President-elect Donald Trump dances after speaking during the Fox Nation's Patriot Awards at the Tilles Center on December 5, 2024, in Greenvale, New York.Last month a major shareholder of a publicly traded company took to social media to complain that people — perhaps short sellers — were spreading lies that could hurt his firm’s stock price.
In its securities filings, the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries,” such as the number of active users and ad views. It has always been a puzzling claim — akin to a TV network choosing not to track ratings. Other publicly traded social media companies doreviewed images of an internal Truth Social employee dashboard from 2022 showing the company monitored the number of active users.
“If political power buys the power to defraud, that’s a problem, not just for our politics but for our markets. American companies have an easier time getting capital because there is faith in the way the American capital markets are regulated,” said Howard Fischer, an SEC trial lawyer during Trump’s first term.
If Trump tries to make enforcement demands of the SEC, as he did in his Truth Social post calling for an investigation of short sellers, SEC officials would face a choice: either ignore the president and risk his wrath, or follow his orders and undermine their independence. Former SEC officials interviewed bypredicted a middle path, in which the agency would not seriously investigate baseless claims against the company’s foes but would claim it was doing so to satisfy him.
Though Clayton was generally popular among the SEC’s staff, his chumminess with Trump, including multiple rounds of golf together, did raise concerns about his independence.if he ever discussed SEC matters with Trump during their golf outings. “There are no conversations that I’ve had that make me in any way — in any way — uncomfortable with my independence,” he testified.
New York’s attorney general has already entered the fray. Letitia James’ office is examining an emergency loan provided to Trump Media before it went public from a trust connected to a bank in the Caribbean, according to records and a source with knowledge of the probe.that Trump Media is in talks to buy a crypto trading venue called Bakkt.