World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company affiliated with US President Donald Trump and his family, filed a defamation lawsuit against Tron creator Justin Sun in Florida state court on Monday, alleging “gross misconduct” by Sun over the WLFI tokens he purchased.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of Sun’s own lawsuit against World Liberty, which was filed in federal court in California, alleging that World Liberty had unfairly frozen 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 probate 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 as a result,” the lawsuit says, adding that Sun’s tweets complaining about his tokens being frozen contain 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 had “lost specific business opportunities.”
Many parts of the lawsuit were redacted, including parts describing Sun’s purchase of the tokens and sections about his alleged misconduct.
This alleged misconduct includes what World Liberty describes as “a large deliberate short-selling campaign designed to suppress the price of $WLFI at the time of its public launch,” which the lawsuit linked to Sun-affiliated wallets moving $300 million to Binance.
“Upon discovering these violations, World Liberty exercised its contractual rights to freeze the tokens of Sun entities to prevent further harm to World Liberty and the $WLFI community at large, an ability of which Sun was aware long before this action was taken,” the lawsuit says.
One issue that Sun was aware of prior to his tweets was that World Liberty had the ability to freeze tokens, the lawsuit said throughout the filing.
“Sun was not only aware of the terms of the agreements, but he also knew through personal experience that the defamatory statements were false because he (and the public) knew that World Liberty had the power to restrict the transferability of the tokens,” the lawsuit says.
The suit alleges defamation and seeks damages, costs and retraction of Sun’s statements.
