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Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Sep 10 • 13 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

1. Trump is not just running for president; he's also partnered with a professional pickup artist to launch a new crypto company

THE COMPANY IS STRUCTURED SO IF TRUMP WINS IN NOVEMBER HE CAN USE THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENCY TO GENERATE MILLIONS IN PROFITS FOR HIMSELF AND HIS FAMILY

Follow this thread for details on how the scheme works

🧵

2. Trump is the "Chief Crypto Advocate" for the nascent venture, World Liberty Financial.

Donald Jr. and Eric are the company's "Web 3 Ambassadors."

18-year-old Barron Trump is World Liberty Financial's official "DeFi Visionary."

popular.info/p/trump-teams-…

3. Trump has already blurred the line between World Liberty Financial and his presidential campaign. In an August 29 post on X, Trump used an excerpt from his July campaign speech at the BitCoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, to promote the new company. In the speech, Trump pledged to make the United States "the crypto capital of the planet."

4. A white paper laying out the details of World Liberty Financial's ownership structure was obtained by the industry publication Coinbase. Ownership in the company will be established through the issuance of a "governance" token. Notably, 70% of these tokens are allocated to "insiders" like Trump and his sons. Coinbase reports that this is "a significantly higher-than-normal allocation."

5. Typically, most of these kinds of tokens are offered for public sale because "proceeds have historically been largely invested back into projects, to grow them." (The company is reportedly planning on valuing the company at $1.8 billion.) Reserving most of the tokens for insiders "raises the question of whether the project is an attempt to cash in on the Trump family's fame rather than build a novel DeFi platform." The industry term for this is a "rug pull," where "founding teams hype up a project only to dump their own tokens once retail traders begin buying."

6. Another complicating factor is that, currently, the SEC treats most new crypto tokens as securities, particularly when marketed as investment opportunities. This means World Liberty Financial's governance token could be illegal.

popular.info/p/trump-teams-…

7. The company appears to be getting around this problem by making its governance tokens non-transferable at the outset. According to the white paper, the tokens will be "locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract until such time, if ever, [the tokens] are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a manner that does not contravene applicable law."

Ah ha.

8. In other words, a future Trump administration could unlock the value of World Liberty Financial's tokens -- potentially hundreds of millions of dollars for Trump and his family -- by appointing an SEC chair who is friendly to the crypto industry.

popular.info/p/trump-teams-…

9. Pausing here to say if you appreciate the info in this thread, you should subscribe to the Popular Information newsletter

It's important to get news directly and not rely on algorithms controlled by right-wing billionaires

It's free to sign up

popular.info/subscribe

10. World Liberty Financial is not owned by Trump or his family. The company is registered to Zak Folkman. Previously, "Folkman previously registered a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC and posted seminars on YouTube on how to pick up women."

11. Folkman, World Liberty Financial's head of operations, also has a checkered history in the crypto industry. Folkman previously co-founded Dough Finance, which lost more than $2 million of customer funds in a July 2024 hack. Early code from World Liberty Financial appears to be lifted "directly from Dough Finance."

12. Want to share the facts on Trump's new crypto scheme? It's all right here, with links to primary sources.

popular.info/p/trump-teams-…

13. Correction: The industry publication is COINDESK, not Coinbase

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More from @JuddLegum

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Sep 9

1. For weeks, major media orgs — including @washingtonpost, @politico, and @nytimes — have possessed internal Trump campaign docs

But all 3 outlets have declined to publish or excerpt them

It's a radically different decision than the same pubs made when Clinton's campaign was hacked in 2016

🧵

2. @washingtonpost Executive Editor Matt Murray defended the decision: "The news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy"

@washingtonpost 3. But when hackers connected to the Russian government leaked internal emails from Clinton campaign officials and the DNC, @washingtonpost published dozens of stories based on the hack

popular.info/p/major-outlet…

Read 12 tweets

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Sep 4

1. Tens of thousands of Florida students are getting NO SEX EDUCATION at all, thanks to the policies and incompetence of the DeSantis administration

Popular Information has obtained internal documents that reveal the disfunction

Follow along for details

🧵

2. In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology.

Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, "either male or female," even though that is inaccurate.

Schools also must "teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students" and "the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage."

3. To enforce these new rules, HB 1069 also requires "all materials used to teach reproductive health" to be approved in advance by the Florida Department of Education (FDE).

That's where things went off the rails.

popular.info/p/why-thousand…

Read 12 tweets

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Sep 3

1. EXCLUSIVE: A drug kingpin convicted of murdering a police officer, Jamie Davidson, whose life sentence was commuted by Trump on his last day in office, was charged with strangling his wife and convicted of domestic violence in Florida earlier this year.

Davidson's reoffence has not been previously reported.

Popular Information has obtained the entire case file, including a full transcript of Davidson's trial.

Follow for details.

🧵

2. The commutation of Davidson's sentence was controversial at the time because of the severity of Davidson's offense and the atypical process that led to his release.

Requests for pardons and commutations usually are handled through the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Davidson had sought the commutation of his life sentence through official channels in 2013 and 2017 and was denied both times.

3. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Davidson skipped the normal process. Instead, Davidson's attorney Betty Schein, used her deep connections to the Trump White House. Schein represented Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Org

popular.info/p/murderer-who…

Read 19 tweets

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Aug 22

1. Major corporations, including @Mastercard, @Meta, and @CocaCola, are quietly sponsoring a Canadian conference headlined by @realchrisrufo, a far-right anti-diversity crusader.

Many of these same companies, however, champion diversity in their public communications.

2. Rufo's profession is to drum up hysteria about efforts to improve diversity at any institution. Rufo appeared alongside DeSantis in Florida when DeSantis signed the Stop WOKE Act, which limits workplace conversations about diversity and race. (Federal courts enjoined that provision as unconstitutional.)

3. Rufo has also crusaded to ban discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools. He has maligned public school teachers, asserting that “parents have good reason” to be concerned about “‘grooming’ in public schools.”

popular.info/p/major-corpor…

Read 8 tweets

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Aug 21

1. Fact-checking is important but the problem with the modern fact-checking industrial complex is that fact-checking is not viewed simply as a mechanism to scrutinize false claims but has a vehicle to demonstrate a media outlet's "objectivity" and proof it treats "both sides" equally.

This leads to some absurd results.

🧵

2. When former President Donald Trump addressed the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month, Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post's fact-check column, scrutinized the claims in his speech. Kessler found that Trump lied repeatedly.

It was all pretty straightforward.

3. Kessler's fact check on the night Trump spoke to the RNC was limited exclusively to Trump. Other noted fabulists on the agenda, including Tucker Carlson, Franklin Graham, Alina Habba, and Eric Trump, were ignored.

popular.info/p/the-fact-che…

Read 10 tweets

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

Aug 19

1. Does taking on price gouging at the federal level make you a communist?

If so, Donald Trump has some explaining to do.

Follow along for details.

2. Both Harris' proposal for a federal law combating price-gouging and existing state laws are geared toward preventing large companies from exploiting a crisis or market disruption.

Notably, during his presidency, Trump was confronted with a severe crisis, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Trump responded by announcing he would crack down on price-gouging.

3. In a March 23, 2020 press conference, Trump announced that he was implementing new policies "to prevent price gouging."

Trump's plan was to make it a "crime" to sell certain products at "excessive prices."

Trump said that he would "not allow anyone to exploit the suffering of American citizens for their own profit."

Read 9 tweets

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