Re: [Salon] Jeffrey Yass' firm invested in company that merged with Trump's Truth Social

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On Apr 4, 2024, at 8:42 PM, Todd Pierce via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:

BLUF: https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1775243387043471706?s=20
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Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt
@FranceskAlbs
Knowing how Israel operates,my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed #WCK workers so that donors would pull out & civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly.Israel knows Western countries & most Arab countries won't move a finger for the Palestinians.
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Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt
@FranceskAlbs
Apr 2
On the day Israel bombed a foreign embassy in a third country, it also killed @WCKitchen humanitarian workers. Israel is crossing every possible red line, still with full impunity. Sanctions now. Indictements now.

Standing against Francesca Albanese, 180 degrees apart, and from me, is the “U.S. New Right” of Israeli Fascist sympathizers, whom I believe we should at least be aware of who they are. The New Right, as they refer to themselves.

Not only does Trump share his “Fascist Zionist/Conservative” ideology with the “Right-wing Network” of Hazony, Tikvah Fund, Kohelet Forum, Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, and their affiliated “Straussian/Kandallian” think tanks/journalists, but for Trump; he’s able to monetarize that, as is Jeffrey Yass with his Republican connections, as I will share more of.

Here is Yass describing his ideological loyalties, which perhaps makes it more clear why libertarians like the Koch Network do so much to serve Israeli fascist “Libertarians/Conservatives,” as part of its “Military Industrial Complex,” and funding of anti-BDS legislation here in the US as part of Charles’ contribution to that “Cognitive War” effort.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/jeff-yass-donald-trump-truth-social-pennsylvania-politics-20240322.html
BLUF: “I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass told the Wall Street Journal last year. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals.” (From main article below.)

This is not about TikTok, but is about Trump, Jeffrey Yass, and about the “Right-wing Network” they are part of as a US extension of Israel’s fascist parties, and vice-versa (it goes both ways, see CPAC, Federalist Society, in Israel, etc.) With an analysis of that by most analysts so “thin” that it is invisible, versus the “thick analysis” that an already mature fascist movement calls for. An analysis to include “Network Analysis,” as employed in a decade old book on Israel’s Radical Right. Although it has a shortcoming in not recognizing the “Israeli Radical Right” as fascist, at least not when the book was published.

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<1. The Antecedents of Israel's Contemporary Radical Right.pdf>

But any "Network Analysis" of today’s Universal Fascism must include the following, as part of the “New Right” which Conservatives here have touted and promoted so much here since Trump came on the scene, simultaneously claiming he would “end the endless wars,” and restore torture and build the US into the Greatest Military Power ever. Something like when Germany’s and Italy’s “Leaders” promised to “Make Germany/Italy Great Again.” That the Goldwaters Democrats are only a half-step behind in that only goes to show the truth of the “Overton Window” thesis.

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/16/israel-jeff-yass-kohelet/
"Eugene Kontorovich, head of Kohelet’s international law department and director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, has been involved in efforts to pass domestic legislation opposing protests of Israel. Kontorovich has helped provide policy drafts and counsel for state and federal legislation opposing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel. He has testified in at least eight congressional hearings on issues including antisemitic domestic terrorism, the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Israel’s control over the Golan Heights, and Palestinian attempts to join the International Criminal Court. Kontorovich is active in conservative political circles in the U.S. and overseas, appearing on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, Hungary, last year. According to Friedman, he has been instrumental in Kohelet’s push to reframe all criticism of Israel in the U.S. as antisemitic.”
. . .
"WHILE ISRAEL’S NEW GOVERNMENT works with Kohelet to push the country further to the right, the group’s benefactor is undertaking similar aims in the U.S. It’s not a coincidence, Friedman said, that one of Kohelet’s sponsors is now funding a new PAC targeting progressive candidates.
. . .

