Parler Offered Share in Company If Trump Posted First There

Social medium Parler and the team of then US President Donald Trump have been in talks about a deal in which a Trump company would receive 40 percent of Parler’s shares and Trump would be the first to post his posts on the social medium.

It would be a temporary four-hour exclusivity on Trump’s posts, Buzzfeed reports based on a document from December and two anonymous sources. During his presidency, Trump used tweets and Facebook posts to make announcements, such as about the firing of ministers or developments in foreign policy.

In exchange for that move, Parler would have offered the Donald Trump Organization a 40 percent share. Parler presumably hoped that Trump’s arrival on the platform and the temporary exclusivity of posts would attract many new users. In addition, Trump would start using links to Parler in posts on other platforms and in emails.

Negotiations started in June last year but quickly stalled. After Trump lost the election in November, both sides are said to have renegotiated. Those negotiations ended after the storming of the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6: shortly after that, Apple and Google pulled Parler from their download stores and Amazon stopped hosting the platform.

One of those involved on Parler’s side has confirmed the talks, but claims there are undisclosed inaccuracies in Buzzfeed’s article. The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that investigates fraud and corruption within the US government, says the deal would violate ethics rules because Trump would use his influence as president to sell a company he would buy stock in. promote. That would violate bribery laws, a spokesperson for that non-profit thinks. Trump did not have an account on Parler. The social medium has been offline for a month.