From the Ecclesiastical Forum to Tiktok: Trump’s far-right donor

Jeffrey Yass, one of the two main financiers of the Israel Ecclesiastical Forum, is a friend of Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, as the organization ‘Citizens for Ethics’ revealed a week ago. Yass helped bail out Trump financially, and in return Trump changed his position regarding Tiktok, of which Yass is one of the owners.

Yass is one of the leading forces behind the Truth Social deal for Trump’s financial bailout. Although Trump is a wealthy man in his own right, most of his wealth is immersed in real estate and is not liquid. Trump was temporarily ordered to pay a reduced amount of 175 million dollars to appeal the ruling of the court in New York, which convicted him and his holding company of fraud and imposed a fine of 454 million dollar.

BREAKING: The biggest institutional investor in the SPAC that’s merging with Truth Social is Susquehanna International Group LLP, which was co-founded by GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass.

The deal is poised to give Donald Trump a massive financial lifeline. pic.twitter.com/W8EClMEkfC

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) March 22, 2024

According to the organization’s disclosure, Yass’s business company, Susquehanna, is the largest institutional investor in the merger deal of Trump’s social network, which belongs to the Trump Media company, to a stock market skeleton called Digital World Acquisition Corp on the Nasdaq. The deal reflects a valuation of the social network of at least 3 billion dollar, which seems inflated, according to the siteFORTUNE , in the first three quarters of 2023 Trump Media lost $49 million, and its revenue reached only $3.4 million. This did not prevent various investors, Trump supporters, from purchasing the stock of the merged company, which raised it by tens of percent.

Trump may use the shares he owns in the merged company, amounting to 60% of it, as a guarantee for the body that will provide him with financing to pay the high fine. This is where other interests of Yas come into the picture, who through Susquehanna owns 15% of Bytedance, the owner of the TikTok network. TikTok is under Chinese control, and American lawmakers from both parties fear that the company has 170 million American users, who may be under the influence of the Chinese government, especially in the run-up to the elections at the end of this year.

Bipartisan legislation is taking shape in Congress in Washington, designed to force ByteDance to sell its holdings in TikTok within 180 days to Western ownership, or the application will be banned for use in the United States.

At the beginning of the month, Trump unexpectedly announced that he opposes the legislation, claiming that its implementation will strengthen Facebook, which he defines as “the enemy of the public”. This is a 180-degree change on the part of Trump, who consistently opposed Tiktok during his tenure. The Instagram network, owned by Meta, this year overtook the TikTok network in the number of new installations, much due to the criticism of TikTok in the United States. It is not only the political concerns, but also the claim that the network contributes to the increase of mental disorders such as depression, eating disorders and suicide among teenagers. Similar claims are also being made against Meta, which is defending itself from a 33-state lawsuit in the United States regarding the negative influence of Facebook and Instagram on teenagers.

Yass and Trump: not a natural connection

Yass was born in 1958 to Jewish parents, accountants, in the Queens borough of New York. He made his initial fortune betting on horse races, to which he recruited statistical experts who were able to crack the system and ensure high winning chances. After he was banned from betting on several race tracks, he moved to the capital market and there he specializes in “market making” – short-term trading in a variety of low-risk securities, except during major market crashes. Today, Yass is the richest man in Pennsylvania, and his fortune is estimated at 28 billion dollars. He opposes the minimum wage and public welfare and education systems. He consistently donates to anti-tax groups. Yass is also a climate denier and works against policies to curb global warming.

About two years ago the ‘Pro-Publica’ website published debriefing which traced the methods used by Yass to evade paying taxes. According to the investigation, the Susquehanna company, specializing in very short-term trading of securities and even cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, is supposed to pay high taxes, but in practice it pays low tax rates. Yass developed a method in which he records a profit on long-term investments, alongside similar losses on short-term investments on the same securities, which produces optimal tax planning for him.

Yass sued the IRS who determined that the method was illegal, and the lawsuit is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Yas manages to pay an average low multi-year tax rate of just 19% on his personal income. He donates to American institutes such as the Cato Institute, to spread extreme economic right-wing positions among policymakers.

Over the years, Yass has been an important contributor to the Republican Party that opposed Trump and supported representatives whose economic positions reflect a much more extreme right-wing view. For the current presidential elections, Yass has already donated tens of millions of dollars to failed candidates, including Ron de Santis and Chris Christie. After Trump was chosen as the Republican candidate, Yass decided to change policies and adopt him into his fold. The two spoke in Florida at the beginning of the month, and the website Bloomberg announced Yass as one of the four candidates to serve as Treasury Secretary if Trump wins the election. Spokesmen for Trump’s campaign denied that the meeting was about possible appointments.

On Trump’s part, only some of Yass’ positions are close to his heart. Trump also opposes taxes, especially on the rich, and opposes the climate policies of Obama and Biden, but on other issues he is not extreme right or right at all. The support he receives from the lower middle class of white voters is also related to his deviation from the hard Republican line, which opposes Social Security. Trump announced that he would cancel the ‘Obamacare’ program, which made health insurance more accessible and continuous for tens of millions of Americans, but in the end he kept it, also due to its popularity among his voters.

Trump is leading in the polls, despite many lawsuits against him

The two presidential candidates, Biden and Trump, are somewhat unusual in the American political landscape, thanks to the relatively high popularity of both among the working class, and the criticism they both express of the financial corporations and in favor of returning industrial jobs to the United States.

This support contradicts public opinion polls, which have given both of them low ratings of popularity throughout their tenure, especially for Biden. Today Trump is leading in the polls in the presidential race, despite lawsuits against him on many issues – disruption of the previous presidential election campaign, possession of classified materials in his home without a permit, sexual assault, civil fraud trial and more.

According to the magazine Atlantic, there are 91 different charges against him, pending in two states and two federal districts, each of which could result in a prison sentence. Dozens of other lawsuits that have already failed were intended to disqualify him from the position of president, claiming that he swore to protect the constitution but participated in the rebellion against the results of the 2020 elections.

Trump claims that the lawsuits against him constitute political persecution. He managed to win the disqualification claims on appeal to the Supreme Court, which determined that he is allowed to run in the elections. If elected president, in January 2025 he would have the power to stay or dismiss federal proceedings against him, but legal proceedings pending in state courts could continue.