Crypto mogul sues Trump family venture over alleged fraud
A cryptocurrency mogul who has invested tens of millions of dollars in various enterprises tied to President Donald Trump and his family filed suit against the Trump family's flagship crypto venture late Tuesday for, among other claims, alleged breach of contract and fraud -- a major escalation of a feud that erupted on social media earlier this month.
Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who has cultivated deep ties to the Trumps, filed the lawsuit late Tuesday in a California federal court, accusing World Liberty Financial of freezing his investment in the firm's digital tokens in a bid to "ratchet up pressure" on Sun to promote another one of the company's offerings.
Sun "has long been (and remains) an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family" and has invested roughly $45 million in World Liberty Financial at least in part "because of the Trump family's association with the project," Sun's lawyers wrote.
But Sun's lawsuit accused other World Liberty "operators" of "engaging in an illegal scheme to seize property ... [causing] Mr. Sun and his companies to incur hundreds of millions of dollars in damages," his lawyers wrote.
A World Liberty Financial spokesperson directed ABC News to posts on X from Eric Trump, who called the suit "ridiculous," and World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff called the claims in the suit "entirely meritless."
"World Liberty looks forward to getting the case thrown out promptly," Witkoff wrote.
Eric Trump, the son of President Trump, and Witkoff, the son of the president's special envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial in 2024, shortly before Trump’s election.
Sun gained notoriety in part for his purchase of a $6 million banana art piece -- an actual piece of fruit duct-taped to a wall -- and has since invested in both World Liberty Financial and the president's meme coin, called $TRUMP. He attended a gala last year for the top investors in the meme coin and currently sits atop the leaderboard for a luncheon scheduled for this weekend at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
Earlier this year, Sun agreed to pay $10 million to resolve a civil fraud case brought by the Biden-era Securities and Exchange Commission.
In his lawsuit filed Tuesday, Sun accused executives at World Liberty Financial -- excluding members of the Trump family -- of using the firm "as a golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud."
He accused the firm of seizing his coins as leverage to persuade Sun to promote World Liberty Financial's stablecoin, called USD1, and "mint" it on his own platform, called TRON -- a strategy he called "a pressure tactic that itself qualifies as criminal extortion."
Sun first raised these concerns on social media earlier this month. World Liberty Financial at the time denied the allegations and added in a post on X, "See you in court pal."
