Truth Social is trying to replicate the success Dominion Voting Systems had against Fox “News” by filing a ridiculous lawsuit in Florida state court against the Washington Post for nearly $4 billion, claiming lies and slanders allegedly told by the Post created an “existential threat” to the perpetually struggling vanity project. But the funniest thing: the basis for the lawsuit seems to be comments on the article and replies to journalists posts on Twitter written by others, not the story itself.
Trump officials were approached by the Washington Post at the time of the report, published on May 13th, but they declined to comment: “Representatives for Trump Media and Digital World did not respond to requests for comment for this story,” the story notes.
Claiming that the Post got its reporting wrong when it published a story asserting the Trump Media and Technology Group took a $8 million loan from a Caribbean bank that services porn sites, Trump’s lawsuit exhibits a form of ESP, claiming to know what readers took away from the headline, which read, “Trust linked to porn-friendly bank could gain a stake in Trump’s Truth Social.” To support their claim, the brief notes comments to the story that point out that the Post had in fact hidden important details, such as: “Yo WaPo, you buried the lede here, even by calling it a loan from a ‘porn-friendly bank.’ It’s PAXUM BANK, one that’s almost surely tied to Russian Mafiya $$$ from sex trafficking of cam girls in Romania and around the world. Its owner just resigned yesterday.” Other comments from Twitter cited in the lawsuit:
The TMTG claims to have informed WaPo on May 14th that the story contained incorrect information specifically regarding the notification to the Securities and Exchange Commission about the loan and the payment of a $240,000 “finder’s fee” to the head of the SPAC investment group investing in TMTG, Digital World’s former CEO Patrick Orlando. TMTG claims to have informed WaPo that it contested the information, but it does not say that it provided any exculpatory evidence to counter the Washington Post’s reporting, and Trump’s lawyers make the unsupported claim that, “Publication of the WaPo Article destroyed at least $2.78 Billion of implied equity value in TMTG” even though the struggling social media platform–a cheap ripoff of the original Twitter system, but with near-complete censorship against anything demeaning Trump and MAGA.
According to various resources, Truth Social has about 2 million accounts, ranking 180th among social media platforms. It currently gets roughly 400,000 visits per day, and its traffic dipped precipitously after the November elections by about half, a cut made long before the WaPo story published.
The suit relies heavily on the fact that Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes, who has famously sued a fake cow, has already filed a lawsuit against another entity that reported the story, the British outlet The Guardian, which reported that federal investigators were looking into the loan for possible money laundering in March; that lawsuit is pending and therefore is essentially useless as a grounds for suing others. No where in the lawsuit do Trump’s lawyers present evidence of and SEC filing, nor do they provide proof that Orlando wasn’t paid; it seems they’re just upset that the report was made and that it was read by millions of people.
Unsurprisingly, while TMTG’s lawyers say the company filed proper paperwork with the SEC, at no point in the lawsuit do Trump lawyers refer to a date of the appropriate filing, provide a document number or even include a copy of the filing in the case. Also at no point do TMTG lawyers provide evidence that the trust in question does not, in fact, have connections to porn websites. The lawyers simply make the claim and expect the Court to believe them as if they’re obviously presenting factual information, something Trump’s lawyers have not done in the past.
The suit asked for $2.78 billion in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive. Trump estimated the value of TMTG at less than $5 million and he noted he made less than $200 from the endeavor in his latest federal financial disclosures required as part of his run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, but as history shows, Trump frequently lies on financial statements.