Where’s the Trump Phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week, except next week, when we take a break until the new year. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, we’re wondering who’s actually behind the mobile company.
Yesterday’s announcement that one of the Trump companies is merging with TAE Technologies raised an unexpected prospect: Is the company that gave up on building phones in the US about to try making a nuclear fusion power plant instead?
The simple answer is no. The longer answer is that we don’t actually know who’s behind Trump Mobile — but it doesn’t come from Trump Media & Technology Group, the wing of the Trump empire that’s suddenly really into fusion power.
Trump Mobile was announced in June by The Trump Organization, with splashy quotes and media appearances from Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both executive vice presidents in the company.
The Trump Organization is run by the Trump children, but owned by the US president via a trust, and it houses myriad more privately owned Trump subsidiaries. Trump Media isn’t among those — it’s a publicly traded company, founded when Trump left office as a vehicle for the Truth Social network. Trump previously owned a majority stake in the company, though that too is now in a trust — managed by Don Jr., who’s also on the Trump Media board of directors.
So Trump Media does social networks and nuclear fusion, while The Trump Organization is making the Trump phone, right? Not quite. It may have announced the Trump phone, but it did so “alongside the team from Trump Mobile,” according to the company’s press release, suggesting a degree of separation. The small print at the end hammers the point home further:
Trump Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals. T1 Mobile LLC uses the “Trump” name and trademark pursuant to the terms of a limited license agreement which may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.
So we have Trump Mobile, and now T1 Mobile LLC, neither of which are seemingly part of The Trump Organization. Trump Mobile’s site has its own small print, which says much the same:
TRUMPSM and all associated designs are trademarks of DTTM Operations LLC. TrumpSM Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The TrumpSM Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals. T1 Mobile LLC uses the TRUMPSM name and trademark pursuant to the terms of a limited license agreement which may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.
But now there’s another company in the mix: DTTM Operations LLC. That is part of The Trump Organization and is simply the company Trump uses for registering trademarks. It was DTTM Operations that applied for the trademarks for “T1” and “Trump” in the mobile space and owns similar Trump trademarks for sneakers, perfume, spring water, and more.
There’s still more we don’t know than we do about Trump Mobile’s ownership
So The Trump Organization owns the Trump Mobile trademarks, via DTTM Operations. And it licenses those trademarks to T1 Mobile LLC, the company that actually operates Trump Mobile. So who’s behind T1 Mobile LLC?
Registered in Florida in April, state records only give an address in Palm Beach. There you’ll find an office building that houses a local bank, an air duct cleaning company, and a urologist — plus the offices of Stuart Kaplan, the attorney who’s listed as the registered agent of T1 Mobile.
Kaplan hasn’t kept his involvement with Trump Mobile on the down-low. He helped announce the mobile company in June, posting on X that he had “partnered with Eric and Don Jr. Trump,” before repeating the familiar line — since rescinded — that the phones would be manufactured in the US.
Kaplan also runs a risk management company, Kaplan & Sconzo, offering risk assessment, investigation, and private security services. Kaplan claims to have been an FBI special agent from 1995 to 2006, a fact he frequently leverages in appearances on local and national news, including CNN, CBS, and Fox. Just this week he appeared on Fox News to discuss the investigation into the Brown University shooting and over the past 12 months has appeared on TV to discuss National Guard deployments, Charlie Kirk’s death, and Kash Patel’s performance as head of the FBI, with years of appearances before that.
He’s been happy to talk Trump too. Kaplan spoke to CNN in 2022 about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, to CBS a year later about the arraignment, and has repeatedly popped up in the news to discuss other aspects of the president’s legal situation, always presented as a former FBI agent and defense attorney. As far as I can tell Kaplan hasn’t popped up in the media to discuss Trump specifically since the paperwork for T1 Mobile LLC was filed on April 25, 2025, but did appear on Florida station WPTV to discuss Trump’s charges as recently as last December, complaining about the FBI being weaponized to “do the dirty work” of Trump’s adversaries.
There’s still more we don’t know than we do about Trump Mobile’s ownership. We don’t know what Kaplan’s role in T1 Mobile LLC is, beyond being the lawyer who registered the company, nor when his relationship with the Trumps began. We don’t know who owns T1 Mobile LLC, or who runs the company. We don’t know how closely linked the Trump sons or The Trump Organization are with day-to-day operations, other than a small print suggestion that they’re doing no more than licensing the Trump name.
But at least we know, as best as we can tell, that the people who’ve repeatedly failed to release a smartphone on time aren’t the same ones tasked with building the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion reactor next year.
None of Trump Mobile, The Trump Organization, nor Stuart Kaplan replied to my latest request for comment.
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