Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were awarded 750,000 shares in Dominari Holdings, according to a new filing. for joining the company’s board of advisers, an entity with little evidence of functioning before their appointments. Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.
00:07Joining me now is my Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for
00:11joining me. Thanks for having me back, Brittany. You have some updated reporting on how much Don
00:18Jr. and Eric Trump have made in stock since becoming involved in Dominari Holdings. So I
00:23want to parse through all of that. But first, can you talk to us about the firm? What exactly does
00:27it do? So it is a holding company. Previously, it had a different name and it was a pharmaceutical
00:33company. But now it is a holding company. It's listed on NASDAQ. Its headquarters are in Trump
00:39Tower, conveniently. And it has subsidiaries that work in wealth management, investment banking,
00:44sales trading, asset management, capital investment. So it really just seems, you know, it's got a pretty
00:49broad purview there. And like I said, this is an update to your story back from a month ago. And
00:55I want to read one of your headlines from March. This is what you wrote, quote, Trump's son's
01:00joint Dominari Holdings advisory board, but there's little public record the board existed
01:04beforehand. What exactly does this advisory board do?
01:11Yeah, that's that's a great question. Unlike boards of directors, which for corporations have
01:17very specific legal requirements, advisory board can kind of do anything. In this case, when
01:23they filed their advisory agreement, Dominaria Holdings said it was basically looking just to
01:27get general advice from time to time, have members of the advisory board recommend other people for
01:32the advisory board, and it might ask them to review plans and proposals. Now, in this case,
01:38the company did credit the advisory board, which had Don Jr. and Eric on it, of really kind of
01:45spearheading a recent partnership they had on a Bitcoin project. So they did get some credit from
01:52doing that, at least according to the company itself.
01:56And in your opinion, then, based on all of your reporting, why does it matter that there's such
02:00little evidence that this board existed before the Trump sons were appointed? What does that
02:05indicate to you?
02:07You know, it's certainly possible. I'm not saying this is definite. We didn't find any proof of this,
02:11but it certainly is possible that the board was kind of reconstituted here as a vehicle to just get
02:18the Trump involvement there. You know, when the Trump sons' names were attached to the company,
02:24its stock price shot up from about $6 to $13 and change a day or so later. You know, it has since
02:31fallen down, but, you know, it seems like a very easy way to attach the Trump's name to it
02:36with no real requirements for them to do much work if, you know, that's something Dominaria Holdings
02:42wanted to do there.
02:42And based on the different guidelines for what the advisory board member needs to do, I mean,
02:48it sounds like a pretty cushy position. So how much in stock were Don Jr. and Eric Trump given?
02:55So they were given what's currently worth about $3 million worth of stock. So they got 250,000
03:01shares for joining. And then when the company reached a milestone related to its market capitalization,
03:07didn't specify exactly what, they took in another 500,000 shares. So that gives them a total of 750,000
03:15shares that they were awarded for joining the advisory board. Like I said, that's currently worth about
03:19$3 million. They also did purchase some shares on their own, spending another $1 million via private placement.
03:28So they were given $3 million each in shares. What specifically are they doing for the company?
03:33Or what are they bringing to the table that merits this much money?
03:38Well, definitely the Trump name. You know, as we did see that the market cap shot up when their
03:44names were attached to it. So that certainly brought some value for shareholders. And they were credited,
03:50Eric especially was credited with kind of spearheading this recent partnership. So it sounds like he is,
03:56you know, in fact, doing some work for the company. And they've deemed, you know, what he's done
04:01to be worth, you know, $3 million. And they were given these shares before most of the work was
04:07done. You know, it looks like the milestone regarding the market capitalization would have
04:11been hit within a few days of them being announced as members of the advisory board. So we're talking
04:17750,000 shares for signing on, watching the market capitalization rise in about three, four days
04:25worth of time being on the advisory board, it appears.
04:27And per usual, I'm going to ask you, are there any conflicts of interest here? Are there any
04:32ethical concerns? Because you and I talked before about how the trading volume was a lot different
04:38before and then after the Trump names were announced and attached to the firm.
04:45Yeah, that's one of the more interesting aspects of a story that I find pretty interesting altogether,
04:50is that the trading volume started spiking in late December. So about six weeks before the Trump's
05:01involvement was announced. And it was, it was very interesting. I mean, it just, it just really
05:05skyrocketed to levels that we had not previously seen. And I couldn't find anything that really seemed
05:11to justify the increase in volume. I reached out to some professors and legal law professors who
05:19specialized in finance, they couldn't find anything. I went through LexisNexis and Google News looking
05:24to see if there was any news about the company that justified such a spike. And I really couldn't
05:29find anything. So, you know, it is interesting, you know, did news of their pending, you know,
05:36joining the advisory board get out there early? You know, did there was a Trump connection a little
05:42bit before then in that Ron Lieberman, who's also a senior executive with the Trump board,
05:46had become a board member of Dominary Holdings in December. So it's possible, you know, people may
05:53have just seen that name get attached to it and started thinking Trump, but it is some very strange
05:58trading matters. Tariffs, as we know, have sent the stock market into essentially a tailspin.
06:06Has President Trump's wide sweeping tariff plan impacted his son's share prices here? I mean,
06:11what does that look like? You know, it's hard to say specifically, this doesn't look like a company
06:17that has a ton of exposure to tariffs. That said, they did list tariffs as what is the risk factors
06:23in their SEC filings. You know, then you've also seen the stock, like many, many, many other stocks
06:29has gone down over the last, you know, several weeks. So it's certainly, you know, overall market
06:34conditions are certainly going to impact what's going on with the stock as well.
06:37When you think about the Trump's business Rolodex, you're thinking real estate, you're thinking
06:43hotels, you're thinking golf courses. Dominary Holdings announced it was entering the AI data
06:50center space. Is that something that the Trump's sons have a lot of experience in?
06:56Not until recently. Obviously, they've been involved with Dominary's work in that sector.
07:00The president has launched a meme coin that they're involved, or excuse me, the world financial coin
07:06that they're involved in. There also is, you know, Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company
07:13of TrueSocial, has been starting to get into some blockchain and crypto work. So there's a little
07:18bit there, but, you know, their experience in real estate and marketing absolutely torques their
07:24experience here in Bitcoin and data centers. I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there with a lot
07:30more experience than what those two bring to the table. And as we know, AI is a rapidly developing,
07:36rapidly shifting space. What is President Trump's policy surrounding AI? Is he bullish on the industry?
07:45Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that he has really been pushing for. He got a lot
07:50of backing from Silicon Valley, most notably Elon Musk, and has taken a very, you know, hands-off
07:55approach towards AI. They want it regulated, but they want it regulated lightly. He seems like he's
08:00very willing to give them what they want in that regard. So, you know, here you've got a president
08:05who is making policies that are beneficial to this company that his sons are involved.
08:12Zach Everson, per usual, I appreciate your reporting. Thanks for joining me.
08:17My pleasure.