Former President Donald Trump attempted to persuade a company executive at Trump Media & Technology Group—the parent company of his blundering Twitter-like platform Truth Social—to hand over a portion of his shares to Melania Trump. According to The Washington Post, it was in a coffee shop last October when the ex-president (who owns 90 percent of Trump Media company shares) called Trump Media co-founder Andy Litinsky and asked for a chunk of his shares to go to the former first lady. Former Trump Media executive Will Wilkerson—now turned whistleblower—told The Post he was present during the call and that Litinsky responded to Trump that “the gift would have meant a huge tax bill he couldn’t pay.” The Post also revealed that Wilkerson had gone to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August to blow the whistle on company wrongdoing. From the beginning, the Trump-backed venture has faced continual headaches, most notably from its users who claim to be censored on the platform. In a statement to The Daily Beast, TMTG failed to address the issue and instead said the “Washington Post published a story rife with knowingly false and defamatory statements.”
