Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought up to $50,000 worth of shares in the company that plans to take former President Donald Trump’s media venture public, a new disclosure revealed Wednesday.
The Georgia Republican bought shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, on Friday, just two days after the SPAC announced a merger deal with Trump’s new media company, according to a disclosure filing.
The stake is worth somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000, the filing says.
DWAC — a so-called blank-check company that’s formed and goes public to raise money to fund an acquisition of a private company, which will then take its place on the markets — announced last week its plans to merge with Trump’s new social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group.
The stock soared more than 1,000 percent in the days following the announcement, driven largely by interest from amateur traders.
Greene bought her shares in the SPAC on the day that it rallied to its all-time high of $175 per share, according to the disclosure, which doesn’t say what exact price she paid for the shares.
Considering shares of the SPAC never went lower than $67.96 per share on Friday, it appears that her stake is worth less now than she paid for it, though the stock began to rally Wednesday after news of her purchase trickled out.
Shares of the company were last seen trading more than 12 percent higher at $66.60 per share.
The stock felt some pressure earlier this week after short-seller Iceberg Research announced on Monday that it was betting against DWAC, saying Trump could seek to secure a better deal for his media company in a renegotiation of the merger.
“We are short $DWAC,” Iceberg said in a tweet. “Now that initial excitement has passed, we see only risks for investors in near future. Based on Trump’s track record, at current price, renegotiation is likely to keep more of the merged company for him.”
“No opinion on the probability of success of TMTG. But SPAC holders don’t own a piece of this project yet. Trump has leverage, not them,” the firm added in a second tweet.
Still, the stock is up around 500 percent since before the merger with Trump’s media company was announced.
Trump’s newly formed company, Trump Media & Technology Group, said last week it plans to roll out a new social network, dubbed Truth Social, which is set to launch in beta for “invited guests” next month and come online nationwide in the first three months of 2022.
Its mission is to “create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley, which have used their unilateral power to silence opposing voices in America,” it said.
The merger deal would value TMTG “at an initial enterprise value of $875 Million, with a potential additional earnout of $825 Million in additional shares (at the valuation they are granted) for a cumulative valuation of up to $1.7 Billion depending on the performance of the stock price post-business combination,” according to the Wednesday press release.
