No. of Recommendations: 5
Okay, on a more serious note...
This change in plea after a change in counsel to a lawyer -- ahem -- affiliated with the Trump Crime Syndicate is quite damning.
First, the change in plea itself makes PERFECT sense and should have been their strategy from Day One. If the feds found text messages, emails or phone calls that showed Shvartsman and the others were actively encouraging family members and business partners to buy up shares of DWAC between the IPO of DWAC in September 2021 and the announcement of TMTG being its target in October 2021 and those records show they communicated TMTG was the target, that is a textbook case of insider trading. If the feds have records of conversations where these actors pushed DWAC stock while it was still privately held and those conversations mentioned Trump or TMTG, that is a textbook violation of laws related to SPACs which state no target can be identified prior to the SPAC going public.
The fact that it took a change in counsel to get them to change their plea indicates one of two things about their first lawyer. Either A) that lawyer was completely incompetent or B) that lawyer was very competent and had initially suggested a not-guilty plea in order to bargain with the prosecutors to use other information on other parties in the DWAC / TMTG deal to get a lighter sentence when they eventually flipped to a guilty plea.
If the lawyer from Trump world swooped in at some point to lobby Shvartsman to change counsel, first, that might be an ethics violation on the part of the Trump world lawyer. Second, for Trump to be worried about these parties cutting a deal, Trump has to be worried about something they know that they could use in bargaining with the prosecutor for a lighter sentence. REMEMBER, the actual nature of the charges against Shvartsman had NOTHING to do with Trump. They were charges he used information about DWAC to enrich friends and family. No one alleged Trump knew of his tips to family and friends or would have materially benefitted from them. Remember, at the time of these insider trades, no one was supposed to know that TMTG was the eventual acquisition target so, in theory, Trump would have had no reason to worry about what an insider at DWAC was doing.
Right? RIGHT?
The circumstances of this change in plea with this change in counsel actually seem to confirm that all parties knew up front that DWAC would target TMTG and that this entire scheme was an master class in insider trading corruption from the beginning. Which, not even in retrospect, seems to be obviously the case. The DWAC SPAC was formed December 11, 2021 which is likely the point it became apparent to insiders that Trump lost and would be leaving the White House. The initial CEO Patrick Orlando ran a commodities based investing firm in Miami and it seems likely would be in Trump's circle via proximity. The desire to launch an app and leverage the Trump brand was an obvious money making ploy and the SPAC mechanism provided a better way to focus any profits from an initial speculative bubble on IPO into fewer, better connected pockets.
I would bet that Shvartsman has knowledge of conversations as far back as December 2020 and January 2021 showing that Orlando and Trump were coordinating this entire process from Day One, constituting a very direct violation of securities laws. Trump is desperate to ensure Shvartsman has as few opportunities as possible to speak with prosecutors behind closed doors or in a courtroom.
WTH
