World Liberty Financial sues Justin Sun for defamation

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a DeFi project led by the Trump family, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun, the New York Post reported. In its complaint, World Liberty alleges that Sun publicly supported the WLFI token while secretly engaging in a "short-and-distort" scheme involving short selling and price manipulation. According to World Liberty, Sun's side invested a total of $45 million in WLFI starting in November 2024, but the tokens were frozen after the project detected alleged unauthorized transfers to Binance, the use of third-party proxy buyers, and engagement in contractually prohibited short selling. World Liberty stated that even after the freeze, Sun continued to publicly support WLFI while privately demanding a settlement worth hundreds of millions of dollars, threatening that the token's price would collapse if the assets were not unfrozen. Sun had previously filed a fraud lawsuit against World Liberty in a California federal court on April 21. In its countersuit, World Liberty is seeking damages and the retraction of related posts.