President Trump sues NYT alleging defamation, harm to his Solana-based memecoin

U.S. President Donald Trump has sued the New York Times (NYT) alleging that the publication defamed him and caused harm to his Solana memecoin token, TRUMP. President Trump filed a lawsuit against the NYT this week claiming that its coverage has betrayed its once professed journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy to become a mouthpiece of the opposing Democratic party.

The lawsuit seeks $15 billion in damages from the media company, claiming that the court should presume that NYT’s reporting caused harm to his business ventures as well as to its readers.

“President Trump’s other business holdings during the relevant period, including the Truth Social platform and the $TRUMP crypto project were harmed,” the filing said.

This crypto project was launched by President Trump on January 18, 2025. The memecoin was built on the Solana blockchain and its total supply was capped at $1 billion.

In the first phase of the memecoin’s launch, 200 million tokens were unlocked for public acquisition. The remaining 800 million TRUMP tokens were kept under the custody of an affiliate entity of the Trump Organization.

As per TRM Labs, “these reserved tokens were locked for periods of three to 12 months, followed by a gradual daily unlocking schedule over the subsequent 24 months,” to curb threats linked to large scale token sell offs and ecosystem instability.

Despite the hype around President Trump’s return to the White House as the 47th President, the memecoin spiked in price and soon dropped. The token registered its highest price point of over $76 between January 20 and January 22 — hitting the valuation of over $8 billion at the time. Following that, however, the token has consistently seen a decline — now having dropped by upto 88 percent, as per reports.

Data by CoinGecko showed that the TRUMP token is presently trading at $8.59.

The lawsuit has alleged that, “Defendants each desire for President Trump fail politically and financially. Each feels actual malice towards President Trump in the colloquial sense: that is, each—Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, as individuals, and the Times and Penguin’s relevant executives as corporations—subjectively wishes to harm President Trump, and each wish to manipulate public opinion to President Trump’s disadvantage to worsen his current and future political and economic prospects.”

NYT’s response on the development remains awaited.