Several people involved with the former president’s company, operator of Truth Social, believe the departures were retaliation following internal complaints about CEO Devin Nunes to the company board.
Trump Media CEO and former Rep. Devin Nunes and former President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention
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
Liz Cheney Blasts Trump Over Jan. 6 as She Stumps With Harris: Oct. 3 Campaign News
Liz Cheney, the highest-profile Republican to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, made clear that her vote is as much against the former president as it is for Ms. Harris. Bruce Springsteen also backed Ms. Harris on Thursday, but an influential firefighters union said it would not weigh in this year.
Former Representative Liz Cheney campaigning with Vice President Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wis., the symbolic birthplace of the Republican Party.
Here’s the latest on the presidential race.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday campaigned alongside former Representative Liz Cheney in Ripon, Wis., the symbolic birthplace of the Republican Party. Both women spoke of putting the country over their respective parties and cast the stakes of the election as preserving democracy in America.
“You may not have supported a Democrat for president before,” Ms. Harris told Ms. Cheney, “but as you have also said, we both love our country, and we revere our democratic ideals.”
The appearance with the most prominent Republican to cross party lines and endorse the Democratic nominee is part of Ms. Harris’s strategy to appeal to Republicans who are repelled by Donald J. Trump and his brand of politics.
Ms. Cheney, in her remarks on Thursday, made clear that her vote is as much against Mr. Trump as it is for Ms. Harris.
“Our republic faces a threat unlike any we have faced before,” Ms. Cheney said, pointing to Mr. Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election results.
Ms. Cheney was run out of office after she turned against the former president over those efforts. Mr. Trump, onstage at a rally in Michigan a day after a judge unsealed new evidence in the federal election case against him, again pushed his false claim that he was the victor in 2020 and the election was rigged.
“We won. We won,” Mr. Trump said a rally in Saginaw, Mich., which is in a swing county in a battleground state that the Democrats captured in 2020. “We did win. It was a rigged election. It was a rigged election.”
Ms. Harris will head to Michigan at the end of her day, setting her up to campaign there on Friday. Recent polls have shown her gaining a narrow lead in Michigan, but the race is close and the state’s 15 electoral votes are still up for grabs in November.
There are 33 days until Election Day. Here’s what else to know:
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To endorse or not to endorse: The International Association of Fire Fighters, one of the first unions to endorse Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, said it will not be endorsing a candidate this year. But Bruce Springsteen will. The legendary rocker announced in a 3-minute video that he is backing Ms. Harris.
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Melania Trump on abortion: Ms. Trump, the former first lady who is releasing a memoir next Tuesday, said in a video on Thursday that there was “no room for compromise” on a woman’s right to “individual freedom.” On Wednesday, a reported excerpt from her memoir said she supported abortion rights, appearing to put her at odds with much of the Republican Party a month out from the presidential election.
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Political memo: At the debate, JD Vance sanded down Donald Trump’s edges the way he often sharpens attacks for rally crowds — picking the facts that can deliver the most impact and discarding the rest.
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Trump ally sentenced: Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., on Thursday was given nine years in prison after being found guilty in August of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.
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Hurricane Helene and voting: The deadly storm that tore through the South could complicate voting in key swing states. Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, announced on Thursday that he would sign an executive order giving election officials in 13 affected counties more flexibility than state law normally allows in administering early and absentee voting.
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Trump threatens Haitians’ status: Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that, if elected again, he would revoke the legal status of tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants who are living and working in the United States legally through the Temporary Protected Status program. The Haitian immigrants, especially those in Springfield, Ohio, have been the target of false accusations by the former president and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, over the past month.
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Trump’s health records: If elected again, he would become the oldest president by the end of his term. He is refusing to disclose basic health information.
A Trump rally in Michigan is dominated by more false statements.
Former President Donald J. Trump held a rally on Thursday in the key battleground state of Michigan that was notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects as varied as the 2020 election and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.
In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks.
The crowd of supporters in Saginaw County, which he narrowly lost four years ago, included Mike Rogers, the former Michigan congressman and the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party chairman.
Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case. He also said his campaign was up in all polls in every swing state, while several public polls show close races and Vice President Kamala Harris leading narrowly in a number of battlegrounds.
Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.
He cast electric cars as a threat to the auto industry, while at the same time praising Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who has endorsed his candidacy and featured him prominently on X, the Musk-owned social media platform.
Michigan was one of a handful of swing states where Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in 2020 through a series of maneuvers that included breaching voting equipment and seeking to seat a set of fake presidential electors. Some of his supporters have been criminally charged in the state, where Mr. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator this year.
Mr. Trump spent time in his speech taking satisfaction over his choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose debate performance this week was applauded by many.
“I drafted the best athlete,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance. The audience — several thousand supporters at a recreation center at Saginaw Valley State University, roughly 100 miles north of Detroit — cheered.
And he mused, at one point, that instead of being on a beach in Monte Carlo or someplace else, he was running for the presidency again. “If I had my choice of being here with you today or being on some magnificent beach with the waves hitting me in the face, I would take you every single time.”
Overall as of Thursday, Ms. Harris led by two percentage points in Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling average, 49 percent to 47 percent. The vice president is scheduled to return to the state on Friday, campaigning in Detroit and Flint.
