Donald Trump eyes $4 billion stock windfall as legal bills pile up

On the financial front, the news has appeared dire for former president Donald Trump this year. Within a span of just a month, two judges in two separate cases ordered him to pay about $540 million in total - a sum so great that pundits have speculated it could erode his campaign finances.

What's gotten far less attention, though, is this: A frenetic rally in a stock tied to Trump Media & Technology Group - which operates the Truth Social platform he posts on daily - has minted a nearly $4 billion windfall for him.

There are any number of caveats to this figure, including how it's only a paper profit for now that he'll have to wait months to monetize, and yet the stock's surge is a potentially huge financial boost for a billionaire candidate suddenly short on cash.


The type of transaction - known as a de-SPAC or blank-check deal - that would hand Trump this new-found wealth is a complex one that briefly became popular on Wall Street during the stock mania unleashed by pandemic-era stimulus. In this particular deal, Truth Social's owner would enter the stock market by merging with a publicly traded company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Shares of DWAC, as the company is known, have soared 161% this year in anticipation of the merger, which has been green-lit by the Securities and Exchange Commission and is now slated to go to a shareholder vote next month. If it's approved, Trump will hold a greater than 58% stake. At DWAC's current price - it closed Tuesday at $45.63 per share - that stake is worth $3.6 billion. Trump could get even more - close to an additional $1.3 billion worth, if the shares meet certain performance targets.

It seems improbable to many analysts that a stake in a money-losing social media company with little revenue and a fraction of its rivals' user bases could potentially more than double Trump's net worth. But as Trump began to steamroll his Republican rivals in January, setting up a likely rematch with President Joe Biden in November, retail investors frantically bid DWAC shares up.