a Better Bubble™
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Former President Donald Trump’s media company has forced out executives in recent days after internal allegations that its CEO, former Rep. Devin Nunes, is mismanaging the company, according to interviews and records of communications among former employees.
Several people involved with Trump Media believe the ousters are retaliation following what they describe as an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint regarding Nunes that went to the company’s board of directors.
The chief operating officer and chief product officer have left the company, along with at least two lower-level staffers, according to interviews, social media posts and communications between former staffers reviewed by ProPublica. The company, which runs the social media platform Truth Social, disclosed the departure of the chief operating officer in a securities filing Thursday afternoon.
ProPublica has not seen the whistleblower complaint. But several people with knowledge of the company said the concerns revolve around alleged mismanagement by Nunes. One person said they include allegations of misuse of funds, hiring of foreign contractors and interfering with product development.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Trump Media did not answer specific questions but said that ProPublica’s inquiry to the company “utterly fabricates implications of improper and even illegal conduct that have no basis in reality.”
“This story is the fifth consecutive piece in an increasingly absurd campaign by ProPublica, likely at the behest of political interest groups, to damage TMTG based on false and defamatory allegations and vague innuendo,” the statement said, adding that “TMTG strictly adheres to all laws and applicable regulations.”
Trump Media’s board comprises a set of powerful figures in Trump’s world, including his son Donald Trump Jr., former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the businesswoman Linda McMahon, a major donor and current co-chair of Trump’s transition planning committee.
Nunes was named CEO of the company in 2021, with Trump hailing him as “a fighter and a leader” who “will make an excellent CEO.” As a member of Congress, Nunes was known as one of Trump’s staunchest loyalists.
After the internal allegations about Nunes were made at Trump Media, the company enlisted a lawyer to investigate and interview staffers, according to a person with knowledge of the company.
Then, last week, some employees who were interviewed by the lawyer were notified they were being pushed out, the person said. The employees being pushed out include a human relations director and a product designer, along with Chief Operating Officer Andrew Northwall and Chief Product Officer Sandro De Moraes. The person with knowledge of the company said Trump Media asked the employees to sign an agreement pledging not to make public claims of wrongdoing against the company in exchange for severance.
On Thursday afternoon, Northwall posted on Truth Social announcing he had “decided to resign from my role at Trump Media,” adding that he was “incredibly grateful” to Trump and Nunes “for this opportunity.”
“As I step back, I look forward to focusing more on my family and returning to my entrepreneurial journey,” the statement said.
De Moraes now identifies himself on his Truth Social bio as the “Former Chief Product Officer” of the company.
Some word of the departures became public earlier this week when former Trump Media employee Alex Gleason said in a social media post that “Truth Social in shambles. Many more people fired.”
Trump personally owns nearly 60% of the company. That stake, even after a recent decline in the company’s stock price, is worth nearly $2 billion on paper, a significant chunk of Trump’s fortune. He said last month he was not planning to sell his shares. What role Trump plays, if any, in the day-to-day operations of the company is not clear.
Since it launched in 2021, the company has become a speculation-fueled meme stock, but its actual business has generated virtually no revenue and Truth Social has not emerged as a serious competitor to the major social media platforms.
Among Nunes’ moves as CEO, as ProPublica has reported, was inking a large streaming TV deal with several obscure firms, including one controlled by a major political donor. He also traveled to the Balkans over the summer and met with the prime minister of North Macedonia, a trip whose purpose was never publicly explained by the company.
Trump Media has a formal whistleblower policy, adopted when the company went public in March, that encourages employees to report illegal activity and other “business conduct that damages the Company’s good name” and business interests.
Do you have any information about Trump Media that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.
Last year, an Alabama reporter and newspaper publisher were illegally arrested for reporting on a local criminal investigation and then forced to agree not to report on ongoing criminal investigations as a condition of their bail.
It was one of the most egregious press freedom violations of 2023 — a year that was full of them. We hoped that, after all the bad press Atmore authorities received (and the failure of their frivolous prosecution), others would learn their lesson and not try to extort journalists into waiving their constitutional rights.
And then the sheriff’s department of Fort Bend County, Texas, came along to crush that dream.
Want your illegally seized equipment? Sign this illegal release
Back in December 2021, deputies illegally arrested Texas citizen journalist Justin Pulliam for filming them conducting a mental health check. They also seized his phone and equipment, in clear violation of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which prohibits seizures of journalists’ materials except when investigating a crime unrelated to newsgathering.
The charges against Pulliam were dropped in May, but Pulliam told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker — a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) — that the phone and equipment illegally seized from him when he was arrested has yet to be returned. The reason? The authorities, Pulliam says, demanded he sign a waiver releasing them from liability before they would give him back his property.
