World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company affiliated with U.S. President Donald Trump and his family, filed a defamation suit against Tron creator Justin Sun in a Florida state court on Monday, alleging “gross misconduct” by Sun regarding the WLFI tokens he purchased.
The lawsuit follows Sun’s own lawsuit against World Liberty, which was filed in federal court in California, alleging that World Liberty unfairly froze its ability to transfer its 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 sales” of the token.
World Liberty froze Sun’s WLFI tokens “to protect itself” and the broader community, the lawsuit says, adding that Sun’s tweets complaining about the freezing of its tokens contained false or defamatory information.
Sun allegedly hired influencers and used bots to “amplify its lies,” World Liberty claimed, and as a result the company said it “lost specific business opportunities.”
Many parts of the lawsuit have been redacted, including portions describing Sun’s purchase of the tokens and sections about his alleged misconduct.
This alleged misconduct includes what World Liberty describes as “a widespread, deliberate short-selling campaign designed to suppress the price of $WLFI at the time of its public launch,” which the suit links to Sun-affiliated wallets transferring $300 million to Binance.
“After discovering these violations, World Liberty exercised its contractual rights to freeze Sun entities’ tokens to prevent further harm to World Liberty and the broader $WLFI community, a capability that Sun knew about long before this action was taken,” the lawsuit states.
One issue Sun was aware of before his tweets was that World Liberty had the ability to freeze tokens, the lawsuit said throughout the filing.
“Not only was Sun aware of the terms of the agreements, but Sun also knew from personal experience that the defamatory statements were false because he (and the public) knew that World Liberty had the authority to restrict the transferability of the tokens,” the suit states.
The suit alleged defamation and demanded damages, expenses and a retraction of Sun’s statements.
