Trump is suing the founders of Truth Social over alleged mismanagement

Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against two Trump Media founders, claiming they should lose their shares in the company due to mismanagement of his social media site.

The two men, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, had already filed a lawsuit against Trump last February to prevent him from reducing their 8.6% stake in the company.

They floated the idea of ​​Truth Social in the wake of the Capitol riots, after Trump was banned from Twitter, and now X.

Their shares are currently valued at around $600m (£477m).

The two founders met Mr. Trump as contestants on the NBC reality show The Apprentice.

In the lawsuit filed March 24 in Florida state court, the former president's lawyers say Moss and Litinsky were responsible for the day-to-day operations of Trump's media and technology group, but “failed spectacularly at every turn.”

Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) is the parent company of Truth Social.

“They made a series of reckless and wasteful decisions at a critical time that caused significant harm to TMTG and a decline in the stock price of its merger partner,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Trump's lawyers allege that executives in particular slowed the process of Trump Media going public, including by finding a suitable merger company.

TMTG went public last week through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

Mr. Moss and Litinsky were not immediately available for comment.

In their lawsuit filed in February, Moss and Litinsky alleged that the former president was trying to reduce their stake in the company by increasing the company's total number of shares from 120 million to 1 billion shares.

Mr. Trump founded TMTG in 2021 after he was kicked off major social media platforms for his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Mr. Moss and Mr. Letinsky proposed Truth Social as an alternative to mainstream social media sites. They later agreed to a deal under which Trump would own 90% of the platform when it was a private company.

Truth Social shares rose last week – rising to $79 (£63) – after Trump Media went public even though the company faces government investigations and other hurdles in its merger deal.

Since then the stock price has fallen dramatically.