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Truth Social stock market stocks displayed at the entrance to the Nasdaq New York Stock Exchange
Photo: Brendan McDermid / REUTERS
Donald Trump is taking two co-founders of the Trump Media & Technology Group to court. Trump Media is the parent company of his platform Truth Social, which recently went public. The core of his lawsuit is the argument that the two should forfeit their shares in the company because of business misconduct.
The former US president's lawsuit, filed March 24 in a Florida court, is a retaliation for a complaint filed in February by co-founders Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss. With their lawsuit they wanted to prevent Trump from drastically reducing their combined 8.6 percent stake in Trump Media. They accused Trump Media of diluting the value of their holding by increasing the number of shares.
In his lawsuit, Trump alleges that Litinsky and Moss, who both participated in Trump's reality TV show "The Apprentice," mishandled an attempt to take Trump Media public several years ago. As a result, the entire project would have been “on hold” for more than a year and a half.
Crash on Easter Monday
Trump Media actually went public last week, merging with a publicly traded shell company called Digital World Acquisition in March. Trump Media shares have fluctuated wildly since their stock market debut. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $51.60, up six percent. However, this was preceded by a crash of around 21 percent on Easter Monday. On paper, the largest stockholder Donald Trump lost more than a billion US dollars in one day. Trump owns almost 60 percent of the company.
The former US president's media company posted a loss of a good $58 million for its last financial year, with sales of around $4 million. Much of that was interest expense, and about $16 million was operating expenses.
mamk/AP