Trump’s $15 Billion Libel/Defamation lawsuit against the New York Times is a bit bizarre, a bit of comedy, and a whole lot of ego. The entire Net Worth of the New York Times is $9.6 billion. What exactly does his complaint entail?
The suit is spurred by a book published by Penguin in 2024 by Pulitzer Prize winning, Russ Buettner and Suzanne Craig which became an instant bestseller titled; Lucky Loser, How Trump squandered his father’s fortune and created the illusion of success. In addition, the 86 page suit claims 3 articles written by Baker & Schmidt ss well as the Times endorsement of Kamala Harris as defamation.
The three articles at issue were written in 2024: One claimed the reality show Apprentice helped to boost Trump’s rise, the second is an interview with Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, in which he claims Trump would rule like a dictator and that Trump made disparaging remarks about the military. The third is a headline for an article which Trump claims is disparaging – “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment”.
While I might not care for the politics of some of these journalists, they have a right to their opinion and to express that opinion. The fact that Trump is also suing The Wall Street Journal for $10 Billion over their publication of Trump’s alleged birthday card to Epstein in 2003, further opens Pandora’s Box of litigations. According to Crush The LSAT, Trump has been involved in over 4,000 legal battles as both defendant and plaintiff losing 93% of the cases.
While these lawsuits may be just a distraction, a much more egregious issue is rattling the Trump Train – World Liberty Financial.
Launched during Trump’s campaign in 2024, World Liberty is a crypto trading company which is 60% controlled by the Trump Family thru a Delaware holding company, WLF Holdco, LLC.. The company issues WLFI Tokens and like Truth Social, the value has been highly volatile. The secondary partner is Steve Witkoff and family. The share price over the past years has remained below the initial offering price. US Congressional Ethics Committee is currently investigating the company.
An early investor was Chinese born crypto billionaire, Justin Sun. In 2024, Sun invested $75 million into Liberty. The financial relationship between Trump and Sun raised potential conflicts of interest, given that Sun’s companies were under investigation by the SEC. The lawsuit alleges Sun was selling unregistered securities related to the sale and promotion of Tron (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens. The SEC alleged that Sun and his companies had engaged in fraudulent activities such as wash trading in the secondary market for TRX in order to raise its price.
Wash Trading is market manipulation. A company buys and sells the same number of shares concurrently, giving the impression that there is ‘activity’ and the shares are falsely valuable. It is highly illegal.
February 2025 when Trump took office, he dropped all SEC charges against Sun. Shortly after, Sun claims Trump had his wallet frozen. Sun liquidated his shares in World Liberty Financial after Liberty was forced to unfreeze his wallet. More recently, the UAE Shiekh bought $2 billion in Trump’s crypto with a caveat that America would sell our highest grade chips to them. Given either Trump or American’s now own 15% of INTEL, the Art of The Deal becomes more than a bit suspect for Mafia style transactions.
Trump has also recently stated that’s the $300milion plane donated to the Air Force by Qatar, is his and will be displayed at his Presidential Library… It is no coincidence that Trump’s net worth since becoming President has increased by $3 billion, an increase of 70%. While Truth Social shares have dropped from $42.91 to $17.49 – a loss of 60%. So where is Trump making his money if his businesses are dropping precipitously?
No ones knows.
Witkoff? Claimed assets worth $350 million when taking office. Forbes recently stated Witkoff’s net worth is now $2 billion. Witkoff’s title, Special Envoy To The Middle East for which he has several significant business dealings in real estate. He is Jewish. He and his wife recently separated.