A little over a week ago, Trump Media Technology Group, which owns Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, became a publicly traded company. Around the same time, Trump Media launched a lawsuit against the co-founders of the platform, claiming that they had hurt the company’s value by bungling key parts of its business operations and the process of going public. As such, the suit seeks to eliminate their stake in the company, which is currently valued at around $606 million.
Trump Media’s lawsuit, which was filed on March 24, is against Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, two former contestants on Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, who somehow became the co-founders of the Republican nominee for President’s technology company. The suit accuses Litinsky and Moss of having “failed spectacularly at every turn” in their operation of the company. Specifically, the suit says that the duo made “reckless and wasteful decisions,” that they did not find an appropriate partner for the public merger, and that, when the merger did materialize, they “began ceaseless attempts to thwart” the deal in an effort to haggle over their own stake in the company.
Litinsky and Moss actually sued Trump first. In February, Trump Media was sued by United Atlantic Ventures, an entity formed by the two co-founders, and accused Trump Media of “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” in an effort to dilute their shares in the company. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware.
Trump’s lawsuit is not actually a matter of counterclaims against Moss and Litinsky, as you might expect, but is a separate lawsuit, that was filed in Florida instead of the same Delaware court where the co-founders filed their suit. The judge involved in the Delaware case, Sam Glasscock III, said he was “gobsmacked” by Trump’s decision to file separate litigation, Bloomberg writes.
Since Truth Social went public via its long-awaited SPAC deal, the stock value of the company has gone up and down in wild swings. It has been widely speculated that the cash infusion from Truth Social could help Trump pay off his immense pile of legal bills. Trump was recently ordered to pay $454 million to settle his New York fraud case and secured a bond of $175 million as he awaits an appeal of the decision. He has also been ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in a defamation suit.
Gizmodo reached out for comment to Trump Media Technology Group Corp. and will update this story if any of them respond.
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