Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of a social networking site Truth socialdropped Thursday after former President Donald Trump was convicted in his hush money trial.
A New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Shares of Trump Media fell about 9% in after-hours trading Thursday as news of the verdict emerged.
The stock, which trades under the ticket symbol ‘DJT’, has been extremely volatile Since its debut in late March, it has joined the ranks of meme stocks that are prone to price swings from highs to lows as deep-pocketed investors try to ride an upward momentum swing at the right time.
The stock has tripled this year, often seeing double-digit percentage moves higher or lower in a single day. It peaked at almost $80 during intraday trading on March 26. For context: the S&The P500 is up almost 10% year to date.
Earlier this month, Trump Media reported it had lost more than $300 million last year quarteraccording to its first earnings report as a Listed Company.
For the three-month period ended March 31, the company posted a loss of $327.6 million, including $311 million in non-cash expenses related to its merger with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC was an example of what happened. known as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC, which can offer young companies faster and easier routes to getting their shares traded publicly, but with much less oversight.
Trumpmedia & Technology this month fired an auditor who federal regulators recently fired accused of ‘enormous fraud’. The media company dismissed BF Borgers as an independent accounting firm on May 3, delaying the filing of its quarterly results.
Trump Media had previously passed over at least two other auditors — one who resigned in July 2023, and another who was fired by the board in March, just as BF Borgers was rehired.
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying corporate records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to cover up potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential election campaign.
The charge, a misdemeanor, arose from refunds paid to then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen after making a $130,000 hush money payment porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump was accused of misrepresenting Cohen’s reimbursements as legal fees to conceal that they were related to a hush-money payment.
Trump’s defense argued that the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal services.
