'Legal warfare' threatens Trump’s grasp on multi-billion dollar Truth Social deal: report

Former President Donald Trump's media company is facing an internal battle as several figures who played a role in its founding are taking legal action, or are the targets of suits themselves.

Trump Media and Technology Group was founded in the wake of the former president being kicked off Twitter in 2021 owing to his posts during the January 6 attack. It oversees Trump's own social media platform, Truth Social.

Though Trump has since been allowed back onto the X platform, he continues to use Truth Social as his main outlet for speaking to his followers. It is on the verge of going public and merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a move that's expected to acquire billions in investor cash.

But there are a number of legal obstacles to the ongoing operation of Trump's company.

According to The Washington Post, both Trump Media and DWAC "have been rocked by legal warfare. Their leaders, past and present, have traded heated accusations of deception and impropriety across four lawsuits in three states. And the cases threaten to erode Trump’s grasp on a stake in the post-merger company potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars — a possible financial lifeline, given that he owes more than $500 million in legal fines."

Trump Media's co-founders, former "Apprentice" stars Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, along with former DWAC director Patrick Orlando, have all been caught up in litigation. Orlando is being sued by Trump Media to try to force him to vote to approve the merger, which he could theoretically tank his shares in DWAC's biggest investor.

Digital World is also separately suing Orlando in New York to try to force the approval of the deal, and yet another lawsuit filed by Trump Media and DWAC accuses Orlando of a "blatant shakedown extortion effort" to maximize his holdings, and of concealing vendor contracts from financial reports.

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Orlando, who was once a firm Trump friend, was fired by DWAC's board last March, and he is reportedly now trying to warn people off investing in it, saying it is “his turn to make the life of the new CEO miserable,” according to the litigation.

Meanwhile, "In a separate case, Litinsky and Moss sued Trump Media, claiming in a recently unsealed complaint that the company had authorized the issuing of 1 billion new shares of company stock — a move they say would dramatically dilute their stake, from 8.6 percent down to less than 1 percent."

And all of this is on top of several other legal dramas unfolding around the company, including a Russian financier who loaned $8 million to Trump's firm being investigated for insider trading.