World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Donald Trump and his sons, said on Monday it has filed a defamation lawsuit in Florida state court against Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, escalating a dispute with one of its prominent early backers.

In a post on X, World Liberty shared a copy of the complaint, accusing Sun of running a “public smear campaign.”

The company alleges he improperly transferred some of his WLFI tokens, which carry voting and governance rights, to the Binance exchange, and separately placed bets against the token through short selling.

It claims these actions were part of a coordinated effort to drive down WLFI’s price as it began public trading in September.

“Justin Sun engaged in a defamatory campaign to torch World Liberty Financial’s reputation. He knew his claims were false and made them anyway to harm WLFI token holders,” Zach Witkoff, World Liberty’s CEO, said in a separate post on X on Monday.

However, stated, “The alleged defamation lawsuit that World Liberty announced on X today is nothing more than a meritless PR stunt. I stand by my actions and look forward to defeating the case in court,” Sun said, according to Reuters.

Sun also shared the same message on X.
In April, he filed a lawsuit against World Liberty Financial, alleging the company unlawfully froze tokens he had purchased.

He claimed World Liberty had secretly put in place mechanisms that blocked him from selling his tokens after they became tradable in September 2025.

In that case, Sun denied accusations that he shorted WLFI’s token.