Media company that Donald Trump just recently went public is suing its co-founders, saying they failed "spectacularly" to get the business off the ground and then tried to "thwart the deal."
In a legal suit brought in Sarasota County, Florida, co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group Wesley Moss and Andrew Litinsky are asked to be stopped from choosing board members or holding any shares in the company.
Moss and Litinsky say that a 2021 deal Trump made with a company they started, United Atlantic Ventures, LLC, allows them to keep their 8.6% share of Trump Media's total stock even if new shares are issued.
That share would be worth about $601 million at Tuesday's most recent DJT price. Around February, Moss and Litinsky took their share of Trump Media to court in Delaware Chancery Court.
Later in March, around the same time that the lawsuit was filed, owners in the fake company Digital World Acquisition Corp. agreed to allow a merger with Trump Media, the private company that runs the new social media app Truth Social.
Once the special purpose merger was complete, Trump Media stock started trading under the code DJT. It went up by as much as 50% in its Nasdaq launch last week.
Unfortunately, the share price dropped sharply on Monday when the company said it had a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023.
In its Florida case, Trump Media asks the court to punish Moss and Litinsky for "breaching their fiduciary duty" and issue damages.
Along with Moss and Litinsky, DWAC founder Patrick Orlando is also named as a suspect in the case, and he is alleged to have been involved in the security breaches.
Moss and Litinsky set up Trump Media's corporate control structure, planned the launch of Truth Social, and found a fake company for a merger that would take the media company public, according to the Florida case.
Moss and Litinsky failed "at every turn," Trump Media says of the two men, who were both contestants on "The Apprentice," Trump's old reality TV show.
Their "wasteful decisions" hurt Trump Media and lowered the price of DWAC's stock, the company says. In spite of a business dispute with DWAC that led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, they decided to merge with Orlando's Benessere Capital Acquisition Corp., according to the case.
Then, on the day before the vote on the Trump Media-DWAC merger, Moss and Litinsky "decided to retaliate" by suing the soon-to-be-public company, according to the suit-first reported by Bloomberg.
Trump Media says the claim that UAV is promised stock is "not true" and that the contract Trump made with UAV in 2021 is no longer valid.
As a result of Trump's lawyers raising worries about the deal in July 2021, the lawsuit says Eric Trump wrote UAV a letter saying that his father had "deemed" the deal to be "void." It is said that UAV "acquiesced" to President Trump's choice to break the deal.
In a legal suit brought in Sarasota County, Florida, co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group Wesley Moss and Andrew Litinsky are asked to be stopped from choosing board members or holding any shares in the company.
Moss and Litinsky say that a 2021 deal Trump made with a company they started, United Atlantic Ventures, LLC, allows them to keep their 8.6% share of Trump Media's total stock even if new shares are issued.
That share would be worth about $601 million at Tuesday's most recent DJT price. Around February, Moss and Litinsky took their share of Trump Media to court in Delaware Chancery Court.
Later in March, around the same time that the lawsuit was filed, owners in the fake company Digital World Acquisition Corp. agreed to allow a merger with Trump Media, the private company that runs the new social media app Truth Social.
Once the special purpose merger was complete, Trump Media stock started trading under the code DJT. It went up by as much as 50% in its Nasdaq launch last week.
Unfortunately, the share price dropped sharply on Monday when the company said it had a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023.
In its Florida case, Trump Media asks the court to punish Moss and Litinsky for "breaching their fiduciary duty" and issue damages.
Along with Moss and Litinsky, DWAC founder Patrick Orlando is also named as a suspect in the case, and he is alleged to have been involved in the security breaches.
Moss and Litinsky set up Trump Media's corporate control structure, planned the launch of Truth Social, and found a fake company for a merger that would take the media company public, according to the Florida case.
Moss and Litinsky failed "at every turn," Trump Media says of the two men, who were both contestants on "The Apprentice," Trump's old reality TV show.
Their "wasteful decisions" hurt Trump Media and lowered the price of DWAC's stock, the company says. In spite of a business dispute with DWAC that led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, they decided to merge with Orlando's Benessere Capital Acquisition Corp., according to the case.
Then, on the day before the vote on the Trump Media-DWAC merger, Moss and Litinsky "decided to retaliate" by suing the soon-to-be-public company, according to the suit-first reported by Bloomberg.
Trump Media says the claim that UAV is promised stock is "not true" and that the contract Trump made with UAV in 2021 is no longer valid.
As a result of Trump's lawyers raising worries about the deal in July 2021, the lawsuit says Eric Trump wrote UAV a letter saying that his father had "deemed" the deal to be "void." It is said that UAV "acquiesced" to President Trump's choice to break the deal.
