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A full report from Guns Down America detailing the dealings leading up to the IPO of Trump Jr., Malik, GrabAGun, Credova, and other connected people.
READ ONA full report from Guns Down America detailing the dealings leading up to the IPO of Trump Jr., Malik, GrabAGun, Credova, and other connected people.
Donald Trump Jr. and his business partners are trying to sell Americans into firearm ownership, and the debt that comes along with it, but investors don’t seem to be buying the pitch.
Trump Jr. rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on July 16 to launch the initial public offering of GrabAGun Digital Holdings. Shares in the company (ticker symbol PEW) plunged almost immediately.
As of August 8, PEW was trading around $6.09/share, down from a peak of $21.40. That’s a 70% drop.
70% drop in Trump Jr.’s PEW stock from its July 16, 2025 launch to August 1
GrabAGun has been around since 2010, but the company appeared to shift its branding in recent years to cater to a more conservative audience. In its early days, GrabAGun described itself as a “family owned and operated company founded by gun enthusiasts.”
But sometime in 2020—when gun sales were surging amid covid uncertainty and civil justice protests—GrabAGun updated its website to replace its description as a “family” company with a new description. “The Second Amendment is in our blood,” the site now reads. GrabAGun says it has an “American duty to help everyone” purchase firearms.
The company is targeting Millennial and Gen Z male customers with a focus on technology, and it offers “Shoot Now, Pay Later” financing that lets people get their hands on a new gun without putting any money down up front. GrabAGun execs say they hope to be a leader in the space and capture a larger share of the $25 billion firearms and accessories market by expanding their platform and pursuing new acquisitions.
GrabAGun defines innovation as selling guns on layaway: leaving young male consumers alone with their guns and debt.
Trump Jr., who owns 1% of GrabAGun stock and sits on the company’s board, helped orchestrate the IPO alongside New York based investor Omeed Malik.
Malik has said he and Trump Jr. are trying to provide consumers with an alternative to “big monopolistic companies [trying] to circumvent our constitutional rights based on their own woke views.”
GrabAGun went public by merging with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, owned by Malik. Going public by merging with an existing SPAC has become a popular way for startups to access the stock market more quickly and with less regulatory scrutiny than a traditional IPO.
Two years earlier, a Malik-owned SPAC merged with the parent company of PublicSquare, an “anti-woke marketplace” where Trump Jr. was an early investor.
GrabAGun went public with a SPAC deal, a way to access the stock market with minimal scrutiny
In July 2023, Malik and Trump Jr. appeared together at the New York Stock Exchange for PublicSquare’s IPO. However, as with GrabAGun, investors seem unconvinced of PublicSquare’s potential. Since the day of its IPO, when shares of PublicSquare parent, PSQ Holdings, Inc., closed at $29.80, the stock has fallen more than 90%. As of August 8, PSQH closed at $1.99/share.
GrabAGun has offered its “Shoot Now, Pay Later” financing through Credova, a consumer finance company that offers buy now, pay later loans for firearms and related products. Most providers of “buy now, pay later” financing do not cater to the gun industry, and companies like Credova have seen that as an opportunity.
Credova has teamed up with organizations including the NRA and the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, and the majority of its retail partners were in the gun business, the New York Times reported in 2022.
An “American duty” to sell guns includes predatory financing from Credova, a subsidiary of Trump Jr. chaired PublicSquare
In 2024, Credova was acquired by PublicSquare. Several PublicSquare board members, including Trump Jr., are slated to serve on GrabAGun’s board. GrabAGun board members Trump Jr., Blake Masters and Dusty Wunderlich also sit on the board of PublicSquare.
Trump Jr. has pitched GrabAGun and PublicSquare as an opportunity for investors to help build a “vertical[ly] integrated” conservative marketplace. Their conservative marketplace includes the online pharmacy All Family Pharmacy which sells pet dewormer medications Ivermectin and Mebendazole to humans, and “pro-life” healthcare company Presidiocare.
“You guys can actually help support this stuff so that we can create that entire vertical integrated sort of, let's call it red state economy behind all of these things,” Trump Jr. said in February in an interview with gun influencer Colion Noir.
“Shoot Now, Pay Later” financing accounted for approximately 8% of GrabAGun’s $93 million revenue in 2024. According to GrabAGun’s Registration Statement submitted to the SEC, GrabAGun generated $93.1 million in revenue 2024. Sales financed via Credova represented approximately 4% of transactions and 8% of revenue over the past two years, which calculates to approximately $7.4 million.
