Donald Trump moved his roughly 57% stake in Trump Media & Technology Group to his revocable living trust, according to a recent regulatory filing—raising the possibility his shares could be traded during his presidency by his oldest son—causing shares in the Truth Social parent to slide 6% while cutting about $200 million from the president-elect’s net worth.
The transferred stock was valued at over $4 billion before trading opened.
Shares of Trump Media decreased to just over $33 as trading opened Friday, lowering the value of Trump’s stake from $4 billion on Thursday to just over $3.8 billion.
Trump transferred his 114.75 million shares of Trump Media to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust on Tuesday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday.
By moving his stake to the trust, Trump now “indirectly” owns the shares, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., is the sole trustee with voting and investment power over securities held by the trust, according to a separate SEC filing.
Trump has said he had no plans to sell his shares in the company, though as The New York Times points out, this “could open the door for shares to be sold [by his son] without violating that pledge.”
President Trump is the lone beneficiary of the trust, meaning he is the only one who could receive money or property held by the trust before he dies, after which the trust’s property would be given to a residuary beneficiary, though it’s not immediately clear whether Trump named anyone to this role.
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Trump could be trying to avoid accusations down the road of having conflicts of interest by distancing himself from the trust. But it raises other ethical concerns—and not for the first time. Trump made transfers to the trust in February 2016 while he campaigned for president, SEC filings show, and Trump made more transfers—including various real estate holdings, assets and liabilities—just before his inauguration in 2017, according to his then-accounting firm Mazars. But many experts then said the trust wouldn’t really protect Trump from accusations he can be influenced by it since his family and close associates still ostensibly ran it.
Trump has a net worth valued at $6 billion, making him the 525th-richest in the world, according to our latest estimates.
Trump Media’s stock has been volatile since the company went public in March through a reverse merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. Trump has said he would not sell his stake, even as other Trump Media executives—including CEO Devin Nunes and Philip Juhan, the company’s CFO—announced plans to do so. Trump Media shares reacted to Trump’s campaign and his election victory, which sent shares soaring while adding roughly $300 million to his net worth. Trump does not hold an executive position with the company, though he has named two of its board members to roles in his administration. Kash Patel was tapped to take over the FBI while Linda McMahon, the former CEO of the WWE, was nominated as Education Secretary. Nunes was also selected to lead the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, though Trump noted Nunes would remain at the company.