An account in exchange for ownership in the company. This is the agreement that Parler allegedly offered President Donald Trump at the time to make the online refuge for expatriate right-wingers and extremists his primary social network.
The Trump organization, which negotiated on behalf of the president, was offered a 40% stake in Parler if Trump were to make an account on the platform, although nothing was ever finalized, according to documents released by Buzzfeed News and four sources familiar with the deliberations who spoke with the exhaust valve. The talks began sometime last summer and then resumed in November after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, apparently so that he could once again have an online soapbox on which he could blare (and make a profit from) his conspiracy theories about election fraud. According to Buzzfeed News, it is not clear how much Trump personally participated in these negotiations.
But even though nothing came of the case in the end, the Trump organization can only by holding the discussions for serious legal headaches. The whole mess almost certainly runs under the anti-bribery laws. It also causes flashbacks to Trump tries to arm Microsoft strongly to give the U.S. Treasury a cut of any TikTok deal he made.
It turns out that if you put a corrupt businessman in charge of a country, he is abusing his power to try to make money. Who would do that?
According to the point of sale, Trump’s representatives conspired with Parler to help the platform compete with common social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The logic is that, if Trump first posted his nonsense on Parler before sharing it on other platforms, Parler would have had the benefit of the exclusivity, while also giving him a direct line to some of his strongest supporters who have been elsewhere kicked off online.
G / O Media can get a commission
Parler sees himself as “the world’s leading free speech platform” which is not captivated by the so-called censorship and oppressive moderation policies of other platforms. Or at least, that’s what it’s claiming it was back when the platform was still functioning. It’s been down since early January when Parler was loaded from Amazon’s web services, as well as Google and Apple’s app stores, for failing to implement meaningful moderation policies that would deter users from posting the kind of violent content that allegedly helped promote the Capitol attack. not. Hill last month. While Parler has since found a new web host—Epik, the domain registrar behind other extremist crooks such as Gab and the Daily Stormer – the site has remained little more than a bulletin board for a handful of provocative messages from Parler’s administrators and their chosen few right-wing experts.
At a White House meeting last year, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was the first to suggest that Trump get a stake in the deal with Parler, according to a source familiar with the negotiations with Buzzfeed News spoke. Four sources said the outlet with which Alex Cannon, a lawyer for Parscale and Trump’s campaign, met then-Parler CEO John Matze and shareholders Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida to discuss a potential deal. According to Parscale, Trump was never in the picture.
“The president was never part of the discussions,” he told BuzzFeed News. ‘The discussions were never so substantive. And that was just one of the many things the campaign explored to address Silicon Valley’s cancellation culture. ”
After the election, Trump’s team reconsidered the idea, according to two people familiar with the matter, but negotiations with Parler soured after pro-Trump insurgents launched a deadly raid on the Capitol building in an attempt to to overturn election results. Before the deal fell apart, Parler offered the Trump organization a 40% stake in the company, according to a December document reviewed by Buzzfeed News and two sources with direct knowledge of the talks. Half of the interest would be transferred immediately after the conclusion of the agreement, while the other half would be distributed in parts during the 24 months of the agreement. In return, Trump would agree to post all of his online content on Parler for at least four hours before posting anywhere else. Parler also asked Trump to call out Parler when appearing on other social media platforms or emailing his supporters, giving Parler access to his mailing lists for promotional purposes and proposing the company to potential investors or advertisers.
Wernick confirmed on inquiry that Parler was in talks with the Trump organization about setting up Trump on the platform, but said the former president was not involved in these discussions. He also disputes the reporting of Buzzfeed News, although he did not specifically go into what information he said was inaccurate.
“We talked to several people about the potential importance in the business of producing certain things,” Wernick said.
Scott Amey, chief executive of the non-partisan watchdog project on government oversight, told the outlet that the news warranted a further investigation and an immediate criminal investigation. ‘
“While President Trump at the time boasted that ethical rules did not apply to him, bribery laws did apply, and courts found that Trump’s posts on social media were official matters while he was in office,” he said. ‘His posts were a preferred method for the White House to communicate with the public. If the offer includes anything of value, and Trump plans to post it on a social media platform while still in office, it will be illegally illegal, and he must be held accountable. ”
Parler did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
You did not really expect the Trump drama to be over now that he had left the White House, did you? This will probably not be the last negotiations that appear after his term of office, and all we can do is hope that they will all see their day in court.
[Buzzfeed News]