC.
Mr Trump’s following on the platform has grown to more than 4 million, but that’s still far short of the 86 million followers he had on Twitter before his ban in January 2021.