World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company associated with US President Donald Trump and his family, filed a defamation suit against Tron creator Justin Sun in a Florida court on Monday, alleging “gross misconduct” by Sun over the WLFI tokens he bought.
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 his ability to transfer his WLFI tokens. In Monday’s suit, 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 token.
World Liberty froze Sun’s WLFI tokens “to protect “itself” and the wider community as a result, the lawsuit said, adding that Sun’s tweets complaining about his tokens being frozen contain false or defamatory information.
Sun allegedly hired influencers and used bots to “reinforce his 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 detailing Sun’s purchase of tokens and sections about his alleged wrongdoing.
This alleged wrongdoing 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 case was linked to Sun-affiliated wallets that moved $300 million to Binance.
“After discovering these violations, World Liberty exercised its contractual rights to freeze Sun’s entities’ tokens to prevent further harm to World Liberty and the broader $WLFI community, an ability known to Sun long before this action was taken,” the lawsuit states.
One issue Sun knew about before its tweets was that World Liberty had the ability to freeze tokens, the filing said throughout the filing.
“Not only was Sun aware of the terms of the agreements, but Sun also knew through his personal experience that the defamatory statements were false because he (and the public) knew that World Liberty had the power to limit the transferability of the tokens,” the suit states.
The suit alleged defamation and seeks damages, costs and retraction of Sun’s statements.
