Billionaire backer sues Trump family's crypto firm over alleged extortion

justin sun, a billionaire crypto backer, is suing the trump family's world liberty crypto venture for alleged extortion. sun accuses the firm of an illegal scheme to seize his wlfi tokens, which he says have been frozen, stripping him of voting rights and threatening permanent destruction via "burning." sun initially invested $45m in world liberty, a project co-founded by donald trump and eric trump. his tokens were once valued over $1bn, but the price of a single wlfi has plunged from 31 cents to under 8 cents since september. sun also bought $100m of trump's meme coins in july 2025. in a lawsuit filed in san francisco federal court, he alleges co-founder chase herro and others are leveraging the trump brand for fraud. world liberty denies wrongdoing, with co-founder zach witkoff calling the suit a "desperate attempt" to deflect from sun's own misconduct. eric trump dismissed it as ridiculous. separately, the sec has dropped an investigation into sun, and trump's truth social platform replaced its ceo devin nunes after the company's share price fell by almost two-thirds in the past year.