For many investors, Trump Media & Technology Group has been a disaster. Since peaking at $79.38 in March, the stock has cratered 62%, to $29.95, even after a recent resurgence. Trump Media, having already burned through $58.2 million in 2023, reported a further $16.4 million quarterly loss in August, half of which it attributed to legal expenses. Yet the company has been a cash cow for at least one former dairy farmer: CEO and former Congressman Devin Nunes.
Since leaving the House of Representatives to take over Trump Media in January 2022, Forbes estimates that Nunes has raked in roughly more than $2 million in salary, $600,000 in cash bonuses and shares worth another $3.2 million. He’s even pulled in some $230,000 in housing stipends on the company dime, according to an analysis of public filings. Add it all up and Forbes estimates that Nunes has made roughly $6.3 million, about 13 times as much money running Trump’s tottering social-media company than he would have made if he stayed in Congress.
Nunes was earning $174,000 as a ten-term member of the House, representing a rural California district, when Trump tapped him to be the CEO and a director of Trump Media—the parent company of Truth Social—in December 2021. “Congressman Devin Nunes is a fighter and a leader,” Trump said in an announcement at the time. “Devin understands that we must stop the liberal media and Big Tech from destroying the freedoms that make America great.”
Nunes, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in the chamber, resigned on Jan. 1, 2022. His contract with the former president’s firm took effect the following day. Prior to helming Trump’s company, the business experience of the then-48-year-old Republican appears to have been limited to working on his family’s dairy farm. But Trump Media thought Nunes’ “leadership experience, familiarity with public scrutiny and media savvy add unique and significant value,” it told would-be investors. He didn’t come cheap. When Nunes started at Trump Media, then a private company aiming to merge with a public shell corporation named Digital World Acquisition Corp., he took a $750,000 salary that was set to increase to $1 million in his third year on the job. He was also awarded 145,000 restricted stock units, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The salary alone was more than four times what Nunes earned annually in Congress.
Nunes’ employment agreement came with perks, including commonplace benefits such as health and dental insurance, plus an annual housing stipend of $84,000 (Trump Media’s headquarters are currently in Sarasota, Florida). Nunes also was eligible for an annual bonus at the board’s discretion.
The merger was supposed to occur pretty quickly, but the company faced multiple government inquiries that slowed the process down: a former Digital World board member was found guilty of insider trading; Digital World settled fraud charges with the SEC for “making material misrepresentations” in its pre-IPO filings; and the commission investigated Trump Media’s accounting firm, Borgers, ultimately leading to the firm agreeing to a $12 million fine and a permanent ban. None of it made much difference in terms of Nunes’ compensation.
By early 2024, as the merger to take Trump Media public was finally on the cusp of gaining SEC approval, Nunes restructured his employment deal. Filings released in February revealed that he and other Trump Media executives agreed to forgo their restricted stock units upon completion of the merger in exchange for cash retention bonuses. In Nunes’ case, that meant $600,000 cash, payable in a lump sum within 30 days of the deal closing. Nunes still would have some equity in the combined company coming his way, too. Trump Media disclosed that it planned to issue Nunes an executive promissory note of $1.15 million, which would convert to 115,000 shares, or 0.3% of the combined company, once it went public.
Shares listed under the ticker DJT soared the day Trump Media began trading on the NASDAQ in March. Nunes suddenly found himself at the helm of a company worth almost $8 billion–about the same as US Steel. The following week, Nunes was elevated to chairperson of the board in addition to being CEO. It was a whirlwind stretch that demanded a celebratory poolside party at Mar-a-Lago.
Nunes—who, like other insiders at Trump Media, initially was barred from selling his shares—watched the value of the stock sink 70% through August, when his lockup expired. On August 22, he and a few of his colleagues sold some stock to cover tax withholding payments, according to SEC filings. Nunes ditched 28,000 shares, worth $632,000. His 87,000 remaining shares are now worth $2.6 million, down from $6.9 million at the March peak.
While Trump Media’s valuation has dropped from almost $7.9 billion to $5.8 billion since the combined company debuted on the market– it doesn’t seem to be because of lack of action on Nunes’ part. Over the past few months, Truth Media launched a content delivery platform and the streaming service Truth+ (the ability to watch via a web browser debuted Monday). Nunes also has been on a campaign to get the government to take action against short sellers, whom he accuses of manipulating the market to tank Trump Media’s stock’s price. It’s a pursuit that has seen Nunes reaching out for help from some of his old Republican colleagues in the House. In April, he wrote to the Republican chairs of four committees, asking them to “open an investigation of anomalous trading of DJT to determine its extent and purpose, and whether any laws including RICO statutes and tax evasion laws were violated.”
An attorney for Trump Media declined to answer a list of questions Forbes sent before publication, other than to say they contained “outright falsehoods.”
According to a ProPublica report, some of Nunes’ underlings have concerns about his performance. Two C-suite executives were forced out of the company recently, ProPublica reported earlier in October, stating that some insiders believe the ousters were retaliation for making accusations internally that Nunes was mismanaging Trump Media. The company disputed those allegations and told ProPublica that it “adheres to all laws and applicable regulations.”
Trump Media’s SEC filings indicate Nunes was set for a pay bump, from $750,000 to $1 million, at the beginning of 2024. (Since April, Trump Media has reported that it intends to negotiate a new contract with Nunes, but it has not yet reported that it has.) If so, Nunes’ compensation from Trump Media through September has totaled some $2.25 million in salary, $600,000 in a cash retention bonus, $231,000 in housing allowances and $3.2 million in stock gains. All told, that’s around $6.3 million.
Nunes may be keeping that door open, though–almost three years after he left office, his Congressional campaign is still sitting on $13.8 million in cash.
Editor’s note: In November 2023, Trump Media sued 20 media outlets, including Forbes, for reporting that included calculations of its financial results while still a private company. The defendants have moved to dismiss the claims.