The law on this is clear — government officials can’t force people to waive their First Amendment rights in order to receive a benefit from the government. And getting your own stuff back after an illegal arrest can hardly even be considered a benefit.
The officers involved shouldn’t be released from liability — they should be released from their jobs.
I wrote about this rule in August for The Hill, focusing on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s unconstitutional “gag rule” whereby the commission forces people it settles cases with to promise not to publicly dispute the allegations against them.
To drive home the dangers of allowing a rule like that to stand, I posed a hypothetical: What if instead of wealthy investment firms, the government went after ordinary citizens? “Want to get out of that traffic ticket without taking off work to go to court? You’ll need to keep quiet about those racial profiling claims.”
The hypothetical was meant to be far-fetched — but apparently it wasn’t. And it’s not the only time the sheriff has violated Pulliam’s constitutional rights.
Citizen journalists are journalists
The government is always resourceful when it comes to limiting its definition of “journalist” to exclude people it doesn’t like.
Officials said Julian Assange wasn’t a journalist because he didn’t redact documents. In Tim Burke’s case, it was because he also worked as a consultant. They’ve even taken the position that documentary filmmakers like Trevor Aaronson occupy some lower tier of journalism with diminished legal rights. Those are just some of many examples.
Add Pulliam to the list. In July 2021 — a few months before his aforementioned arrest — the same sheriff’s department excluded him from a news conference in Richmond, Texas, claiming he was not a member of the media, despite regularly reporting on local government and police on YouTube and Facebook.
Pulliam sued (good for The Institute for Justice for taking the case), and last week a judge ruled in his favor, granting him partial summary judgment and finding that the sheriff — and its departmental policy excluding social media journalists from its definition of “media” — violated his constitutional rights.
The Tracker reported that Magistrate Judge Andrew Edison – whose opinion was adopted by the lead judge on the case — called Pulliam’s journalism “unequivocally” protected by the First Amendment, regardless of his platform.
Long before social media existed, appellate courts said that 'what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.'
The judge said the unconstitutionality was obvious enough that officials were not entitled to qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability when the legal rights they violate are not “clearly established.”
Unfortunately, the denial of qualified immunity is a high bar to reach. An appellate court, for instance, recently held that officers were immune from liability for the unconstitutional arrest of another Texas citizen journalist, Priscilla Villarreal, under an archaic law criminalizing solicitation of information from the government. I previously wrote about the need for the Supreme Court to right that wrong.
To state the obvious, Edison is correct. Long before social media existed, appellate courts said that “what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.”
And the House of Representatives endorsed Edison’s reasoning by unanimously passing the PRESS Act — the federal reporter’s shield bill that uses a functional definition of “journalist” to protect from government surveillance anyone who regularly gathers, writes, or reports the news, whether for a Substack blog, The New York Times, or YouTube.
That bill enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate but, as Roll Call recently reported, it’s being held up by outlier objections. (Side note: Tell your senator to support the PRESS Act here.)
A trifecta of First Amendment violations
It’s great news that Edison recognized that qualified immunity should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card for officials who blatantly violate journalists’ rights. But that’s only one of the sheriff’s three strikes when it comes to Pulliam’s First Amendment rights.
Strike two? The December 2021 arrest that was also covered in Pulliam’s lawsuit. The judge did not grant him summary judgment on his retaliation claim, but he can still prevail. The court acknowledged that, as we’ve written, the recent Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Trevino rightly eased the burden of proving First Amendment retaliation. That case wasn’t decided yet when Pulliam briefed his summary judgment motion but he’ll have the chance to raise it at trial.
And the final, third strike: The equipment seizure, which is flagrantly unconstitutional, with or without the Gonzalez case. The attempt to twist Pulliam’s arm into signing away his legal right to sue the sheriff’s department only goes to prove that the department knew what it did was wrong and should have no claim to immunity.
The officers involved shouldn’t be released from liability — they should be released from their jobs. And if Pulliam ever does sign a release, it shouldn’t be for his own equipment. It should be for a fat settlement check.
Fort Bend County, Texas, Sheriff Eric Fagan at a news conference in January.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via APLast year, an Alabama reporter and newspaper publisher were illegally arrested for reporting on a local criminal investigation and then forced to agree not to report on ongoing criminal investigations as a condition of their bail.
It was one of the most egregious press freedom violations of 2023 — a year that was full of them. We hoped that, after all the bad press Atmore authorities received (and the failure of their frivolous prosecution), others would learn their lesson and not try to extort journalists into waiving their constitutional rights.
