Following recent complaints from Devin Nunes of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) suggesting possible “market manipulation” around the stock price of the Trump-branded company, the financial industry giant Citadel Securities — who Nunes named in his complaint, which was directed elsewhere — responded in… blunt terms.
“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame “naked short selling” for his falling stock price,” a Citadel statement asserted. “Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on the Apprentice. If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do.”
Nunes is a former GOP Congressman from California, and TMTG is the company — relatively new to public trading — behind Truth Social, Trump’s alternative social media site. Trump himself uses the platform like he formerly used Twitter (now called X), though Truth Social’s usage seems still far, far below the usage rates of more established social media sites. The Trump-branded company debuted on the stock market after a long delayed merger with an already publicly traded company, Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC). As ambitions of DWAC and TMTG merging became clear, investments in DWAC became popular among Trump’s political supporters.
Now, the stock price for the Trump-branded operation trading on the stock market is fluctuating significantly, though it finally rallied — a bit — since earlier in the week. It’s still well below a high above $66 from the end of March, though.
Writing to the CEO at NASDAQ, where Trump’s company is being traded, Nunes earlier recounted that “‘naked’ short selling — selling shares of a stock without first borrowing the shares of stock deemed difficult to locate — is generally illegal pursuant to Securities and Exchange Commission.” Short selling, in general, is a process in which some effectively bet that a certain stock will decline. It was part of the backdrop for the market craze around stock shares of Gamestop famously seen in recent years.
