A lawsuit was filed by the co-founders of former president Donald Trump's media company claiming that Trump and other leaders had schemed to deprive them of a stake in the company worth millions of dollars.
The move comes at a time as Trump Media & Technology Group which operates Truth Social, eyes a lucrative merger with Digital World Acquisition.
According to a report by NBC news, a lawyer for UAV, Christopher Clark said about the co-founders, "The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal. It's not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket. They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn't want to pay."
It was in early 2021 after Trump was banned from Twitter and lost the White House, two men who had first encountered him as competitors on his reality programme "The Apprentice," Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, approached him with the idea of launching a new start-up and social media platform. After Trump approved the purchase, he received 90% of the business.
UAV launched the Trump Media business, and later Litinsky and Moss left Trump Media amid a dispute with its leadership. UAV retained its shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this month from Digital World. The filing said that Trump was set to receive 78 million shares in the post-merger company, a stake worth $3.5 billion at today's share price and that UAV would receive more than 7 million shares, a stake worth about $339 million, reported The Washington Post.
Trump is currently going through a financial turmoil, with a New York appellate judge recently rejecting his plea to delay a $454 million civil fraud penalty.