And then the sheriff’s department of Fort Bend County, Texas, came along to crush that dream.
Want your illegally seized equipment? Sign this illegal release
Back in December 2021, deputies illegally arrested Texas citizen journalist Justin Pulliam for filming them conducting a mental health check. They also seized his phone and equipment, in clear violation of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which prohibits seizures of journalists’ materials except when investigating a crime unrelated to newsgathering.
The charges against Pulliam were dropped in May, but Pulliam told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker — a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) — that the phone and equipment illegally seized from him when he was arrested has yet to be returned. The reason? The authorities, Pulliam says, demanded he sign a waiver releasing them from liability before they would give him back his property.
The law on this is clear — government officials can’t force people to waive their First Amendment rights in order to receive a benefit from the government. And getting your own stuff back after an illegal arrest can hardly even be considered a benefit.
The officers involved shouldn’t be released from liability — they should be released from their jobs.
I wrote about this rule in August for The Hill, focusing on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s unconstitutional “gag rule” whereby the commission forces people it settles cases with to promise not to publicly dispute the allegations against them.
To drive home the dangers of allowing a rule like that to stand, I posed a hypothetical: What if instead of wealthy investment firms, the government went after ordinary citizens? “Want to get out of that traffic ticket without taking off work to go to court? You’ll need to keep quiet about those racial profiling claims.”
The hypothetical was meant to be far-fetched — but apparently it wasn’t. And it’s not the only time the sheriff has violated Pulliam’s constitutional rights.
Citizen journalists are journalists
The government is always resourceful when it comes to limiting its definition of “journalist” to exclude people it doesn’t like.
Officials said Julian Assange wasn’t a journalist because he didn’t redact documents. In Tim Burke’s case, it was because he also worked as a consultant. They’ve even taken the position that documentary filmmakers like Trevor Aaronson occupy some lower tier of journalism with diminished legal rights. Those are just some of many examples.
Add Pulliam to the list. In July 2021 — a few months before his aforementioned arrest — the same sheriff’s department excluded him from a news conference in Richmond, Texas, claiming he was not a member of the media, despite regularly reporting on local government and police on YouTube and Facebook.
Pulliam sued (good for The Institute for Justice for taking the case), and last week a judge ruled in his favor, granting him partial summary judgment and finding that the sheriff — and its departmental policy excluding social media journalists from its definition of “media” — violated his constitutional rights.
The Tracker reported that Magistrate Judge Andrew Edison – whose opinion was adopted by the lead judge on the case — called Pulliam’s journalism “unequivocally” protected by the First Amendment, regardless of his platform.
Long before social media existed, appellate courts said that 'what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.'
The judge said the unconstitutionality was obvious enough that officials were not entitled to qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability when the legal rights they violate are not “clearly established.”
Unfortunately, the denial of qualified immunity is a high bar to reach. An appellate court, for instance, recently held that officers were immune from liability for the unconstitutional arrest of another Texas citizen journalist, Priscilla Villarreal, under an archaic law criminalizing solicitation of information from the government. I previously wrote about the need for the Supreme Court to right that wrong.
To state the obvious, Edison is correct. Long before social media existed, appellate courts said that “what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.”
And the House of Representatives endorsed Edison’s reasoning by unanimously passing the PRESS Act — the federal reporter’s shield bill that uses a functional definition of “journalist” to protect from government surveillance anyone who regularly gathers, writes, or reports the news, whether for a Substack blog, The New York Times, or YouTube.
That bill enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate but, as Roll Call recently reported, it’s being held up by outlier objections. (Side note: Tell your senator to support the PRESS Act here.)
A trifecta of First Amendment violations
It’s great news that Edison recognized that qualified immunity should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card for officials who blatantly violate journalists’ rights. But that’s only one of the sheriff’s three strikes when it comes to Pulliam’s First Amendment rights.
Strike two? The December 2021 arrest that was also covered in Pulliam’s lawsuit. The judge did not grant him summary judgment on his retaliation claim, but he can still prevail. The court acknowledged that, as we’ve written, the recent Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Trevino rightly eased the burden of proving First Amendment retaliation. That case wasn’t decided yet when Pulliam briefed his summary judgment motion but he’ll have the chance to raise it at trial.
And the final, third strike: The equipment seizure, which is flagrantly unconstitutional, with or without the Gonzalez case. The attempt to twist Pulliam’s arm into signing away his legal right to sue the sheriff’s department only goes to prove that the department knew what it did was wrong and should have no claim to immunity.
The officers involved shouldn’t be released from liability — they should be released from their jobs. And if Pulliam ever does sign a release, it shouldn’t be for his own equipment. It should be for a fat settlement check.
stLouIST
