Truth Social co-founders accuse Trump of trying to rip them off in merger

The co-founders of Donald Trump's media company accused the former president of scheming to lock them out of a stake in the company potentially worth millions of dollars.

Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Trump's Truth Social platform, is trying to merge with a special purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisition and go public. If the merger is successful, the company could be valued at more than $3 billion.

As The Washington Post points out, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss met Trump as contestants on his reality show “The Apprentice" and pitched him the idea of a social media platform after he was banned from Twitter, now branded as X.

Trump was given 90 percent of the company. The co-founders took 8.6 percent, while an attorney on the deal, Bradford Cohen, was given the remaining 1.4 percent, according to a lawsuit filed by the pair.

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"[United Atlantic Ventures] launched the Trump Media business, hired employees and raised funding while receiving no 'fee or payment for its work,' the motion said," according to the Post.

"And though Litinsky and Moss left Trump Media that year amid a dispute with its current leadership, UAV retained its shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this month from Digital World."

According to a motion filed by UAV's attorneys, Trump was to receive 78 million shares worth $3.5 billion after the merger. But UAV says Trump tried to “drastically dilute” the co-founders' stake in an “11th hour, pre-merger corporate maneuvering” tactic and that the “dilution scheme” had “no legitimate business purpose."

UAV was “promised 8.6 percent of this company and sadly its business partners are baselessly trying to renege,” the partnership’s lead attorney, Christopher J. Clark of Clark Smith Villazor, told The Post.

“They feel like: We made Truth Social for you. You get 90 percent. But some people just aren’t happy with 90 percent.”

Read the full report over at The Washington Post.