Before he was removed from office and social media, Donald Trump’s private company reportedly negotiated a deal with Parler, the social media platform popular with right-wing users and used by many during the Capitol riots last month.
The deal – which never fully materialized – offered the former president a 40 percent stake in the company in exchange for his exclusive use of the platform, BuzzFeed News reported.
Ethics experts have since raised concerns about the talks, saying they may have violated anti-bribery laws, as Trump was still in the Oval Office when they occurred, according to the report. It was unclear how the former president may have been involved in these discussions, which would have been organized by his former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, as well as by a campaign attorney, Alex Cannon.
Along with company investors, former Parler CEO John Matze met with Trump’s advisers last year to discuss the proposal: the former president would post his statements and content exclusively on the company’s social media site for four hours, before sharing the material on other platforms – with links that lead to Parler’s original content.
In statements to BuzzFeed News, Mr. Parscale stated that the former president “was never part of the discussions” that he described as “never so substantive”.
He added: “That was just one of the many things the campaign was looking at to deal with the culture of Silicon Valley cancellation.”
Parscale was removed from his post in the Trump campaign and effectively expelled from the former president’s inner circle after falling into his favor.
A company advisor also said BuzzFeed News the former president was not involved in the discussions and added: “We have been talking to several people about the company’s potential participation in the production of certain things”.
Even so, some groups have suggested that the discussions may have violated anti-bribery laws, even without the full materialization of a final agreement or the direct involvement of the president, including the Government Oversight Project.
Scott Amey, general counsel for the non-partisan watchdog group, told the media that “the courts considered Trump’s social media posts to be official business while he was in office.”
He added: “Your posts were the preferred method for the White House to communicate with the public. If the offer included something of value and Trump planned to post on a social media platform while still in office, it would almost certainly be illegal and he should be held responsible. “
Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted about the news: “In addition to all the other problems with this, the government argued that Trump’s tweets were official broadcasts.”
He added: “Parler would have paid Trump to post official broadcasts on his platform. Corruption was bottomless. We need to demand major ethical reforms and strong ethical leadership.
Parler was removed from the app stores of Amazon, Apple and Google after the deadly riots on Capitol, with employees from major technology companies citing their failure to sufficiently address users’ posts containing threats of violence. The former CEO then argued in lawsuits that the closure was made “in part out of a desire to deny President Trump a platform”, while claiming he had expressed an interest in joining the site.
Trump was also removed from the vast majority of social media platforms after the unrest, after posting videos and messages during the insurrection, in which he continued to promote false allegations of a stolen election. The former president was removed for the second time by the Chamber of Deputies for fomenting the insurrection.