By Paul R. La Monica
Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who is President-elect Donald Trump's new nominee for U.S. Attorney General, may be a less controversial choice than Matt Gaetz. But Bondi has one potential problem that needs to be sorted out: the fact that she owns a stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded owner of Truth Social.
According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Bondi owns 106,250 shares of DJT, which went public in late March following a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a blank check special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. At current prices, that stake is worth nearly $3.3 million. Bondi also owns 31,250 warrants to purchase DJT common stock.
Bondi, now a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of lobbying firm Ballard Partners, will undoubtedly face questions about her investment in DJT. Bondi's brother Brad Bondi, a lawyer at Paul Hastings, also worked on the deal to bring Trump Media public. He isn't listed as owning any DJT shares, though.
Pam Bondi, Ballard Partners, Paul Hastings, and Brad Bondi weren't immediately available for comment. Neither was Trump Media & Technology Group.
However, there is precedent for cabinet officials to divest -- or at the very least put in a blind trust -- shares of publicly traded companies that they could influence via government actions. Officials in the Biden administration, including Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and current Attorney General Merrick Garland, all agreed to divest stockholdings before joining the administration.
Top government officials in the previous Trump administration also sold shares of companies they owned to satisfy ethics requirements. Former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who served as Trump's first Secretary of State from 2017-2018, sold his shares in Exxon Mobil. And Gary Cohn, the former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, sold shares of both Goldman Sachs as well as a stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, when he took the job as chair of Trump's National Economic Council in 2017. Cohn resigned in March 2018 following a dispute over Trump tariffs.
But Bondi's ownership of DJT shares is a potentially even thornier conflict of interest issue than the ones that were faced by Tillerson and Cohn.
Trump Media & Technology Group is the President-elect's major source of wealth. Trump owns a nearly 60% stake that is currently valued at more than $3.5 billion. Forbes estimates that Trump's net worth is $5.7 billion.
"It's a weird place to be. The easy answer is that Trump should divest DJT. It's more on Trump's side than Bondi's side but her stake will also raise questions," said Jordan Libowitz, vice president of communications for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
"Putting her stake in a blind trust would be the easiest way to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest," he added.
The Trump campaign wasn't immediately available for comment.
Another possible concern? Anything that Bondi does that could impact other potential investors in DJT would have to be viewed skeptically, raising further conflicts of interest questions.
Danielle Caputo, who works on the ethics team for the Campaign Legal Center, wrote in a blog post this week that because Truth Social is a "publicly traded company with stock available for purchase by anyone -- including foreign interests," that "presents a clear pathway for any deep-pocketed interests looking to be on Trump's good side."
So the problem is that Bondi, if confirmed by the Senate, may not just personally benefit from any actions she'd take as the head of the Justice Department that helps boost the value of DJT. The bigger issue is that her future boss could, as well.
Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 22, 2024 16:45 ET (21:45 GMT)
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