"The billionaire’s support for radicalizing conservative politics in Israel is well known, but his domestic political ventures have only recently involved tamping down on progressives in Congress, who have consistently been the only elected officials willing to criticize U.S. support of Israel. His bankrolling of the Moderate PAC comes as international good governance groups are increasingly recognizing Israel as an apartheid state, and officials in Congress are censuring members who speak out against Israeli violence. The House of Representatives voted earlier this month to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the body’s most vocal critics of Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Kohelet and the Moderate PAC are both part of a broader project to silence criticism of Israel in Congress and bolster institutional support for the Netanyahu regime, Friedman said. Kohelet has been behind many of Israel’s illiberal policies, she noted, adding that Congress has stifled critiques of the same policies, which have been condemned by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. “Now the common refrain in Congress is, ‘Oh, this is antisemitic,’ which is then used to shut down critics of Israel like Ilhan Omar. There’s something rather elegant about this.”

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/jeff-yass-donald-trump-truth-social-pennsylvania-politics-20240322.html

Pa. billionaire Jeffrey Yass’ firm has a large holding in company that merged with Trump’s Truth Social
Trump, who is facing mountainous legal fees and fines stemming from legal cases against him, stands to net more than $3 billion from the sale.
Julia TerrusoMar. 22, 2024, 7:38 p.m. ET
Jeffrey S. Yass, a founder and the boss at Susquehanna International Group, addresses a class of interns at the Bala Cynwyd-based investment trading company in 2022. SIG employs over 2,500 worldwide.Read moreSIG
Philadelphia area billionaire Jeffrey Yass’ firm was the largest institutional shareholder as of December in the company that has merged with Truth Social, former President Donald Trump’s social media company.
While the firm is a trading company that serves as a market maker for many well-known stocks, it could signal a link between one of the most powerful GOP megadonors in the nation with the presumptive Republican nominee. Yass is a Republican megadonor who has never donated to Trump’s campaign.
Trump, who faces mountainous legal fees and fines stemming from legal cases against him, stands to net more than $3 billion from the sale, which was green-lit on Friday by shareholders, according to SEC filings.
Truth Social, owned by Trump Media, merged with Digital World Acquisition Corp., which has received investments from several other institutions and banks.
Yass’ Susquehanna had double the next highest shareholder’s investment in DWAC, as of the latest December filing, but the firm holds shares across thousands of companies at any given time. Susquehanna has held the stock since the merger between DWAC and Trump Media was first announced in October 2021.
SEC reports come out quarterly so the most recent investors won’t be known until May.
A spokesperson for Yass declined to comment Friday evening.
Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He’s since been reinstated to both, but has stuck with Truth Social as a megaphone for his message.
The new company will be called Trump Media & Technology Group and trade under the ticker DJT, Trump’s initials. To enable the merger, the company went public, meaning shares of Trump’s media group can now be bought and sold on the public market.
The board of directors for the new company includes Donald Trump Jr., former California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, and several other former Trump aides.
If recent activity in Digital World’s stock is any indication, shareholders of Trump Media could be in for a bumpy ride.
Many of Digital World’s investors are small-time investors, who are either fans of Trump or trying to cash in on the mania, instead of big institutional and professional investors, according to The Associated Press. Those shareholders helped the stock more than double this year in anticipation of the merger going through. But on Friday, the shares lost almost 14%.
Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a $464 million bond in New York’s civil fraud case against him or New York’s attorney general could try to seize his golf course and private estate north of Manhattan — or other assets.
Yass has donated more than $46 million to Republican causes so far in the 2024 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, including several of Trump’s rivals, like GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Chris Christie.
He has not endorsed Trump, who has been lagging President Joe Biden in fundraising, in the presidential election.
But the two were drawn together during the recent Congressional vote to ban TikTok. Yass’ firm reportedly has a 15% stake in TikTok’s parent company and he donated millions to the conservative group, Club for Growth, which opposed the ban.
Yass and Trump met at a donor retreat earlier this month, after which Trump came out against the legislation. He had previously expressed an interest in banning it. Trump spoke with Yass about school choice — Yass’ biggest political interest, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump said on CNBC last week that the two didn’t discuss TikTok.
But the timing led to speculation that Trump, under mounting financial pressure, may have been aiming to court Yass.
The U.S. House voted 352-65 on the bill which would prohibit app stores and internet providers from offering TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests from the app. The bill’s future in the Senate is uncertain, but President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law if it reaches his desk.
Truth Social is at least the second social media company that Susquehanna has invested in. It was an early investor in ByteDance in 2012.
“I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass told the Wall Street Journal last year. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals.”
The Associated Press and staff writer Joseph DiStefano contributed to this article.
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