World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company affiliated with U.S. President Donald Trump and his family, filed a defamation lawsuit against TRON founder Justin Sun in a Florida court on Monday, accusing Sun of “serious misconduct” in connection with his purchase of WLFI tokens.
The lawsuit follows a lawsuit Sun filed against World Liberty in California federal court, alleging that World Liberty unfairly froze his ability to transfer WLFI tokens. In Monday’s lawsuit, World Liberty alleged that Sun-related entities purchased WLFI tokens for other investors through straw purchases and may have “engaged in short selling” of the tokens.
World Liberty froze Sun’s WLFI tokens “to protect itself” and the broader community, the lawsuit said, adding that Sun’s tweets complaining that its tokens were frozen contained false or defamatory information.
World Liberty alleges that Sun allegedly hired influencers and used bots to “amplify his lies” and as a result the company said it “lost certain business opportunities.”
Many parts of the lawsuit have been redacted, including sections describing Sun’s purchase of the tokens and sections regarding his alleged misconduct.
The alleged misconduct included what World Liberty described as “a massive, deliberate short-selling campaign designed to drive down the price of WLFI when it went public,” according to the lawsuit related to the transfer of $300 million from a Sun-affiliated wallet to Binance.
“Upon discovery of these violations, World Liberty exercised its contractual right to freeze the Sun entity’s tokens to prevent further harm to World Liberty and the broader $WLFI community, an ability that Sun was well aware of before taking this action,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says throughout the filing that one issue Sun knew about before tweeting was World Liberty’s ability to freeze tokens.
“Sun not only knew the terms of the agreement, but also knew through his personal experience that the defamatory statements were false because he (and the public) knew that World Liberty had the authority to limit the transferability of the tokens,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit accuses Sun of defamation and seeks damages, costs and retraction.
