Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. This week, we explain how the presidential phone company connects to an older company that’s really running the show.

We’ve long known that Trump Mobile was linked to Liberty Mobile, a carrier that’s traded for years using freedom-themed branding to sell cheap mobile plans to a conservative crowd. Turns out, the two businesses are even closer to one another than it had initially appeared. And as we wait for the launch of the Trump phone — potentially as soon as next month, having been delayed from August — it’s worth understanding who’s actually behind the device, regardless of the name that will be emblazoned on its back.

“Liberty Mobile is umbilically connected to Trump [Mobile],” Don Hendrickson tells me. And he would know: Hendrickson is one of the three Trump Mobile executives, alongside Eric Thomas and Pat O’Brien, who have been the semi-public faces of the company. And the same three men just happen to be the owners of Liberty Mobile, too.

The Trump Mobile terms of use say that it is “powered by Liberty Mobile Wireless LLC,” but that appears to be underselling the relationship. During the same interview in which the executives showed me what they claim is a near-final version of the Trump phone itself, Thomas calls Liberty Mobile the “enabler” for the Trump network, while Hendrickson calls it the “backbone.” To hear Hendrickson describe it further, it’s clear that Liberty Mobile handles not only all of Trump Mobile’s technical back end and relationships with the larger carriers, but also many of its legal and financial obligations.

“Liberty Mobile is the company that is registered with all the states, that clears all the taxes, pays all of the different E911 fees, the universal service tax, the different things that each one of the states require,” Hendrickson says. “Liberty has the engineering staff, the teams that work with the carriers, the algorithms that work with giving the best possible optimization of usage to the end users.”

It seems like without Liberty Mobile, there would be no Trump Mobile. But what is Liberty Mobile?

It’s an MVNO — or mobile virtual network operator — meaning it’s a small carrier that pays a larger carrier for unused network capacity, allowing it to run a network with minimal overhead.

Most MVNOs target lower price points or niche audiences. Liberty Mobile is focused on the latter, with freedom-themed branding designed to draw in conservatives, leaning on a Liberty Bell logo in red, white, and blue.

It’s not the only Liberty in the industry. Liberty Mobile is not to be confused with the separate, and now defunct, MVNO Liberty Wireless; the telecoms infrastructure group Liberty Global; or the various Liberty carriers that operate under the Liberty Latin America group.

Its messaging is less overtly political than Trump Mobile’s, and it’s open to targeting other audiences too. I reported last week that Liberty Mobile previously ran Canelo Mobile, an MVNO co-branded between Liberty Mobile and the Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez, and marketed specifically toward Mexican Americans.

As for its service, Liberty Mobile’s plans are cheaper than the single $47.45 Trump plan, ranging from $17 to $40 per month. They include free international calling, but interestingly not the other perks found in the more expensive Trump option, like roadside assistance, device cover, and telehealth.

Its online presence is minimal, with no social media accounts I could find. Its website still lists a copyright date of 2025 in the footer, and appears either outdated or incomplete in other respects too. The “phones” page is entirely blank; the blog includes a single, 62-word entry on the Affordable Connectivity Program with a picture of then-VP-elect JD Vance; and the FAQ consists of nothing but lorem ipsum placeholder text.

But who’s behind it? Here, things are even more opaque. When I ask, Thomas tells me that he and Hendrickson, alongside O’Brien, both own Liberty and are “the core of” the company.

At first, that seems to bear out. In summer 2024, when Trump Mobile was but a glimmer in their eyes, O’Brien appeared on the podcast The Boon of Wireless and confirmed that his company — Ensurety Ventures — had acquired Liberty Mobile earlier that year. Ensurety doesn’t list Liberty Mobile among its brands on its website, but does list Drive America and Omega. Those happen to be the same companies that provide roadside assistance and device protection to Trump Mobile customers.

But when I ask Hendrickson and Thomas if Ensurety owns Liberty, they deny it. “No, Ensurety is a third party,” Thomas says, in no uncertain terms, while Hendrickson simply repeats “No.” I’ve emailed the pair to ask for clarification, but hadn’t received a response in time for publication.

Their exact roles are unclear too. I asked directly for Thomas’ and Hendrickson’s specific job titles, but neither would confirm them over the call. Instead they said I’d be sent an “official structure” by email. Several weeks later that still hasn’t arrived, and my follow-up email asking for those details has not been acknowledged.

Neither O’Brien nor Thomas list Liberty Mobile or Trump on their LinkedIn profiles — and it’s also not mentioned on the only LinkedIn page I can find that’s a plausible match for Hendrickson, though it’s so scant on details that I can’t be sure. O’Brien is listed as the president of Ensurety, though, a role he’s apparently held since 2001. Thomas lists himself as a founder and CEO of Vmedical, a medtech company that’s mentioned prominently on the Liberty Mobile homepage under the header “Services we provide,” and described there as a “sister company.” He’s apparently been there since 2020, four years before the supposed Ensurety acquisition.

To confuse matters further, state business records all list Matt Lopatin as the founder and CEO of Liberty Mobile, and make no mention of any of the others. So far I’ve struggled to find any detailed information on Lopatin, who hasn’t been publicly linked to Trump Mobile either. The earliest of those records also suggest that the company was first registered in 2018, but that contradicts what I was told by Hendrickson, who said it’s “been in the business since 2006.” I can find no other evidence that Liberty Mobile was in operation prior to 2018.

Like so many elements of Trump Mobile, digging into Liberty Mobile brings up more questions than answers. Still, at least one thing about the company isn’t surprising at all: its registered address. You’ll find Liberty Mobile in an apartment complex at 16001 Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida — also known as Trump Towers.

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