Trump sues Truth Social co-founders, claims former ‘Apprentice’ contestants should lose their stock
Donald Trump sued two of his fellow co-founders of his newly public Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG) alleging that because they set the company up improperly they aren’t entitled to any stock in it.
The lawsuit filed late last month in Florida state court claims Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss — who were both contestants on Trump’s NBC reality TV series “The Apprentice” — violated an agreement about the setup of TMTG and don’t deserve their 8.6% stake.
Their shares are currently valued at a collective $606 million, according to Bloomberg.
The duo also made a series of costly mistakes “that caused significant damage to TMTG and a decline in the stock price of its merger partner,” according to the lawsuit.
After TMTG’s flashy stock market debut under the ex-president’s initials “DJT,” it surged to more than $70 before closing at roughly $66 a share on March 27. So far this week, however, prices have plunged and the company closed at $51.60 on Tuesday.
Trump blamed Moss and Litinsky in the court filing for the firm’s losses, where he alleged that they “failed spectacularly at every turn,” including when “they failed to get the corporate governance established” in TMTG’s early days.
Then, Moss and Litinsky picked Patrick Orlando, the former chief of Digital World Acquisition Corp. to take TMTG public — “hardly the best merger candidate because several of its officers and directors did not want a deal with TMTG,” per the suit.
DWAC — the blank-check firm that ultimately took TMTG public — abruptly ousted Orlando last month, though it only said because of “unprecedented headwinds.”
Orlando had been undergoing a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission after the DWAC-TMTG venture was announced over claims he had been telling investors privately for months that he’d been mulling a deal with Trump.
The probe “caused the merger to be put on ice for over a year and a half, leading to huge legal and other expenses,” according to Trump’s lawsuit.
“Understandably, Moss and Litinsky could not stay on with the company. So, they decided to retaliate,” the suit added, noting they later “began ceaseless attempts to thwart” the SPAC deal in the struggle for their respective stakes.
“This was a phenomenal opportunity for Moss and Litinsky,” the suit notes, adding that they were both “riding President Trump’s coattails.”
The stock dropped 21% on Monday alone after TMTG disclosed in a securities filing that it suffered a $58 million loss in 2023 and needed money from Trump’s blank-check firm in order to keep operating — a performance that fueled skepticism about its roller-coaster IPO launch that led experts to dub it another “meme stock” like AMC and GameStop.
Trump’s net worth surged and tumbled along with TMTG’s share price, which ultimately slumped and sent the presumptive Republican nominee’s fortune spiraling 14%, to $6.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
Trump owns 57% of the company, according to the filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission obtained by Bloomberg, with his stake now worth $4.02 billion on paper.
Trump’s suit is just the latest in his court battle with Moss and Litinsky, who were credited for pitching the idea of a copycat Twitter platform called Truth Social in early 2021 after Trump lost his White House bid and was barred from the social media site now known as X in the wake of the Capitol riot.
Litinsky and Moss brought their own suit against the former president in Delaware Chancery Court over their promised stake in the social media company.
Even with its slump, TMTG currently has a market capitalization of about $6.4 billion.
Trump is unable to sell any of his 57% shares in the company due to a six-month lockup related to his New York civil fraud case.
Delaware Judge Sam Glasscock III declined to fast-track Litinsky and Moss’s suit after Trump’s lawyers agreed to avoid lessening the value of their shares, Bloomberg reported.
But at a hearing Monday, the pair told the judge they plan to seek an order barring Trump’s subsequent Florida suit from going forward while they litigate claims that Trump planned to target their stake all along.
Glasscock told the court he was “gobsmacked” to learn of Trump’s Florida suit, which he filed instead of bringing counterclaims against the two in Glasscock’s own courtroom, according to Bloomberg. As a result he’s mulling possible sanctions against the former president in the Delaware case.
The Post has sought comment from Trump, Litinsky, and Moss.
