An
The lawsuit was filed under seal in Delaware’s Chancery Court, but an attached public filing says it seeks “monetary relief” for fiduciary breaches by the tech giant’s senior leaders. The shareholder suit also names the Commerce Department as a defendant, according to the case docket.
Neither Intel nor the agency immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday.
The unorthodox stock sale in August reflected the increasingly heavy-handed economic approach deployed by President
The president’s interventionist instincts have been at their most aggressive when he can tie them to a security rationale. At the time of the Intel transaction, the Trump administration characterized a US stake in the beleaguered semiconductor firm—America’s largest—as a matter of national security. The Pentagon last month moved to designate Anthropic PBC a “supply-chain risk” after the AI giant pushed for some guardrails around military use of its technology.
Although the shareholder complaint against Tan and Lutnick isn’t yet public, another related court filing says available information—including the company’s regulatory filings and statements by Trump—suggests the government may have pressured Intel into handing over a 10% stake for a fraction of its market value.
Trump posted online in August that “I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, ITS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS.” Intel’s own accounting disclosures acknowledged that it “allocated $5.81 per share for the 275,000,000 shares of Intel common stock issued to the DOC” at a time when they traded at $24.80, according to the court filings.
Skadden Link
According to one of those related court filings, public information indicates much or most of the price paid by the government for its stake actually came from billions it was already set to pay Intel anyway in connection with preexisting research and development grants.
The per-share figure appears to have been reverse-engineered by “dividing the disbursements (i.e., amounts awarded (but not yet paid) to Intel pursuant to the direct funding agreement and the secure enclave award commitment) by the number of shares of Intel’s common stock that would represent a 9.9% ownership interest,” the document says.
The lawsuit appears to target sections of the stock agreement pledging the government’s support for Intel’s sitting directors in any board election. Those provisions likely make a successful proxy contest impossible, according to the public filing.
The document also suggests the shareholder suit may seek to link the transaction to a $100 million pro bono agreement between the administration and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, a leading white-shoe law firm that advised Intel on the stock sale.
Skadden didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
It’s one of a handful of major law firms that reached preemptive, widely criticized accords with Trump after he issued punitive executive orders against several others. Thursday’s court filing refers to Skadden as “potentially conflicted” by virtue of its pro bono deal with the administration.
Each of the four firms targeted by Trump’s orders prevailed against them in court, a wave of challenges that culminated in a bizarre spectacle earlier this week, when the Justice Department said it would drop its appeals and then reversed course.
The shareholder complaint will likely be unsealed next week under court rules that provide five days to redact confidential information.
The Intel investor, Richard Paisner, is represented by Heyman Enerior Gattuso & Hirzel LLP.
The case is Paisner v. Tan, Del. Ch., No. 2026-0307, complaint filed under seal 3/5/26.
An incorrect AI summary previously at the top of this story was removed.
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