World Liberty Financial sues Justin Sun over alleged defamation campaign

World Liberty Financial has turned its fight with Justin Sun into a defamation case, accusing the billionaire crypto entrepreneur of waging a coordinated campaign to damage the Trump-linked project after he sued it for fraud last month.

The company filed the lawsuit Monday in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Florida, and is seeking unspecified damages along with a public retraction of Sun’s statements. World Liberty said Sun launched a “public smear campaign” and a “coordinated media smear campaign” after the company froze tokens tied to one of his businesses to protect the broader $WLFI holder community.

Sun’s April lawsuit in California federal court escalated the dispute over WLFI tokens that became tradable in September 2025. In that case, Sun said World Liberty illegally blocked him from selling tokens worth up to $1 billion and stripped him of governance rights. According to reporting on that complaint, his wallet was blacklisted and about 540 million tokens were frozen after roughly $9 million in transfers to exchanges that Sun described as routine testing.

World Liberty’s new complaint says Sun crossed the line into defamation by promoting false claims about the company and its token operations. The venture also alleges he engaged in prohibited token transfers, straw purchases and short sales, and says he used third-party buyers, online influencers and fake social-media bot accounts to amplify his accusations. Bloomberg reported that World Liberty portrayed Sun’s campaign as coordinated and retaliatory after his earlier lawsuit.

Sun dismissed the new case on X as a “meritless PR stunt” and said, “I stand by my actions and look forward to defeating the case in court.” The clash now places one of crypto’s best-known figures against a company that has become deeply intertwined with the Trump family’s business interests.

That political backdrop raises the stakes. Reuters reported that Sun invested about $75 million in World Liberty Financial and related Trump-linked crypto assets, while the Trump family receives 75% of net proceeds from token sales. Sun had already emerged as a major backer of the venture, and Mother Jones reported that he invested $30 million when the project launched in 2024 and later spent another $45 million on 3 billion tokens.

With fraud claims in California and defamation claims in Florida, the dispute has moved beyond a token freeze. It now tests how far a high-profile crypto investor can go in attacking a politically connected project before a business feud becomes a legal and reputational crisis.