Trading in Dominari Holdings Inc. soared ahead of the February announcement that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had taken stakes in the company and joined its advisory board—an increase some securities law experts called “suspicious.” Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins "Forbes Talks" to discuss.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/03/05/donald-trump-jr-eric-dominari-holdings-stock-nasdaq-trading-volume/
0:00 Introduction
1:06 Trump's Sons Grow Richer How?
6:02 Is The Business Of Dominari Holdings Legal?
8:11 Experts Say 'Suspicious Activity' Since The Trumps Have Joined The Advisory Board
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Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/03/05/donald-trump-jr-eric-dominari-holdings-stock-nasdaq-trading-volume/
0:00 Introduction
1:06 Trump's Sons Grow Richer How?
6:02 Is The Business Of Dominari Holdings Legal?
8:11 Experts Say 'Suspicious Activity' Since The Trumps Have Joined The Advisory Board
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is my Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for coming back
00:11on.
00:12My pleasure, Brittany.
00:14You have even more news about Dominari Holdings and Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump's involvement
00:21in the firm. We have a lot to parse through, but first, talk us through what exactly does
00:26Dominari Holdings do?
00:30It seems like it'll do anything that'll make it some money. It's a holding company. It
00:34has pharmaceutical subsidiary. It works in finance. It's most notable. It was a penny
00:43stock. Nobody really paid it much attention. It was most notable that it had a Trump Tower
00:48address to it. Other than that, it's not something anybody would have heard about until February
00:5311th when it announced that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board
00:59and also participated in a private placement, bought some shares in the company.
01:06So not only does it have a Trump Tower address, it has two of the Trump sons on board. I want
01:11to read one of your headlines from this story. Quote, Trump's sons joined Dominari Holdings
01:16advisory board, but there's little public record the board existed beforehand. Can you
01:21explain exactly what you mean there?
01:25Yeah, I went ahead and looked for evidence that this advisory board had been an entity
01:30prior to the Trumps joining it, and there was very little evidence that it existed out
01:35there. Now, clearly, it did exist. There are references to it, a few of them, but it did
01:41not seem like it had much of an active role in the company. It looked like it was mostly
01:46a holdover from when the company was exclusively a pharmaceutical company. It had advisors
01:52who were all doctors working in the medical field. So there just wasn't much out there.
01:58Between June 2021 and February 2025, there were no mentions in SEC filings about an advisory
02:07board, except to point out a couple of times that one of the officers of the company had
02:12been on it for a few months. So that was it. If you look online, there's no reference to
02:18it. And also, the company did not even have its advisory board agreement on file with
02:23the SEC until February 12th, the day after Don Jr. and Eric were named to it. The only
02:29other person we could find who belongs to it is a guy named Ron Lieberman, who is also
02:35a board member, a member of the regular board of directors of the company, and also a
02:39longtime employee of the Trump Organization.
02:42I'm curious, what exactly do advisory boards do? How big of a role do they play in a
02:48company? And specifically, when it comes to Dominari Holdings, what does this advisory
02:53board do? What information did you find out about that?
02:57It's pretty vague. They give advice, you know, they're there to review documents if you
03:02want them to. It really did not have much specific there. They're, you know, they could
03:09vet other members to join the advisory board.
03:12You know, it really seems that there's, you know, unlike a board of directors where
03:16securities law has specific responsibilities for it, advisory board can largely just
03:22just pretty much do anything.
03:23And that seems to be the way it's the paperwork is set up for this predominant advisory
03:28board to operate.
03:30I've talked to other people about advisory boards.
03:32They sound like largely cushy positions.
03:35So I am curious, why does this matter?
03:37Why does it matter that there were scant evidence that there was an advisory board
03:41that existed before the Trumps got on board?
03:44What exactly does this indicate to you?
03:48It seems like an easy way to get the Trumps associated with the company and hopefully
03:52cause the stock price to jump, which it did.
03:54It certainly went up after their involvement was announced.
03:57So it's a way to attach the Trumps names to it, not really require much, if anything, of
04:02them. And, you know, hopefully see the see the stock price go up.
04:07So now let's get into the trading here at Dominari Holdings.
04:10You're reporting that right before the February announcement that the Trump brothers
04:14were becoming involved, that that is Don Jr.
04:17and Eric Trump. The trading skyrocketed.
04:20Tell us about that.
04:23So we look back over the last three hundred and sixty five days, and it was really
04:28interesting how the stock price jumped as we got closer to this announcement.
04:32So from February twenty twenty four until December twenty ninth, the stock averaged
04:38just eleven thousand five hundred shares trading a day, which is not all that much.
04:42And the price was pretty stable between a dollar ten and three dollars twenty nine
04:46cents. Now, on December 30th, shut up.
04:50Three hundred fifty eight thousand shares traded hands that day, and it went on to
04:55average one point two million dollars of shares trading all the way through February
05:0010th. And the price also fluctuated a lot more as well, hitting a low of eighty three
05:04cents, but also reaching a high of six dollars and fifty cents the day before it was
05:08announced that the Trumps were on.
05:10Now, February 11th, before the market opened, they announced the Trumps were that they
05:15announced the Trump's new role and the stock price jumped to eleven dollars.
05:19Thirty three cents went on to hit thirteen dollars and fifty eight cents as a high a
05:23couple of days later. So you saw this really big jump in volume right before this
05:29announcement became public.
05:31And I couldn't see anything that seems to have.
05:36Brought that about, you know, I spoke with some experts in securities, talked to some
05:40professors and they looked through the SEC filings and similarly did not see anything
05:45that really said, oh, this is why the stock price would have jumped, this is why you
05:49would have seen all that trades.