Meanwhile, it appears that GrabAGun is a key driver of revenue for Credova. According to PSQ Holdings' Annual Report, following its acquisition of Credova in 2024, it added $10.1 million of revenue and $4.1 million of net loss, suggesting that GrabAGun was responsible for a large share of Credova’s overall revenue.
The loans are advertised as interest-free as long as they are repaid within a limited amount of time, but fees can rack up quickly if customers miss a payment. In 2022, the New York Times reported that some customers “complained about” Credova’s “one-year installment plan, under which customers can end up paying much more than the list price for a gun if the borrowed amount is not repaid within a 90-day, interest-free period.”
Members of Congress also have scrutinized Credova’s lending practices. In 2022, 18 House Democrats questioned whether Credova had sufficient “safeguards” in place to ensure the guns it financed are not being resold on the black market. The lawmakers asked Credova to explain what steps they took to ensure that guns are not being quickly resold, whether it was aware of violent acts by its customers, and how many customers defaulted on their loans. It is unclear if Credova ever responded to the letter.
Trump Jr. began consulting for GrabAGun a month after his father was elected to a second term in the White House last year and now serves on the company’s board of directors. He received approximately 1% of the company’s stock prior to its IPO.
Malik is a former Bank of America executive who left the company in 2018 following an internal investigation into alleged inappropriate sexual conduct. Malik denied he sexually harassed anyone and sued Bank of America for defamation; he reportedly received an eight-figure settlement later that year.
In 2022, Malik launched 1789 Capital with backing from prominent conservative funder Rebekah Mercer, who also has supported Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica. Trump Jr. is a partner in 1789 Capital.
The fund behind GrabAGun has connections to Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart
Multiple press reports have raised concerns over quid pro quos, and the opportunity for investors in Donald Trump Jr.'s ventures to seek to curry favor with the Trump administration.
“Don Jr. is not subject to any disclosures,” Donald Sherman, executive vice president and chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told the Intercept in July, referring to another of Trump Jr.’s questionable business ties as the board member of drone maker Unusual Machines. “There’s just innumerable ways that [a company with] ties to Don Jr. can lobby the administration through him without having to report that information.”
“ There’s just innumerable ways that [a company with] ties to Don Jr. can lobby the administration through him without having to report that information.
Since Election Day, Trump Jr. has joined five corporate boards, including GrabAGun and PSQH, drone maker Unusual Machines, and financial advisor Dominari Holdings, according to the Associated Press.
Trump Jr.’s role as a partner in 1789 Capital “will be to monetize the powerful profile … as a chief gatekeeper for his father,” the Wall Street Journal reported in November 2024. “How Trump Jr. will manage the potential for conflicts of interests … is unclear, especially after he spent years accusing President Biden’s family of corruption for Hunter Biden’s business ventures.”
The Financial Times in March 2025 quoted a “person familiar with the family’s thinking” who acknowledged that the family experienced "a flood of potential deals" from investors "in the hope of currying favour with the president down the line." But the source insisted there was “never a quid pro quo . . . people aren’t handing them money or deals in exchange for anything specific. They are simply investing in the Trump family, betting that it will pay off in the future,” according to the FT.
In March 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decided to rescind a Biden-era rule that would have imposed stricter consumer-protection requirements on buy-now, pay-later financing companies such as Credova.
After Trump took office, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rescinded a Biden-era rule that would have scrutinized Credova’s lending practices
In April of this year, Trump Jr. opened a members-only club in Washington called Executive Branch. The launch party was attended by several prominent administration officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, deputy FBI director Dan Bongino and administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz, CNBC reported.
GrabAGun will release its first quarterly earnings report since the IPO on Aug. 14, and CEO Marc Nemati says he is “excited to share [their] financial results.”
Ahead of the earnings report, a small cadre of Redditors appear to be trying to turn it into the next meme stock, pitching it as a potential “short squeeze” in which short-sellers may be forced to exit their positions at a disadvantage. Some PEW promoters may be hoping for a payday on par with Gamestop, which saw its share price soar in early 2021, but of course anonymous Internet posters should be taken with a grain of salt.
Another perspective comes from Seeking Alpha’s CAN Analyst, which published a “hold” recommendation on GrabAGun two weeks after the IPO. According to CAN Analyst’s calculation, PEW is only worth $3.03/share, less than half of where it was trading at the time.
