Former President Donald J. Trump shaking hands with former Representative Devin Nunes, now the chief executive of Trump Media, at the Republican National Convention in July.
Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Trump Media’s Soaring Share Price Masks Truth Social’s Internal Strife

Employees have complained to the board about hiring and management practices at the parent company of Truth Social, which serves as the main online megaphone for former President Donald Trump.

by · NY Times

The parent company of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media platform has soared on the stock market over the past month, despite growing turmoil behind the scenes.

In recent weeks, Trump Media & Technology Group has dismissed or pushed out at least three senior managers amid employee complaints about the leadership of Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman who is chief executive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The departures came after several employees anonymously sent a letter, which they described as a whistle-blower complaint, to Trump Media’s board a few weeks ago. The letter accused Mr. Nunes of being over-reliant on foreign contract workers and mismanagement. A copy of the letter was reviewed by The New York Times.

It was not clear whether the employees who were pushed out of Trump Media were involved in drafting the letter.

In the letter, the employees said that Mr. Nunes’s “directive” to hire foreign contractors was inconsistent with “the ‘America First’ principles we stand for.” Trump Media has looked to outsource some work to Cosmic Development, a technology company based in Canada that has operations in Macedonia and Serbia, said the two people.

Mr. Trump, who is the largest shareholder of Trump Media and the main draw for users on Truth Social, has talked on the campaign trail about imposing stiff tariffs on foreign goods and U.S. companies that outsource abroad.

Separate from the letter, employees at Trump Media have also raised concerns that Mr. Nunes rarely visits the company’s headquarters in Sarasota, Fla., said the people.

The letter said that Mr. Nunes has not formally addressed Trump Media’s staff in two years and that “this lack of transparency has left employees in the dark about the company’s vision, strategy and future.” The letter also said that Mr. Nunes relied too heavily on “unqualified members of his inner circle.”

Details of the letter were first reported by ProPublica.

Trump Media’s stock is volatile and often trades as a proxy for Mr. Trump’s political fortunes. Over the past month, its share price has more than doubled, as polls ahead of the presidential vote have tightened and betting markets have tilted in favor of Mr. Trump.

Trump Media made its market debut in March, after merging with a public shell company. The stock initially surged, peaking above $60 per share, before a long slide erased much of its value, bottoming out at around $12 late last month. It traded at about $32 on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump owns about 59 percent of the company’s stock, a stake worth $3.4 billion.

Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media, said: “The New York Times continues its jihad against the truth and fact-based reporting — this time by using fake information from sources the reporter knows to be unreliable in order to gin up defamatory conspiracy theories and fake news.”

Truth Social has yet to turn profit and has struggled to attract new users and advertisers since it launched in early 2022. In September, Truth Social had 698,000 monthly active users in the United States, compared with 70.4 million for X, according to Similarweb, a data tracking site.

Mr. Trump has no official role at the company. He has said little about the direction of the company except to praise Truth Social. He remarked in April that Truth Social is “not very expensive to run.”

The company’s seven-member board includes Mr. Nunes, Mr. Trump’s eldest son and three former members of the Trump administration. The whistle-blower letter was addressed to the board’s audit committee, which includes Robert Lighthizer, a former U.S. trade representative, and Linda McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Business Administration.

The board brought in an outside lawyer to question several employees about the letter, according to one of the people. Soon after, at least three top employees were told they either should resign or would be pushed out.

In a regulatory filing this month, Trump Media disclosed that Andrew Northwall, the company’s chief operating officer, had resigned. Trump Media’s chief product officer, Sandro De Moraes, also recently left the company, according to his Truth Social profile, as did a lower-ranking employee in the human resources department.

Trump Media had 36 full time employees at the end of last year, according to filings. There are now under 30 full-time employees, people with knowledge of the details said.

Trump Media employs five people who were part of Mr. Nunes’s former congressional staff, including Scott Glabe, the company’s general counsel, according to people with knowledge of the company and biographical information on LinkedIn. Mr. Glabe served as staff director for Mr. Nunes on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

In naming Mr. Nunes as chief executive in 2022, Trump Media tapped one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken supporters in Congress. But Mr. Nunes brought limited experience running a tech company. Before being elected to Congress in 2003, his main business experience came from working for his family’s dairy farm.

In the letter to Trump Media’s board, the employees said they did not trust Mr. Nunes and worried about retaliation for speaking out.

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