The Daily Fuckup

A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Bruce Garelick on May 9, 2024, in a case tied to the planned merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media & Technology Group. Garelick, a former board member of DWAC, was found guilty of insider trading after prosecutors said he used nonpublic information about the deal before it was announced. The Justice Department said the case involved trading and tipping based on merger details that were not yet public.

The verdict came out of a broader investigation into trading around the Trump Media transaction, which helped bring the company into public markets. Prosecutors said Garelick had access to confidential information about the pending merger and passed along that information before it became public. The jury’s decision did not implicate Donald Trump or Trump Media as criminal defendants in this case.

Garelick’s conviction adds another legal wrinkle to the history of the Trump Media merger, but the case itself stayed narrow: who knew what, when they knew it, and whether they traded on it before the market did. That is the basic line the government brought to trial, and the jury agreed.

The ruling also puts a sharper edge on the scrutiny that followed the SPAC deal from the start. Trump Media’s path to the stock market drew heavy attention because of the company’s political ties and the unusual structure of the transaction. This case did not resolve any larger debate about the company’s prospects or politics. It did, however, end with a federal conviction over alleged misuse of confidential merger information, which is exactly the kind of conduct insider-trading laws are meant to punish.