Digital World Acquisition, which plans to merge with the parent company of Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform, reported it made accounting errors in its last financial report, adding to financial reporting issues that have threatened to delist the company from Nasdaq, on top of two investigations that have delayed the deal with Trump, Forbes reports today.
The year-end report can “no longer be relied upon,” Digital World told regulators, and the company is now developing a remediation plan to address the “material weakness” in its “internal control over financial reporting,” per the filing.
Trump Media & Technology Group, which founded Truth Social last year and is majority owned by Trump, announced a deal to merge with Digital World Acquisition in October 2021, roughly eight months after TMTG was founded.
The merger has faced major delays because of federal investigations into whether the deal violated federal securities laws, and whether a group of early investors in Digital World engaged in improper trading. The investigations stem from a New York Times report following the merger announcement, which found that Digital World’s former CEO Patrick Orlando was discussing the deal with Trump at least two months before the SPAC went public. That prompted the investigations because SPACs are not allowed to have a target company to acquire in mind before going public.
Orlando was fired in late March and replaced with an interim CEO. Read more.