05:50You know, we look through media mentions, pretty much the only media mentions out
05:53there were of the stock price itself, not of the company doing anything in particular
05:58that would have caused it to become more valuable.
06:02The volume in trading significantly increase, then you see after this announcement, as
06:08soon as it was announced that Eric and Don Jr.
06:10were involved, you see the stock price increase.
06:13Is this normal?
06:14Is this just a coincidence?
06:16What are experts saying?
06:19You know, the stock price increasing isn't too surprising at all when you've taken this
06:22company that really wasn't well known and all of a sudden saying the president's sons
06:25are attached to it. Not too surprising.
06:27It's going to go up there.
06:28You know, we've certainly seen Trump related securities and crypto doing quite well, much
06:34better than you would expect based on the valuation of their company.
06:37So that wasn't surprising.
06:38But one of the experts I spoke to, Alan Pellmiter, a professor at Wake Forest University
06:43Law School, described it as super suspicious.
06:46You know, he just said it seems that somebody had figured out what was going on well
06:49before the press release came out announcing their involvement.
06:52I mean, you hear suspicious, does this equate to insider trading?
06:57What are people saying?
07:00There's no proof of any of that.
07:02You know, we don't know who is buying those shares.
07:05That is something that regulators could look into.
07:09The SEC, FINRA, NASDAQ could all take a look at this.
07:12They could try to figure out who purchased those shares and did any of the people who
07:16purchased those shares have connections to insiders in the company?
07:21And they will not comment publicly if they are investigating anything like that, though.
07:25So there's a good chance that we will just never, ever know if that was the case and if
07:30there were any punishments filled out.
07:33So what is the likelihood of regulators looking into this, slim to none?
07:37What have experts told you?
07:41You know, it's something that should have raised red flags, that their computer systems
07:45are set up to automatically detect, you know, to go back and look when is a major
07:50announcement made and go back and look what the trading volume was leading up to that.
07:54You know, the SEC right now falls under the purview of Donald Trump, father of new
08:00advisory board members and co-owners and owners in this company, Donald Trump Jr.
08:04and Eric Trump. So it does not seem likely that much will, if anything, will come of
08:09this. I want to read one final headline from you regarding this.
08:14Insiders loaded up on firm's stock right before Don Jr.
08:18and Eric Trump's involvement sent shares soaring.
08:21What did experts say to you specifically about that?
08:24As suspicious?
08:26I mean, what does that look like?
08:28No, it's legal for this to have happened.
08:31It's not insider trading.
08:32Both parties of the trade, the insiders who were buying it in the company, were most
08:38likely well aware of what was going to happen on February 11th when they announced the
08:43Trump's involvement. But they were surprised.
08:45They say they don't usually see timing like this where there's a major private placement
08:49and bonuses doled out.
08:50And then the next day there is big news like this.
08:53They just said that is not common.
08:54Now, there is a possible legal issue here in that some of the shareholders could sue
09:03the board of directors in what's known as a derivative suit, saying like they didn't do
09:08their fiduciary duty like they should have.
09:10They should not have sold those shares for as cheaply as they did to themselves.
09:14They knew that the price was probably going to go up the next day once that news was
09:18announced and they should have got more money out of themselves.
09:22So it's possible we could see a lawsuit out of that.
09:25It doesn't seem really likely just because the company's not all that wealthy.
09:31You know, a lot of whether or not somebody gets sued depends on how much money they have
09:34to pay attorneys fees and court awards.
09:38And it does not seem like Dominary is a company that's going to have a lot of money and
09:42really catch the eye of any sort of plaintiff's attorney.
09:46This is not the first time you and I have talked about Dominary.
09:49You wrote a few stories about them.
09:51We're talking about them again.
09:53I'm sure you reached out to the company.
09:55I'm sure you reached out to the Trumps.
09:57Have you received any responses?
09:58What are they? I haven't.
10:02I didn't receive any responses at all from the Trumps regarding this.
10:05Dominary responded to my first article after it was published, just saying, here's some
10:10email addresses. Here's who you should contact.
10:12Should you have questions again?
10:13I've reached out to them repeatedly.
10:15They did not comment.
10:17They did not respond. I reached out to every member of the board of directors who
10:20participated in that private placement.
10:22Likewise, I did not receive any responses there.
10:26Zach, when you're looking at this whole story, when you're looking at all the reporting
10:29surrounding it from really December of twenty twenty four to now in March of twenty
10:34twenty five, what are your takeaways here?
10:39There's a lot there's there's a lot to go on, you know, I think I got four or five
10:43articles here out of some penny stock that nobody really knew about just over what had
10:47transpired over the last couple of months.
10:49So, you know, it's really interesting continuing to follow this.
10:52The stock price has gone back down.
10:54Last I checked, it was trading at about four dollars and eighty cents a share.
10:58So less than what it closed on the day before the Trump's involvement was announced.
11:03So it's going to be interesting to see what they come up with and the extent of the
11:08Trump's involvement, if there's any more SEC filings, if they were if that talk about
11:13what they're doing, if there are any more private placements, if they sell, you know,
11:16we have not seen any evidence that any of these insiders have sold their shares when
11:21the price shot up.
11:23So, you know, there might be some some filings coming out in the future that might
11:27give us some more insight on this.
11:29Some of the shares may have been tied up.
11:30They may not have been able to sell them right away.
11:32So hopefully we'll get some insight into what exactly is going on as time progresses.
11:38Well, Zach, I always appreciate your reporting.
11:40I always appreciate our conversations.
11:42Thanks so much for joining me.
11:45Likewise, Brittany, thanks for having me.