FLORIDA, USA – Former executive vice president of operations for Donald Trump’s media business, Will Wilkerson, has become a federally protected whistleblower, providing over 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and investigators in Florida and New York.
The documents are challenging the main engine of Trump’s post-presidential business ambitions. This venture once commanded multibillion-dollar valuations with lofty promises to overtake the titans of American tech.
According to Washington Post, Wilkerson accused Trump Media and Technology Group last year of violating securities laws, but the company fired him shortly after, claiming he had “concocted psychodramas” but not responding to the specifics of his claims.
This month, the company’s chief executive, former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, sued Wilkerson for defamation in a Florida circuit court, claiming he had been subjected to “anxiety,” “insecurity,” “mental anguish” and “emotional distress” as a result of Wilkerson’s comments.
Trump Media’s attempt to merge with a financial outfit known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, has been frozen for months due to a pending SEC investigation that predates Wilkerson’s public comments and has blocked the company’s ability to unlock a critical source of cash.
The SPAC, Digital World Acquisition, said in an SEC filing last month that it had replaced its chairman and CEO, Patrick Orlando, and was facing “unprecedented headwinds.”
Orlando’s termination came one week after Forbes cited Wilkerson’s testimony in a report alleging that federal investigators were examining whether $8 million in investments had violated money-laundering rules.
Wilkerson’s whistleblowing case has gained little of the attention the other legal challenges facing the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee have gotten, but his testimony and trove of records have challenged Trump’s Truth Social executive.
If the SEC takes action against Trump’s company and eventually collects sanctions, Wilkerson could be eligible to make millions of dollars through the agency’s whistleblower reward program, depending on the amount of assessed penalties. But such payouts are far from guaranteed, and it’s unclear whether it’ll make up for the money he lost by speaking out. Wilkerson’s lawyers, Phil Brewster, Patrick Mincey, and Stephen Bell, argue that his firing was corporate retaliation, which is prohibited by U.S. law.
Trump Media, however, has declared Truth Social a resounding success. Nunes said in an interview this month that the site is “blowing up the status quo,” and Trump said in a “truth” this month that it has allowed him to “get the word out like never before. As soon as I ‘speak’ on Truth, the WORD immediately spreads everywhere. MAGA!”
However, the company, which had told investors it would reach 50 million users by 2024, appears to be only a fraction of the way there, according to the site’s own publicly visible follower data. Truth Social’s global traffic last month fell to roughly 7 million visits, 40 percent below its August peak, according to estimates from the online analytics firm Similarweb.
Wilkerson, who was fired from his position at Trump Media, is now working as a certified barista trainer at a Starbucks inside a Harris Teeter grocery store. Though he’d listed his Trump Media executive role on his resume, he suspects his past barista experience got him the job.
