Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group closed lower Friday after swinging
wildly over the course of the day following the conviction of former
President Donald Trump in his hush money trial.

After the U.S. stock markets closed Thursday, a New York jury found Trump
guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence
the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the
two had sex.

After rising more than 2% at the opening of trading Friday, the shares
ended the day down 5.3%.

The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol �DJT,� has been
extraordinarily volatile since its debut in late March, joining the group
of meme stocks that are prone to ricochet from highs to lows as small-
pocketed investors attempt to catch an upward momentum swing at the right
time.

The stock has tripled this year, in the process frequently making double-
digit percentage moves either higher or lower on a single day. It peaked at
nearly $80 in intraday trading on March 26. For context, the S&P 500 is up
almost 10% year to date.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission before going
public, Trump Media warned investors of the potential pitfalls faced by the
former president and the adverse affect it might have on the stock.

�President Donald J. Trump is the subject of numerous legal proceedings,
the scope and scale of which are unprecedented for a former President of
the United States and current candidate for that office. An adverse outcome
in one or more of the ongoing legal proceedings in which President Donald
J. Trump is involved could negatively impact TMTG and its Truth Social
platform.�

Earlier this month, Trump Media reported that it lost more than $300
million last quarter, according to its first earnings report as a publicly
traded company.

For the three-month period that ended March 31, the company posted a loss
of $327.6 million, which it said included $311 million in non-cash expenses
related to its merger with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.
DWAC was an example of what�s known as a special purpose acquisition
company, or SPAC, which can give young companies quicker and easier routes
to getting their shares trading publicly, but with much less scrutiny.

Trump Media & Technology fired an auditor this month that federal
regulators recently charged with �massive fraud.� The media company
dismissed BF Borgers as its independent public accounting firm on May 3,
delaying the filing of its quarterly earnings report.

Trump Media had previously cycled through at least two other auditors � one
that resigned in July 2023, and another that was terminated by its board in
March, just as it was rehiring BF Borgers.

Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his
company in connection with an alleged scheme to hide potentially
embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential
election campaign.

The charge, a felony, arose from reimbursements paid to then-Trump lawyer
Michael Cohen after he made a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor
Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter
with Trump in 2006. Trump was accused of misrepresenting Cohen�s
reimbursements as legal expenses to hide that they were tied to a hush
money payment.

Trump�s defense contended that the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal
services.

Paulo wrote:
> Trump’s defense contended that the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal
> services.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/31/intentional-misfeasance-makes-show-trial-conviction-ripe-for-reversal-legal-experts-say/

Constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky says the conviction isn’t
likely to stick, for an array of reasons. Chief among them: Merchan’s
convoluted jury instructions, in which the Biden campaign-donor judge
framed the jury’s deliberations in a way that, according to legal expert
Jonathan Turley, “seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned
hunt.” Merchan told the jurors they didn’t have to agree on the three
possible “unlawful means” prosecutors vaguely alleged Trump had employed
to “influence” the 2016 election.

“The jurors were told that they could split on what occurred, with four
jurors accepting each of the three possible crimes in a 4-4-4 split. The
court would still consider that a unanimous verdict so long as they
agree that it was in furtherance of some crime,” Turley wrote in the
Hill before the verdict was handed down.

Von Spakovsky said Merchan’s instructions point to reversible error —
“an error in trial proceedings that affects a party’s rights so
significantly that it is grounds for reversal if the affected party
properly objected at trial,” according to the Legal Information Institute.

“This is such a mistake. … If I were the court of appeals, the moment
this case came in, I would overturn the conviction,” the former Federal
Election Commission member and Heritage Foundation fellow told me before
the verdict this week on the Simon Conway Show. “That is one of the
craziest things I have ever heard and it is a complete violation of
President Trump’s substantive due process rights.”

Von Spakovsky said the standard in like cases is that jurors come to a
unanimous agreement on each of the charges they are deliberating. He
said Merchan added an absurd twist to the proceedings after handicapping
Trump’s defense throughout the trial.

Defense attorney Randy Zelin told CNN that Merchan’s jury instructions
contained a “key flaw.”

“Whether you are driving in a Ford or a Ferrari, if someone gives you
bad directions, you’re going to end up lost. And those jury instructions
were just a complete, just take the Constitution, throw it out a window,
burn it, shoot it and hang it,” the attorney said on “CNN Special Report.”