In brief
- Donald Trump Jr. said the Trump family has not abandoned World Liberty Financial, dispelling online rumors.
- Co-founder Zach Witkoff said the firm is close to conditional approval for a national bank charter.
- The company also defended its lawsuit against Tron founder Justin Sun amid their escalating feud.
Donald Trump Jr. addressed rumors Thursday that he and his family have quietly exited World Liberty Financial, insisting he and his siblings remain part of the crypto firm as it ramps up a high-profile legal skirmish.
“I think I saw on Twitter at one point that Don and Eric had abandoned the project,” Zach Witkoff, another World Liberty co-founder, said during a Thursday afternoon appearance at Consensus, a Miami crypto conference.
“It was news to me too,” Trump Jr. chimed in, chalking the rumors up to misinformation spread online after World Liberty took a list of company co-founders, including President Donald Trump and his three sons, off the company website.
“You get enough people who blindly follow what someone’s feeding them, you get bots pushing it… I don’t think I’d be on this stage here if that was the case,” Trump Jr. continued.
“As far as I’m aware, Don and Eric are still very much co-founders of the project,” Witkoff added.
The co-founders were prompted to respond to the rumors by the panel’s moderator, David Wachsman—an independent crypto PR executive who runs public relations for the Trump family’s crypto firm.
During the panel, Wachsman also asked Trump Jr. and Witkoff to address a lawsuit filed this week by World Liberty against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. Sun, the founder of the Tron network and one of World Liberty’s top financial backers, sued the company last month, alleging rampant misconduct by its leadership.
World Liberty has now clapped back with a defamation suit, arguing that Sun not only publicly spread falsehoods about the company, but also secretly shorted the company’s native token, WLFI, in an effort to drive down its price.
“We wouldn’t have filed the lawsuit if we didn’t have the receipts,” Witkoff said, calling the legal action a “last resort.”
Witkoff soon after pivoted to World Liberty’s regulatory ambitions. In January, the company applied with a division of President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department for a national trust bank charter, which would allow it to handle key banking functions related to its dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD1.
“We’re really excited to hopefully get our charter,” Witkoff said. “I think we’re in the final stages of receiving conditional approval.”
In recent months, top Democrats have seized on World Liberty’s pending bank charter application as proof of President Trump’s alleged “crypto corruption.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren has pointed to the banking charter’s potential approval as proof of “perhaps the most disgraceful presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history.”