Pa. billionaire Jeffrey Yass’ firm has a large holding in company that merged with Trump’s Truth Social

Philadelphia area billionaire Jeffrey Yass’ firm was the largest institutional shareholder as of December in the company that has merged with Truth Social, former President Donald Trump’s social media company.

While the firm is a trading company that serves as a market maker for many well-known stocks, it could signal a link between one of the most powerful GOP megadonors in the nation with the presumptive Republican nominee. Yass is a Republican megadonor who has never donated to Trump’s campaign.

Trump, who faces mountainous legal fees and fines stemming from legal cases against him, stands to net more than $3 billion from the sale, which was green-lit on Friday by shareholders, according to SEC filings.

Truth Social, owned by Trump Media, merged with Digital World Acquisition Corp., which has received investments from several other institutions and banks.

Yass’ Susquehanna had double the next highest shareholder’s investment in DWAC, as of the latest December filing, but the firm holds shares across thousands of companies at any given time. Susquehanna has held the stock since the merger between DWAC and Trump Media was first announced in October 2021.

SEC reports come out quarterly so the most recent investors won’t be known until May.

A spokesperson for Yass declined to comment Friday evening.

Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He’s since been reinstated to both, but has stuck with Truth Social as a megaphone for his message.

The new company will be called Trump Media & Technology Group and trade under the ticker DJT, Trump’s initials. To enable the merger, the company went public, meaning shares of Trump’s media group can now be bought and sold on the public market.

The board of directors for the new company includes Donald Trump Jr., former California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, and several other former Trump aides.

If recent activity in Digital World’s stock is any indication, shareholders of Trump Media could be in for a bumpy ride.

Many of Digital World’s investors are small-time investors, who are either fans of Trump or trying to cash in on the mania, instead of big institutional and professional investors, according to The Associated Press. Those shareholders helped the stock more than double this year in anticipation of the merger going through. But on Friday, the shares lost almost 14%.

Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a $464 million bond in New York’s civil fraud case against him or New York’s attorney general could try to seize his golf course and private estate north of Manhattan — or other assets.

Yass has donated more than $46 million to Republican causes so far in the 2024 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, including several of Trump’s rivals, like GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Chris Christie.

He has not endorsed Trump, who has been lagging President Joe Biden in fundraising, in the presidential election.

But the two were drawn together during the recent Congressional vote to ban TikTok. Yass’ firm reportedly has a 15% stake in TikTok’s parent company and he donated millions to the conservative group, Club for Growth, which opposed the ban.

Yass and Trump met at a donor retreat earlier this month, after which Trump came out against the legislation. He had previously expressed an interest in banning it. Trump spoke with Yass about school choice — Yass’ biggest political interest, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump said on CNBC last week that the two didn’t discuss TikTok.

But the timing led to speculation that Trump, under mounting financial pressure, may have been aiming to court Yass.

The U.S. House voted 352-65 on the bill which would prohibit app stores and internet providers from offering TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests from the app. The bill’s future in the Senate is uncertain, but President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law if it reaches his desk.

Truth Social is at least the second social media company that Susquehanna has invested in. It was an early investor in ByteDance in 2012.

“I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass told the Wall Street Journal last year. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals.”

The Associated Press and staff writer Joseph DiStefano contributed to this article.