Donald Trump was reportedly in talks to acquire a 40 percent stake in Parler in exchange for the then president agreeing to post first on the social media app, which became the platform for many of his supporters.
The negotiations, which allegedly took place while Trump was still president, were terminated after lawyers in the White House objected to it, saying such an arrangement violated the ethical rules and could potentially expose him to bribery charges.
The news of the talks was first reported by BuzzFeed News, which obtained documents outlining the proposed agreement.
According to BuzzFeed News, Trump’s company would have immediately received a 20 percent stake, while the remaining 20 percent would be handed over in parts over a two-year period.
Donald Trump (seen above in West Palm Beach, Florida, on January 20) has offered a 40 percent stake in social media app Parler, according to BuzzFeed News
Parler sees himself as a social media platform that enables ‘free expression’.
The then president would have to agree to make Parler his primary way of communicating with his supporters.
That meant Trump had to post all of his social media content – including posts, videos and live streams – on Parler for at least four hours before posting on any other platform, according to a proposal.
Parler also asked Trump to link back to the site when sending to other social media platforms or when emailing his supporters.
Trump would also be required to give Parler access to his mailing lists so that the website could promote its platform to its many supporters.
Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, linked Trump’s idea in 2019 with Parler
According to BuzzFeed News, Trump representatives were in talks with two Parler stakeholders – Fox News commentator Dan Bongino (left) and investor Jeffrey Wernick (right)
Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, negotiated with Parler’s CEO on behalf of the then president, according to the report.
Parler was represented in the talks by two of his leading shareholders – Fox News commentator and Trump supporter Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick, one of Parler’s earliest investors.
DailyMail.com commented on Parler and Bongino.
“The president was never part of the discussions,” Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale told BuzzFeed News.
‘The discussions were never so substantive.
“And that was just one of the many things the campaign explored to address the Silicon Valley cancellation culture.”
Wernick told BuzzFeed that Trump was never involved in any discussions to bring him to Parler.
“We talked to several people about the potential importance of the business in producing certain things,” Wernick said.
He said non-disclosure agreements made between Parler and the Trump organization prevented him from setting out the details of what was discussed.
Legal experts quoted by BuzzFeed News said the reported arrangement could have been illegal, as Trump would essentially receive a financial reward from a company that received exclusive content while he was a sitting president.
After Trump lost his re-election offer in November, the two parties reconsidered the idea, but talks broke down after Parler was weakened by major technology giants such as Apple, Google and Amazon, who accused him of not moderating extremist content.
Parler hoped Trump would help increase his traffic by having him post content on his platform before doing so on other social media applications.
Trump advisers thought Parler offered an alternative to mainstream applications such as Facebook and Twitter, which have long been accused of anti-conservative bias.
While the outgoing president is negotiating with Parler, he is using the other platforms to conduct a public liaison campaign aimed at discrediting President Joe Biden’s victory in the election.
Earlier this week, Parler CEO John Matze said he was fired after a disagreement with one of the company’s key financial backers over content moderation policy
In the weeks following the November 3 election, Trump has posted hundreds of messages claiming he was victimized by widespread voter fraud that robbed him of victory.
Twitter and Facebook both place indemnity on his posts and suspect the companies want to censor the outgoing president.
On January 6, Trump held a rally near the White House on the same day that Congress convened to ratify Biden’s election victory.
After Trump spoke, hundreds of rallyers stormed the Capitol, overwhelming police and furiously hiding lawmakers in fear for their lives.
Five people, including a Capitol police officer, were killed in the riots.
Amid the chaos and the ensuing tension following the riots, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms banned Trump, saying there was a risk he would use his accounts to incite more violence.
Trump was instantly deprived of his most important way of communicating with his 88 million Twitter followers as well as the more than 35 million people who followed him on Facebook.
After Trump was banned from the mainstream apps, millions of users flocked to Parler, though it also had trouble.
Parler, which is home to mostly far-right users who support Trump and in many cases applauded the riots, has been removed from Apple and Google app stores.
It was also removed by Amazon from a web hosting platform, making it inaccessible to users.
The big tech companies accused Parler of not fighting extremist content and called for violence.
Talks between the Trump organization allegedly broke after Parler of Amazon Web Services was removed from its cloud-based servers
Parler disappeared from the internet last month with an error message saying ‘we can not connect to the server’ after Amazon pulled the plug
The then CEO of Parler, John Matze (27), accused the big technology giants of censoring his platform.
Parler sued Amazon last month for antitrust violations. It also tried to get online again with the help of a Russian internet security company, DDos-Guard, but users still could not post.
Earlier this week, Matze said he was fired from his post by the company’s board after a disagreement with Republican megadonor Rebekah Mercer, one of the app’s key financial backers who has a majority stake.
Mercer has reportedly set up a team to run the site in Matze’s absence – including British lawyer Matthew Richardson and former tea party activist Mark Meckler.
Matze said Wednesday that he and Mercer disagree on whether Parler should do more to moderate extremist content on his platform.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Matze wanted to strengthen the website’s content modification mechanism so that it could be allowed to return to the app stores run by Google and Apple.
Matze said the board does not agree with its proposal to ban certain groups linked to domestic terrorists.
Matze’s claim was disputed by Amy Peikoff, chief executive of Parler, who called his statements ‘misleading’.
“The owners and managers of the company have worked tirelessly to build a resilient, non-partisan platform dedicated to freedom of expression, civil conversation and privacy of users,” she said in the statement.
The idea of Trump becoming a co-owner of Parler is first raised by former Parscale.
Trump was removed from social media applications Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others in the wake of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in which five people died.
Trump’s ban on Twitter meant he could no longer communicate with his 88 million followers on the platform
Trump was also banned by Facebook, where the former president had more than 35 million followers
According to BuzzFeed News, Parscale broke the idea during a White House meeting with Trump last year.
A Trump-Parler partnership intrigued Parscale, who first raised the idea of the then president to create an account on the controversial platform.
In the days after Trump was encouraged by some of his assistants to set up accounts on Parler and another social media platform with fewer restrictions on hate content, Gab.
But in the end, he decided against it after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and another adviser, Dan Scavino, discouraged it, Bloomberg News reports.
Matze said Parler eventually has about 15 million users on his site, including the former president’s two eldest sons, Eric and Don Jr., as well as many former White House staff who served in the Trump administration.